Found a CD-I (Sorta)... Some Questions!

[Glitch695]

Hey guys, I happened to find what I thought was a CD-I with a bunch of sealed games (kind of, more on that later) for $30. It worked perfectly and was in great shape so I picked it up, and knowing NOTHING about the CD-I I just assumed there were 2 or 3 models like the Genesis or something, but yikes, there's like 25-30 different models of this thing!
The one I got happens to be a DVS Dream Machine 200 or something like that. Instead of a controller, it has a strange, black remote that slides open on the bottom to expose 9 buttons. It also came with a cord that plugs into the printer port on the back that I have no clue about, you can see a picture of it below.
It came with 16 games, most of them sealed, but the majority seem to be more like learning programs than games. The sealed games/ learning thingys are:
Pegasus
Pecos Bill
The Emperor's New Clothes
Tell Me Why Two
A First Look At Trees
Converting Fractions to Decimals
Whole Numbers
Animal Life in a Tidepool (this one sounds gripping)
The Civil War: The South Secedes and the War Begins
Insects: Reproduction & Metamorphosis
Mathtrak
Percentages

I also got 4 disc only games that are real, ACTUAL games:

Dragon's Lair
Burn Cycle
Space Ace
Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia

Burn Cycle was actual kind of cool, but I didn't want to try any of the other sealed games because if they DO have some value, I'd hate to lower it by wanting to learn more about decimals. And as far as I can tell that Compton Encyclopedia has nothing to do with NWA, unfortunately.
So I have a couple of questions. First of all, just what the heck is the deal with this Dream Machine? I can't find much info on it. When was it released, where, etc. Second, is this system actually worth owning? Does it have any better games than Burn Cycle, and if so, what are they? And I know it belongs in the other board, but since I don't want to start two threads on the same thing, is it worth anything more than what I paid for it?
I did find a pretty cool CD-I site, but it didn't have a ton of info I was looking for so... I'd like to hear from the digitpress experts. Thanks!

[Bojay1997]

DVS is a German company that also distributes their products worldwide. They manufacture professional video presentation and A/V systems for the industrial market. I have seen DVS branded DVD kiosk systems and back in the day, DVS sold CD-i players primarily for the corporate training and attraction (theme park) kiosk markets. It's a neat variant, but not super rare or valuable. The games/edutainment titles you have there are all dirt common. $30 is a fair price and maybe a slight bargain. I enjoy the CD-i, but then again, I love FMV titles and odd multimedia stuff. As far as hardcore games, you're probably going to be disappointed. The system has limited memory and a fairly slow processor. A lot of people pick up the Zelda trilogy of titles as a curiousity, but they are very poor in my opinion. Not a whole lot of game exclusives, but Burn Cycle is kinda cool and some of the later titles like Lost Ride are exclusive and well done. Overall, a nice addition to a collection, especially for that price.

[buzz_n64]

The CD-i is an interesting showcase. Plays VCDs, educational titles, and games. Most of the games just plain suck! If you want better graphics, but not better gameplay, try Thunder in Paradise Interactive, and many other FMV titles. Hotel Mario is fun for a few minutes, fun if you like Wrecking Crew but is very repetitive. CD-i is in a class of it's own, but shares many titles with Sega CD and 3DO.

[OldSchoolGamer]

In my opinion that is a damn nice looking CDi unit as they go! Congrats!

[tom]

Hi well done, nice score.
The CDi has many great games (considering its small library of games) and edu titles available.
Always remember though, the CDi was never intended as a gaming console like SNES or Genesis, first and foremost is was to be a CDi movie player, making movies available on CD.

A small selection of good games:
The Apprentice
7th Guest
Alice in Wonderland
Lemmings
Zelda's Adventure
Voyeur
Tetsuo Gaiden
Steel Machine
Pac-Panic
Othello
Sargon Chess
Tetris
Escape from Cybercity
Flashback
Defender of the Crown
Atlantis
Backgammon
Micro Machines
Creature Shock
Merlin Apprentice
Lost Eden
Uncover (feat the delicious Tatjana)
Solar Crusade
Christmas Country

You might wanna try here for more info:
http://www.cdinteractive.co.uk/forum/


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[Bojay1997]

Hi well done, nice score.
The CDi has many great games (considering its small library of games) and edu titles available.
Always remember though, the CDi was never intended as a gaming console like SNES or Genesis, first and foremost is was to be a CDi movie player, making movies available on CD.

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Completely not correct. Games, edutainment, training and movies were all part of the original design specs for the system. It tried to do everything which is why it wasn't particularly good at games. Still, there are some decent titles available.

[NayusDante]

I have copies of Pinball and Mystic Midway that I'm trying to get rid of, but they don't seem to attract any bids on eBay. CD-I stuff seems to be either worth its weight in gold or nothing at all, with the Nintendo titles being the ones worth real money.

That LPT cable looks like it's for external control of the unit. Many stereo receivers and A/V hardware have those headphone jack ports, and they're labelled something like "IR Control." I'm guessing that you plug it in to a stereo so you can control multiple devices with one remote. Good luck finding compatible devices, though.

I think you got a good deal, from what I've seen the hardware goes for at least that. Your unit might be one of the more attractive variants, the ones I've seen are generally pretty ugly and don't fit in with most A/V hardware. And you got the Don Bluth games, I would think those are worth a little more than the encyclopedias.


I know it's generally well known that Burn:Cycle is one of the better CD-I games, but I know it had a PC version as well. Aside from the Nintendo games, were there any good game exclusives on CD-I? Pretty much the only ones I know of are cross-platform.

[NerdXCrewWill]

There are lots of good games for the CD-I. Dragon's Lair II is by far the best. It's definitely the most enjoyable FMV game ever. It plays like sheer insanity. You should grab that one for the CD-I or DVD or any of the other platforms. Note, though, that with the digital video cartridge, full motion video looks amazing. Aside from later dvd versions, it's the best looking you're gonna get. Of course, the infrared controller sucks balls unless you find a "hot spot" to sit in front of.

As far as good non-Nintendo exclusives go, I can only think of one: Escape From Cyber City. Even popular CD-I titles such as Burn Cycle, Thunder in Paradise, and Voyeur got releases on the DOS, disqualifying them.

[jb143]

Neat. I always scan through the piles of DVD players and VCR's at thrift stores looking for CD-i's and other multimedia consoles for cheap. So far I haven't found anything though.

[dnehthend]

I've found a few, they are usually super cheap, priced with the single disc cd players and not the dvd players

sometimes laserdisc players are priced with the multi disc cd players

[Glitch695]

Awesome input, you guys know your stuff. I went back and asked the guy who sold me the system exactly what the cord allowed me to do, and he said 'print stuff', so- no help from him. And while Burn Cycle is cool and the unit itself looks sharp, I may just end up getting rid of it... I've been focusing more on just finishing my childhood nostalgic collection more than anything else. I'll probably make a trade post or something.
Something interesting about the controller: my friend saw it and asked if it was a 'cool black Wii variant controller'- it's really not that far off, to be honest.
Also I was watching the AVGN videos on the Zelda CD-I games, and, wow, they might be cool from a collecting point of view but as playable games they seem pretty atrocious.

[tom]

Don't watch AVGN that man's a piss-artist, no more.
Also, don't only listen for 'good game' opinions here or any other forum, these statements are usually extremely personal, rely on your own judgement.

Read the CDi/Zelda games review in Retro Gamer issue 27 (interview with Del DeSharone, programmer of both titles), that is more fact based than any of the people here state or AVGN.

Read a great interveiw on Dale DeSharone in Retro Gamer issue 31 (more on the Zelda games too)

Also read Retro Gamer issue 32 for a definitive Philips CDi article, here's a quote from Dale DeSharone what Philips (NL) told him: "Philips was actually very clear in telling us that it didn't believe the market for this device (CDi) was games"

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[Bojay1997]

Don't watch AVGN that man's a piss-artist, no more.
Also, don't only listen for 'good game' opinions here or any other forum, these statements are usually extremely personal, rely on your own judgement.

Read the CDi/Zelda games review in Retro Gamer issue 27 (interview with Del DeSharone, programmer of both titles), that is more fact based than any of the people here state or AVGN.

Read a great interveiw on Dale DeSharone in Retro Gamer issue 31 (more on the Zelda games too)

Also read Retro Gamer issue 32 for a definitive Philips CDi article, here's a quote from Dale DeSharone what Philips (NL) told him: "Philips was actually very clear in telling us that it didn't believe the market for this device (CDi) was games"

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Give me a break, why do you even frequent discussion boards in the first place? Anything written by anyone ever is biased to some degree or another. Also, unless you have unlimited resources or are some kind of rom pirate, most of us consider the opinions of others, biased or not, to help make purchasing decisions. It's not like every game in the world you might be interested in can be purchased for mere pennies instantly, at least not yet.

The Retro Gamer article is no less biased than anything else. I'm a gamer first and a collector second. The three Zelda games on the CDi are horrible games by any standard in my opinion. Is it interesting that they are on a non-Nintendo CD-based early 90s platform? Absolutely. Are they collectible because of that fact? Absolutely. Does that make them good games when compared to the large sea of games out there in my opinion? Nope. Heck, I bought the first two Zelda CD-i games shortly after release and they were not great then compared to most of what was available on CD-i or other systems and they haven't aged well.

I don't know Dale DeSharone, but I can state for a fact that Philips invested tens of millions of dollars in creating in-house and third party resources to develop games from the very beginning of CDi. Obviously, they decided late in the game to abandon most game development, but the estimates I have seen involved spending over $100 million on marketing and software development for the CDi over three years just for the consumer market.

[tom]

Another quote: I'm not sure if you were familiar with CDi titles: Treasures of the Smithonian (not a game) had multi-million dollar budgets, while games like Laser Lords was closer to just $700.000.

tens of millions of dollars ...I don't think so.

[Bojay1997]

Another quote: I'm not sure if you were familiar with CDi titles: Treasures of the Smithonian (not a game) had multi-million dollar budgets, while games like Laser Lords was closer to just $700.000.

tens of millions of dollars ...I don't think so.

How does this in any way support your point? Laser Lords was one not particularly high budget title out of dozens and dozens that Philips created in-house. By my count there are at least fifty first party game titles. If each just had a $500K budget (and obviously Philips paid a lot more for rights to some leading PC titles like 7th Guest and paid an incredible amount to create and do the marketing for Voyeur), that would be $25 million dollars, just for development. My recollection was that Voyeur alone cost several million to develop including the various fees for the prominent actors and several million more to market through informercials and regular commercials. I'm sorry, but as you pointed out, people come to things with a bias and Mr. DeSharone is no different. The fact is, most people who have actually played the CD-i Zelda games agree they are very poorly done and not fun in the least. Do you think it's possible that this guy is making all sorts of claims in hindsight about the limitations of the system and a lack of support from Philips to cover up or convince himself that his games weren't really all that bad? If they really had no interest in supporting games, why did they give away his Link game as a pack-in for over a year with the CD-i model 450? Seems like they would have packed it with VCDs or CD-i compatible movies instead if your claims are correct.

[NayusDante]

Treasures of the Smithsonian had a multi-million dollar budget? Geez, and I lost money trying to flip it.

[Rickstilwell1]

My favorite CD-i game that isn't listed in this thread is Mutant Rampage:Bodyslam. It's a very long sidescrolling beat-em-up that plays exactly like Final Fight and Streets of Rage.

[NerdXCrewWill]

You should give the sidescrolling Zelda games another try. If not for the poor controller, I think people would actually enjoy them. I have the both of them in my list of the top games of all time (admittedly, in the 100+ range). They're ahead of Zelda II and Faxanadu and various other similar games. Sure, there's a bit of farming involved throughout the games, but I like the mechanics and level design overall. Plus, I think everyone can agree that they feature some beautiful 2D graphics. (The cutscenes are debatable, but I think they're charming.)

Heck, I even sort of like the bad controls to an extent, since they add some challenge to the games. I think the game would probably be better with a proper wired controller though.

[Ze_ro]

Does it have any better games than Burn Cycle, and if so, what are they?

Sadly, no. Burn Cycle is generally considered to be about the best game on the system. There are other games that are interesting and fun, however.

The Zelda games are horribly flawed, but when you consider the capabilities of the CD-i itself (it's basically a step above the interactive menus on DVD players), it's almost amazing they were able to pull off what they did. They're kind of fun in the same way that watching Plan 9 From Outer Space is fun, but they're a little too rare and expensive to recommend (I paid about $100 for Zelda's Adventure, and $40 each for Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon).

Second, is this system actually worth owning?

That depends on what you want to do with your stuff. From a collecting standpoint, the CD-i is actually a pretty interesting system, with some neat stuff that you won't find anywhere else. Where else can you find a mini-golf game featuring the voice of Eugene Levy? It's also arguably the best system for FMV games like Dragon's Lair and Mad Dog McCree, as long as you have a Digital Video Cartridge installed.

... but if you just want to play games, then you won't have much fun.

And I know it belongs in the other board, but since I don't want to start two threads on the same thing, is it worth anything more than what I paid for it?

I'm sure you could sell it for more than $30. It's hard finding other people who are interested in CD-i stuff, but that specific model seems rare enough that it should turn a few heads.

--Zero

[retroman]

sweat find dude..i have the magnavox cdi