Thanks for including myself, @jenovi and @historicnerd in this. It was fun to shoot for myself... maybe not my liver. The CD-I is extremely underrated. I think you're right, the majority of people's opinions on the CD-I comes from an echo chamber of opinions that kicked off with AVGN. I forgot to mention, the CD-I tennis game is crazy good. Very responsive and looks great. I'm also really glad you pointed out the CD-I's sales. I think a lot of people don't realize that it was a 7 figure seller. Anyway, great video Top Hat. And I'd be saying that even if I wasn't on it.
I've been critical of the CD-i long before AVGN ever reviewed it, and I discussed it online with others who were equally critical of it. AVGN definitely made the CD-i mainstream, but I wouldn't say he's the reason it's getting so much hate. I really don't think it not being a pure gaming console is a very strong defense. If you're trying to sell it to gamers it doesn't matter if you can watch movies on it if it falls short in the gaming department. There's a reason why most people consider Microsoft's E3 2013 showing to be pathetic.
@@WrestlingWithGaming Even though most of my memories with that system are pretty negative, it's nice seeing a video bring up some of its better points!
I'm 40, so I remember when this came out and had some Hands-On time with it at the Sears in my local mall I thought it was horrible, I thought it mocked itself, and maybe I would have liked it more if I got to use it with the wired controller because one of my major issues with it was the horrible remote, but I don't see what it has to offer that you can't get on Sega CD or PC Beyond a handful of FMV titles Maybe, I don't even know if any of them are exclusive anyway, but the system mocked itself and didn't need James Rolfe to do it
Thing is it was never meant to be a console at all! It just happened to run a CD format that could take rough games, and that's what people latched on to rather than it's real use. There are many really bad consoles out there. The CDi doesn't deserve ridicule for something it wasn't originally supposed to be! It should be reviewed as an obsolete home media centre, not a console.
Absolutely a brilliant episode, and I don't just say that because I'm in it. Thank you very much for the opportunity to submit a segment for this video and for letting me make something a bit more silly than I would typically do. Hotel Mario is an interesting game because I don't know one single person who's called it a bad game after actually playing it. In fact, it's almost always on folks list of best games on the hardware. Other notable titles are Dragons Lair II, which was exclusive to the hardware for nearly two decades, Burn Cycle, and let's not forget Secret Mission.
$799.00. That's the number one reason this system was shit. The library of games is extremely tepid. The few games that actually offered some enjoyment had terrible (inconsistent) framerate, long load times and notable controller lag. Granted, the price did drop... multiple times, but never really settled into a comfortable "console" range. The fact it was marketed as a multimedia device, not a game console didn't help either. The VCD format is dreadful, having lower resolution than VHS, due to the compression of the format. Most movies had to be put on several discs if you didn't want them looking like trash. Ultimately the CDI was relegated to running demonstrations in mall kiosks. Yes. This was a bad system. What it tried to do is immaterial compared to what it actually did. If we are going to subscribe to this train of thought, let's talk about how ambitious the 32x was. No? I owned a CDI and ended up giving it to my neighbor as it ultimately collected dust. Mutant Rampage. Terrible framerate, terrible hit detection... absolute jank. Yet...it was the best game on the system. I support that this wasn't the worst system ever, but my Lord. It's far from a good one.
I bought the system on day one from Tottenham Court Rd London, as i remember it was about £600-£700 , i bought 2 games Palm springs Golf as i was a big golf fan and Battleships. The FMV cartridge was due out a little later after launch at about £200 i think, but this was delayed for a bit longer than what they said. But i have to give Phillips my respect as they sent a letter to everyone that bought the CDI Player offering them a free VHS Video Recorder or Portable TV as a good will jester as the FMV cart was delayed, these were worth about £200 each. What company would do that these days?
My dad when inwas a kid was like: no you're not getting a snes or other console for your birthday/christmas, we already have a pc that plays games. Also my dad: buys a cd-i Me: laughing, put a game in that i got via a friend, plugged in the controller in the back and till this day he refuses to accept he bought a console. I had a ton of fun with the cdi. Burn cycle, defender of the crown. Lots of fun. Fine machine alltogether. It could go online too! Later he tried to convince me it was a superior cd player. I just told him: well, just buy yourself a playstation then, since it actually has the best DAC in any cd player. He refused. I got one myself though by getting a job few hours a week as a kid. Right now, he needs a bluray player. I keep saying: get a console, like then xbox one s, it is cheaper then the uhdbluray players without xbox. Of course, he spent 100 euros extra for no reason.... Ok, boomer!
3DO FZ-1 had a better audio output than the "Audiophile" PS1. Bought an audiophile PS1 just to test the claim and you hear far more percussion instruments on the 3DO than the PS1.
The laser on Sony's consoles are cost balanced more for reading interactive media, than they are for playing stream media like music of movies. Same goes for the XBone S. That being said... don't most people just stream media over network these days? Like... do people still use Bluray? Like in a way that puts them apart from people who have better VHS collections than I do (One day my VHS collection will beat theirs)?
PS1 had the best DAC in any CD player? TIL. Puts me in mind of one of my own favorite pieces of trivia: The PS2 was the worst DVD player ever created, because it was the only one that couldn't display DVDs at their native 720x480 (it only gave them 640x480).
@@NimhLabs I use most any DVD types as I prefer my media in a for lack of a better term physical format rather then streaming network for varies reasons ...Oh and before someone tries to say its because I'm a boomer … I am younger then a boomer
I mean I know they were trying to say otherwise in this video but the reason people will remember the CDi for decades to come are the memes. I'm certain CDi had way more to offer (sadly like many systems of the day the games and other things just don't hold up)
@@joeyparkhill8751 Nintendo has made great consoles before, but just being a portable console alone may not be enough for Nintendo to take down Sony in the console race. And you think that the PS2 may not be taken down in top console sold overall, well the PS2 had more than just what Nintendo imagined in the past, but the Nintendo Switch's rising popularity may change your mind. Think about it, if you combine a handheld and portable console in one, then you have a console that is stronger than a portable console alone.
The CDi came about when I was in my late teens and died when I was in my mid-20's. What hurt the CDi the most was 1. It's price. 2. It tried to do too many things and because of that initial lack of focus, it never did any 1 thing the best. Don't even get me started on SNK and the Neo-Geo. Had SNK not been so greedy, the Neo-Geo could have become a game changer. $650 for a system with a by-then cheap, but good, Motorola processor combined with another cheap processor that was made 15 years prior.
The Neo Geo MVS was a game changer. Literally. Up to 6 of them. No, but seriously you're correct. The Neo Geo hardware was too expensive for a home console, and it wasn't designed for it. The problem was the fancy GPU hardware. But software rendering with fast 25MHz 80286 onto a shared bus frame buffer (maybe 256x192 with 256 colors) could have produced similar graphics at a lower cost.
@@IsaacKuo SNK wanted to have their cake (Neo-Geo arcade machine sales), and eat it to (home console). They initially bet on the long term viability of arcades and by the time it became obvious to them that the home console market was going to make arcades disappear, it was too late for them to do anything about it.
@@jasonj5862 I think that they never thought of the home console market when they were developing the MVS and AES. The hilariously bulky carts with two parallel slots are okay for arcade games and hotel rentals, but for a home console? It makes no sense.
@@IsaacKuo I'm not sure what their marketing department was up to as time went by. My best guess is that they weren't sure which direction was most likely going to win out so they tried to cover a bit of everything at once. If you remember even the gaming magazines back then didn't even give them much more than a small blurb every now and then while the rest of the pages were dedicated to Sega, Nintendo, NEC (early), Sony (later).
Yeah, coverage was pretty minimal. The gaming magazines just weren't very interested in the arcade scene. I guess anyone who had money to spend on magazines had money to spend on a home console. Naturally, the gaming magazines would cater to the popular home consoles and computers. And also, who needed a gaming magazine to read reviews of an arcade game? It cost nothing to watch someone play a game, and it cost only a quarter to try it out yourself! But with a console game, a magazine review could be a lot more helpful making a decision than just going by the box. And of course, the transition to CD format gave rise to the cover disc ...
I own a CDI and got it years ago. My mum got it from a carboot sale years ago. It blew my mind that I could play Mario and Zelda on this console and i remember being impressed with the graphics from dragon's lair and lil divil and 7th guest I still have it today
AVGN was spot on, it's garbage. I own a model 910 and 220, as well as most of the games talked about. This is for collectors with lots of disposable income who want it for nostalgia or novelty. Holding up Mutant Rampage Bodyslam as an example? Horrible controls, terrible hit detection, and subpar graphics and sound. Streets of Rage II laughs, then bodyslams the CD-I.
The CD-i was my first console and I grew up with it as a kid. The controller it came with was awful. The controller I bought to replace it was worse. The console frequently experienced issues with loading and crashing. The hardware was bad. It had some decent games, ports such as lemmings, and that Tetris port with the amazing music that I hear your video playing in the background, and I played a bunch of the edutainment games because I was like 5. But it was a pretty bad experience overall. I didn't play any of the FMV games because I was too young, and maybe if you really, really like those, it's ok, but I don't think it makes up for how awful the hardware was. It's really bizarre whenever I see people put out articles and videos defending the system, because I think most of its defenders didn't grow up with it either...
Hi Top Hat, great video and having owned a CD-I since 1994 I have waited a long time for someone to say something positive about the system. I’ve always had a soft spot for the system and still play quite a few games on it and watch many of the great music video CD’s that were released on the system. I now own around. 99% of all the titles inc reference and film titles and hope to one day show off my collection. If anyone is interested in trying out the best games on the system here is my top 10 in no particular order 7th Guest Hotel Mario Dimo’s Quest Tetris Pac Panic The Apprentice Mad Dog McCree Mutant Rampage Bodyslam Burn Cycle Mystic Midway RIP Cheers
To be honest, I had multiple magazines as a kid that mentioned only the gaming aspect of the cd-I. I purchased one long before the avgn episode existed... And I hated it. Almost none of the software I could track down at the time was worth the effort. It ended up feeling like the sega cd mk 2, with even less to offer. At least my sega cd was attached to the Genesis. So in my opinion, the cd-I is terrible because of the amount of effort I had to put in to aquire and play the the small handful of titles out of the 200 or so available that are actually worth playing. While not originally billed as a gaming console, eventually that's exactly what Phillips advertised it as when I started to fail. Had they never done so, perhaps I would be more charitable. To be fair, it didn't help that I had a power Mac around the time of the original release the was better in every way save for asthetic appeal (I don't hate the appearance of the cd-I). Don't worry, I actually don't fell like this is the worst console I've owned. That accolade goes to the tiger Game.Com (unless you count the r-zone as a game console. Then we have an undisputed king.)
I mean i saw zero reason to change my mind about the CD-i in this video. All we got was thgm rambling about people more successful than him and shaking his fist at clouds.
My CDi memories: This soccer game is awesome! This fmv game is fun! Playing jeopardy with my parents and siblings? Awesome! Wow The 7th Guest is hard! Omg, digital photos?!? Holy crap, a controller for my toddler nephew, complete with 2 Sesame Street games he loves??? Man, what an awful system...
1) Is this the most ambitious retro gaming RU-vid crossover ever? 2) When are we finally going to get the wrestling crossover the internet is clamoring for? I'm not talking about NXT vs AEW, I'm talking about Top Hat Gaming Man vs Wrestling With Gaming!
The cdi was not the only multi media platform system, so was the ps2, ps3, xbox one, ps4 etc,,,but those sustems were stated as a game console, while philips first teleased there cdi as a multi media system but later announced it as a game console with new revisions of it.
I formed my opinions on it before AVGN and RU-vid existed. Though it was already defunct when I bought it two decades ago I was one of those kids who drooled over it when seeing it on display at Macy's where you were often approached by either the CD-i or the 3DO salesman, competing for your interest. When I saw the Zelda games at Babbage's I knew I would have to own the system one day. I still have my CD-i, Zelda: Wand of Gamelon, Link: Faces of Evil, Tetris, and about 45 other titles. That said, I ended up HATING most of them. Still, I have my favorites. If I had to pick a favorite from what I have it would probably be Defender of the Crown since it's so much better than, say, the NES version, and doesn't seem to suffer compared to other versions. Speaking of Tetris, why does not one ever mention it as one of the fruits of their deal with Nintendo? Nintendo had exclusive non-PC home rights back then. Though their cooperation isn't as explicitly obvious as the Zelda/Mario games, it could not have been made without Nintendo's blessing. Also, the angled falling pieces art is clearly Nintendo's design. That said, it is a really bad version of Tetris that Nintendo would probably prefer to remain unassociated with. I can't believe they think it's OK to freeze, fade out, load, fade in with new art, and resume each time you go to a new level. Since I play for Tetrises (clearing four lines at once) it feels like the game stops every other time I make a match. It's ridiculous and, IMO, inexcusable! Borderline unplayable... you'd literally have to value the background art and a new audio track every few seconds more than the gameplay to be OK with that. I have a new/sealed controller splitter cable for my CD-i. I never tried it to see if it lets me plug two controllers into the front but that would be nice. I do have to disagree with an opinion it seems many of you share about it being the ultimate FMV console. You see, very few of these have the video cartridge, myself included, making it very poorly-suited. I think it's dubious to promote the platform as a whole for excelling at that when these cartridges just aren't available to CD-i users in general.
I did own a Phillips CDI in the early 90's. I went through consoles buying and trading back in for the next in the following order: Atari 2600 -> NES -> Super NES -> Sega Genesis -> Sega CD (add on) -> Phillips CDI -> 3DO (kept it) -> N64 -> PS2 (kept it) -> Wii (kept it) -> XBox One (kept it) -> Nintendo Switch (kept it)
I dunno ... I'm old enough to remember that laser disc games were a flash in the pan before the great video game crash. They just weren't very good, so it should have been predictable that people wouldn't be into FMV games either. It's worth remembering that the interactive multi-media thing was ALSO attempted using laserdisc a few times. All of them were failures, so it should have been predictable that multi-media was just not going to happen. Okay, they were all rather expensive due to the laserdisc hardware, but the multi-media titles produced just weren't compelling at all. Reducing the price with improving technology wouldn't solve that problem. The whole multi-media CD thing was something a lot of companies were trying to make happen - obviously including Commodore, but also including a ton of big names like Apple, IBM, that Steve Jobs guy (who was doing NeXT at the time) ... it never really took off, and it wasn't just because of Philips. There just wasn't much of anything appealing about it. It was a better fit for computers, but even on computers there just weren't any titles that did well. Well ... except for Myst if you count that. Of course, Myst was a GAME. Commodore's CDTV was, of course, doomed. But at least anyone who got a CDTV had an Amiga 500 - just add a keyboard and floppy drive, and it can play a bunch of fun games. A bunch. And you could Parnet it with another Amiga to use its CD drive over the network. Still, I suppose the multi-media thing wouldn't be truly proven to be a dead concept until the Playstation 2. Unlike the original Playstation, a lot of people bought the PS2 strictly to use as a DVD player (it being one of the more affordable DVD players at the time). And DVDs had interactive capabilities. If there was ever any time that interactive multi-media titles could take off, the PS2 would have been it. But come on. Can you name even a single PS2 or DVD multi-media title? Nope. It's just not a good concept. And as for the interactive features of the DVD? Mostly just an annoying obstacle to watching a show. Today, of course, we use streaming and mobile devices to watch shows. Where are the interactive features, though? Why don't Netflix and Amazon emulate those cool DVD interactive multi-media capabilities? Oops ... no one really wants them. At all. We've got the technology. What's lacking is consumer demand.
There is a reason why the system flopped, and why Phillips lost a billion dollars on it, and the only reason the Nintendo titles were on there was as some form of compensation of the deal that fell through between Nintendo and Phillips in developing a CD based system, otherwise it could have very well been the Super Nintendo CD-i...and imagine if you had Shigeru Miamoto as the chief overseer of the Zelda/Mario games on the system, you could have got the games on the CD-i of the quality of Super Mario World, or the Legend of Zelda on the Super Nintendo, hell maybe even a port of those games onto the CD-i with various CD enhancements for sure they would have been system sellers...circa 1993 why would you choose a CD-i for your gaming needs over a 3do? Hell come late 94/1995 with the Playstation and Saturn riding into town, the CDi was already on a hiding to nothing.....the beat-em up showcased in this video looks like something that wouldn't be out of place on a CD32...I understand it was never meant to be a game-system back in 1991....but if you are going to go in the gaming scene you better be sure that at least your next iteration of the machine has at least modest capabilities to go toe-to-toe with the competition, otherwise if you don't feel you have that then they should have done what Panasonic did with the M2....pull out before any (more) money is lost....
I wasn't even aware that AVGN had done a video about the system, since I rarely ever watch that channel. I actually bought my system before RU-vid was created - found it in a thrift store and had always been curious about it since its launch. And you're right, it was never considered a video game console by Philips; they designed it back in the '80s when the spec for CD-ROM data storage was finalized. They drew up plans for the machine, took years on-and-off to get it to production, but they didn't update the processor in that time to take advantage of speed increases in the Motorola 68000. It was seen by Philips as a child-friendly substitute for a big, expensive PC and not a games system, therefore using a more modern version of the 68000 wasn't necessary since a CD about learning how to play guitar or the works of Van Gogh wouldn't be processor-intensive. I have Hotel Mario and The Apprentice and they are pretty decent titles, but they weren't enough to garner the public's interest in such a limited machine when pretty much everything on the market was more powerful and focused more heavily on games. The idea behind it was sound, the execution was pretty poor.
Remember the CDi very well it was a good machine the quality of the videos were great for their time prior to the advent of DVD and Blu Ray. It was a shame it did not get the positive recognition it deserves very simple to use and fun machine to possess.
even before AVGN and such you tubers, gaming magazine at the time kept recommending readers to go to the better consoles at the time as the CD-i was very expensive and literally didn't have proper games on it, I remember one magazine had an article saying the CD-I heavily pushed for educational video games ( that it had success on PC ) but not on home consoles where this gener was already is not very welcoming on there.
I was gonna buy a Phillips CDI so I could get Don Bluth's laserdisc games because they had the best video quality out of all the other CD based consoles out there at the time because VCDs were, in many ways, the precursor to the DVD. The 3D0, Playstation, and Saturn didn't even come close to the CDI's video quality. However, these were the ONLY games I would've owned for the CDI if I ever bought it, and even if I did, I NEVER would've bought those Nintendo licensed games. (I've only learned about their infamy by the early 2000's.) While I'm glad I never played those, I would never experience 'Dragon's Lair', or 'Space Ace' in all their glory until the advent of DVDs.
When the Philips CD-i came out, I understood it as a "failed Sega CD"... and then it became a meme to dislike the CD-i... and well, you do make a good point about how "failed Sega CD" has become too Flanderized. At the time the draw of PC gaming was that you could expand and upgrade your PC Compatible with new peripherals to improve that experience... and Sega tried to get in on that with the Power Base Converter, Sega CD, Sonic & Knuckles, 32X and Sega Channel... and well, Nintendo had the Satellaview and nearly the "playstation" or CD-i... and well, expansions on consoles turns out to be a bad idea. This does have me realising that the Nintendo Wii realises what the CD-i couldn't quite get to AND what the Power Glove wasn't able to actually do. I agree... the Flanderization of this meme of "Failed Sega CD" needs some push back--it is getting a bit much.
I love my CD-I. Sure I laugh at it and the memes it has been a part of all these years and the hilarious Zelda/Mario cut scenes, but it's a fun system I go back to every so often. I've even sprung for the expansion cartridge to play some games that I thought looked fun, I really enjoy Lucky Luke. My biggest gripe with the system is the time keeper chip that is almost always dead in pretty much all the systems out there now. Without this chip you cannot save your games. Sure it's replaceable but it's still sucks.
I respectfully disagree. This should be conpared to a pentium I which had internet access and games like Diablo, simcity, lords of the realm. Phillips cdi also compares generally unfavorably to similar Amiga which also had internet access and gold box series games and excellent video editing
This is my new favorite THG video, excellent work sir! And it was a real treat seeing you working with Wrestles and Jenovi. Two of my favorite youtubers!
This why I love your channel, you've usually got a fresh take on your subject. I've never owned or even played a CD-I but I'm more likely to after this. Keep it up my good man!
I don't know if I agree with some of the information in this video. To say that the CD-I never wanted to be a gaming console and that it was misunderstood is misleading. Phillips was directly targeting gamers. I remember the info commercials on the system and they definitely wanted to replace video game consoles and touted the "edutainment" as an alternative to mind numbing gaming consoles. To compete with the big boys but not want to be classified as the same is redundant and may be why the system appears to be an electronic identity crisis. Maybe it was the marketing team that caused these issues. I was amazed by the system and always wanted one back then, but the price tag was what kept me from getting one, none of these other reasons. Might as well have gotten a 3DO
Awesome video! Always great to see some more positive attention for this underdog. Hope this will offer a nice invitation for more people to give the system and its many titles a go. It really did offer a few experiences, right in the living room, other systems did next to nothing with. All for rather small niche markets for sure, but still. Think about digital board games, FMV games (easily some of the best ports for these at the time), kids titles and a rather impressive library of educational titles. Some extra fun facts: Did you know the light gun (The Peacekeeper) works just fine on modern TV's? It works through IR. It's a bit of a pain to calibrate, but once it's set up alright it's quite good. Think of it as an early Wii remote on a wire and without a gyro obviously. Did you know that, as good as a game Hotel Mario actually is (yes), it might not be entirely original? There was a prototype Atari 5200 games called Looney Tunes Hotel... there are some similarities. Coincidence? Probably...
I'm surprised AVGN is how so many people first learned of the CDI. I remember reading about it in a gaming magazine a lonnnnnng time ago, and how it was bad/infamous mainly for the Zelda games. They also covered the CDI Zelda games on an old G4 show several years before the AVGN episodes.
Great video, i also think the CD-i is really an underrated system. It has it's flaws, but it has a good library of games. If you love fmv games, it is the primary choice. I even wrote a little guide (in italian) about the history of the system and some of it's best games :)
In the Netherlands, the CD-I was all over the place in the 90s. Honestly, none of my friends liked it. It was sold as this super duper futuristic (and expensive) console, indeed focusing on FMV games. But we didn't like them. Loading times, bad controls, ugly design... We felt like we were being lied to. The Megadrive and Snes were pumping out hit after hit, so we left the CD-I cold. I agree with everything said in this video, there's a certain charm to it, and there are worse consoles. But I also understand why it's considered the worst, because it's like it failed harder than any other console.
Synopsis- The biggest reasons why the CDi is mocked/failed is because it never really knew what it wanted to be and was overpriced at the time. Game support was never really there either. The Playstation and Saturn ended up being the final nail in the coffin. Other systems during that short time frame exhibited the same fate. While I knew of the system when I was growing up, I was never interested in it as I had already evolved from consoles to PCs and it was expensive for what it was. Nowadays I am glad that the system is starting to be emulated and appreciate what was missed. While it is no SNES/Genesis/Playstation, it wasn't a complete disaster. Making it look like a VCR/DVD player didn't help it one bit.
I knew of the CD-I Zeldas about a decade before AVGN's review, thanks to issues of EGM talking about them. AVGN's video was simply the first time I saw them in action.
I absolutely love Hotel Mario. The cut scenes are a tiny portion of the game and you can immediately skip them. I play this game for HOURS. Thanks for praising it.
Great video. I totally agree with everything you covered. I've always had a soft spot for the CD-i as it was my first CD based console. The games were so unique and the FMV was amazing when compared to other CD consoles of the time.
I always felt very fortunate to have had an opportunity to play with the CDi for as long as I did even though it wasn't mine. Believe it or not, I RENTED the system and a few games for 2 weeks back in 1994. I grew up in a tiny desert town in south east Arizona. A neighboring town 8 miles away was where a very nice family opened a video game rental store. Yes games only! They invested their money to buy every gaming console and as many games for each they could get. It was incredible to see their selection being where I grew up from a tiny desert mining town with no street lights or fast food restaurants. They had EVERYTHING they owned in video games up for rent. It was a tiny store front with what they could invest for a basic operation with extremely low overhead. The games were stacked on the ground and divided into piles based on the console. It was like rummaging through a massive video game garage sale, but for renting. I rented every console they had during my last few years in that town before graduating H.S. One I remember most fondly was my time with the CDi. I rented a few games, but the ones I remembered the most was Burn Cycle and Voyeur. Burn Cycle was a deeply complicated puzzle sci fi game, but it had an amazing structure in its level design and puzzle difficulty. The actors in the video cut scenes were understandable, and it was a popular game for my friends and I to work together to solve the puzzles. Voyeur on the other hand, being in my teens was an incredible joy to play at night. This was very much a late night Showtime or skinimax worthy title almost like it was an interactive movie on one of those channels late at night. The allure of being a Private Detective in a Voyeur mission was very intriguing to me and this game satisfied that. I rented the Zelda game for the CDi and turned it off after the first cut scene. No thanks. That style animation can just make your stomach turn much like the old animation of the Hobbits and Lord of the Rings in the 70s. It just turned me off big time as a kid and I never liked it. I loved Don Bluth animation whenever I can see it for what its worth. Everything I rented for the 3DO was trash.
The grade school I went to got talked into purchasing the Phillips CD-i. It was painful watching our teachers try to navigate the educational software with those remotes. It didn't take long for them to abandon them and go back to using a VCR. I picked one up about a year ago for $7. I was always frustrated in the 90's that Thunder in Paradise was only on the CD-i so I was glad to finally have an opportunity to play it. I bought a SNES controller converter for mine so I could avoid using and paying the hight prices for a Phillips branded controllers, but I've yet to purchase any other titles for it.
I remember the CD-I demo setup in a local bookshop as a kid in the early 90’s with the roller ball controller and beeing quite intrigued by it. At the time I didn’t see it as a a games console but as a thing in it’s own right. It wasn’t until the mid 90’s that I noticed games beeing reviewed in magazines. The reception of them was quite reasonable for what it was. Philips was good inventing new tech but poor at marketing. Without the CD-I there would have been no DVD. I’ve always seen the CD-I as the DVD’s ancestor who was perhaps a bit too ahead of it’s time. One could wonder why CD-I failed where DVD succeeded. I think it mainly has to do with approach of the format, when DVD was developed they already figured out movies on discs would work quite well but that people prefered dedicated gaming platforms such as the PS2. CD-I was in a way an early attempt at achieving what DVD managed to do successfully. DVD is perhaps a bit more focused overall whereas CD-I tried to do everything one could imagine of multimedia.
No the problem with the CDI was always the price first and gaming library second. The was also a lot of competition at that time in the high end gaming space with Jaguar and 3DO. They had better brand recognition and marking budgets. Glad you enjoy the CD-i, but I think it's better left in the past. Ugh you can see the frame rate issues with Hotel Mario in your video. The system got what it deserved.
I was there when the CD-i hit the shelves in The Netherlands. It wasn't marketed as a console. It wasn't even in the same stores as Sega and Nintendo consoles. The CD-i was positioned as a TV/hi-fi add-on. In stores they ran demos with an encyclopedia and a vcd of some famous Vietnam-themed movie of that era. I only remember the helicopter scene. And there were some educational games too. It was a video player with some extra features, hoping to cash in on the "interactive tv" hype of the time. Only after it failed they sold the leftover stock as if it was a game console. It wasn't.
Am I the only American who didn't first hear about the CD-i from the Angry Video Game Nerd? I mostly knew about it from reading about it in video game magazines in the early 90's. I didn't own one or know anyone who did and I think I remember seeing a demo unit for one in Nobody Beats the Wiz but that was about the extent of my experience with it. I don't remember even really seeing one or the software for it for sale anywhere. I think the reason it didn't appeal to me or people like me is because of the fact that it did not seem well suited to the kinds of games that were popular at the time and my family already had a PC with a CD-ROM and soundblaster card (these were a big deal at the time) so things like FMV games and edutainment titles and stuff like Grolier's Encyclopedia on CD were already things I could have if I really wanted them. The $700 price tag (over $1200 in today's money) really didn't help matters much either. That being said I don't think it was a terrible system but I don't think we should lie to ourselves and act like it was a good system either. It just kind of existed and even its best games would be considered mediocre at best on other systems of the time. FMV games seemed pretty impressive at the time but at the end of the day they are about as interactive as using the menus on your DVD player, they barely count as games and after you've "played" through one of them once there's very little reason to do so again so as for myself I just wasn't all that impressed with the FMV titles on the system. Where I think the system could have done well however was I think it would have been brilliant for point and click adventure games of the Sierra or Lucasarts variety but I don't think it got very many of those which seems like a missed opportunity imo.
Im 45. I owned it. We enjoyed it. The thing every one looks over is that its a true entertainment system, not just a game system. My girlfriend and my mom at the time were both fascinated with the horrorscope disc, for example. When we wanted to play good games, we would fire up the Playstation. But when we wanted an alternative, a truely different kind of experience, thats when the cdi was turned on. Theres so many different types of disc, a kind of first indie scene. Just like any home console, you should know its strengths and weaknesses. I love my switch for example , but i dont play the unbelievable amount of trash games on it.. anyway,, It was a cool experience at the time, and its a shame so many missed it because they jumped on the hate wagon without even trying it.
I really enjoy my CDi 550 model with the DV cart inside and I have the 4 button controller. One thing that's awesome about it is that the controller is 12 feet long! None of the other systems of the time had cables that long, so it makes the CDi great for playing on a larger TV. Good games I'd recommend are 7th Guest, The Apprentice, Christmas Crisis, and Chaos Control.
For some reason I was hoping for the punchline throughout the whole video..... Like for someone to break the tone and be like "Just kidding! The CD-i does indeed suck!"
It looks like your facing the issue that most game reviewers land in at some point in their career. As much as the non professional thinks they know about quality they will never have the full understanding of just how bad games systems can get. This is a lovely attempt to reframe the cdi's context.
When I saw the CDI on display to play at my local store Media Play back in the 90’s IT WAS MIND BLOWING!!! Once I got a look at the price tag I had to admit to my childhood self that I would never have this system, but MY GOD THE GRAPHICS!
I do remember the infomercial for this thing, at no point did they proclaim it a game console, but rather a multimedia system that also happened to have some games on it.
I remember those too, I think they had Phil Hartman in them. Unfortunately for Phillips they were offering a product that nobody at the time wanted. My family had a PC at the time that did everything the CD-i did much better than the CD-i could do and it was far more capable when it came to games so it seemed kind of pointless. I was probably luckier than other kids back in 1992 because my dad was very much into computers and technology and staying current was very important to him so we had a 386 DX with a 40 mhz processor and CD-ROM and soundblaster card and that had to have cost him a few thousand dollars so maybe $700 for a device that could do at least some of the things a PC could do should have seemed like a good deal. I guess people just didn't see it that way, as cheap quasi-PC, they looked at it as a games device that couldn't really do games very well and cost nearly 3 times as much as other game systems at the time. Phillips and the general public seemed to have a very different perception of what the CD-i was supposed to be. They weren't pushing it as a games device but people perceived it as one anyway and games magazines of the time covered it as such.
I remember it being marketed as essentially a PC deal that hooked up to a television. I don't even think the in store displays for this even utilized many actual games. The most game like thing I remember them demonstrating was a Sesame Street edutainment title where the "game play" was click on something and things happen.
The CD-i was super popular in German driving schools. In general, I remember the emergence of interactive multimedia stuff in the 90's (Scala MM anyone?), years before Macromedia Director. It was really good at this aspect, interactive multimedia presentations, more powerful than what DVD menus could do years later. It was basically just that, a Blu-Ray player 15 years before Blu-Ray was a thing. But as a games console, I think that even the good games aren't good enough - if I had to choose only one failed 90's CD system, I'd go with the 3DO - unless you want to bomb some dodongos, of course.
So the biggest problems with the CDi mostly I think was the price and the marketing. The fact it had "games" based on Zelda and Mario I think confused people. And the marketing was all over the place and coupled with that high price did it no favors. I remember there was a display at one of my local malls for the CDi and it was the first and only time I ever really played it. The game was hotel Mario, and me and everyone who played it seemed confused and disappointed. I mean this was at the time when we had like super Mario world so again maybe having that game as your display game wasn't smart.
I agree with all of your points. I've been a secret cdi defender since I was a kid. At the time, playing a Genesis or Nintendo was fun but everyone had those. Nobody else had what I had.
I just had a conversation, three days ago, about Hotel Mario and how it, and most of the rest of the CD-i, was unfairly maligned and was worth actually taking a few weeks to play around with.
I've played around with a CDi emulator and I discovered that the games aren't that bad. I downloaded a couple of failed console emulators such as the 3DO and Jaguar, and I definitely spent more time playing the CDi than the other two on account of there being some fairly decent FMV games on the system. I had played FMV games on the Sega CD and 3DO, and I had thought the genre was just time events games like Dragon's Layer and Time Gal, but I found that there are also FMV games that are like point and click mysteries and games that require you to navigate an area in real time in order to follow and affect a story, like Night Trap but good. Some of these games have a clear budget behind them and even though they are often corny, the stories are engaging enough to result in a fun game. FMV games are not my favorite, but the best ones are on the CDi for sure.
It's an actual standard that you can still license cheaply to this day (VCD menus use it, they sort of have to). If only there were other manufacturers, say Sony made one and made the PSX compatible with it.
Great episode Chris! My favourite part was the term "System Racism" ... hilarious! You really get your point across that way. So sad that a system with that much substance is being brushed aside due to the hyperbolic impression of a failed joke we are presented by the majority of high profile gaming RU-vidrs. This is the main reason your channel is great (other than your mean mug of course); the fact that you point out stereotypes and tropes of other channels so consistently and vigorously, you cannot help but provide unique insights, tidbits and stories that make watching and listening to your videos a worthwhile experience. Good show!
This is a really nice video - lovely to see appreciation for old hardware that most have given up on. I remember this being released back in '91. I was a solid Amiga fan then, and a friend's brother bought a brand new shiny Phillips CDi. He had a golf game on it that that did look good at the time, and I think it worried me for maybe 10 minutes... but it was so darned expensive to buy! And, tbh no-one back then knew what to do with a home entertainment system (do they now?) so it just didn't seem attractive enough to be considered essential. But affectionate looking back is wonderful.
It is good that the CD-i is starting to be defended as what it was instead of what people think it was. I bought my 470 new in the 90s as a video player because Laserdisc was getting harder to find. I loved it. Didn't own a single game for it. Just films.
"what people think it was", dont you mean what it was SOLD as instead? because, it was sold as a console, and as a console, its a giant piece of garbage.
Well done video. My father bought the family a CD-i back in the 90's . We used it for education apps an his train video's. I would still have it today but the internals finally stopped working. Nice memories though.
Bravo! At last some CD-i positivity. I've been a supporter and user since 1994 when I got a 450 with a DV Cartridge and a game pad for Christmas! I added a Retro Tink two years ago to allow use on a large modern screen and unlike other retro machines, the light gun works with modern TV's too! CD-i is an electronic swiss army knife yet one of the retro gaming worlds most misinterpreted and poorly treated devices, one who's image is too often smeared by disgruntled Nintendo/retro gamer snobs who simply don't/can't get CD-i. To truly appreciate it, you have to look at all the things it offered beyond gaming and put yourself back to the early 90's when some of its abilities where cutting edge. Top hats off to you, great video!
in my early 30s (around 1994 or so) I'd go downtown and at the Lazarus dept. store they had a display set up for the Plilips CD-I. Never really saw games for it, but it was being pushed primarily for movies. At the time in the US VHS still dominated, and Laserdisc was still around (Pioneer was using a couple of anime titles it owned, Moldiver and Tenchi Muyo to try and get more people to adopt it). VCD never really took off in the US, but the CD-I could read that format on the movies released for the device. I have a couple of gaming magazines from 1995 and 1996 that mention the CD-I, but they never seemed terribly impressed with it. and at the prices they were asking, there was no chance of me picking one up. I admit I am still keeping an eye out at local thrifts in hipes of finding one (I've found a number of my consoles at thrifts, including two 3DOs, an Intellivision, a model 1 Sega CD with Genesis and a Virtual Boy). I do have a few CD-I games and movies waiting for the day I find one...all found at thrifts as well :)
I had a CD-i as well and it fully deserves its ridicule. It couldnt decide what it wanted to be and its performance was odd to say the least. The Mario Hotel game was actually one of the more fun games on the system. I made it to the last Hotel, so thats something. A little hint if you ever wanna complete the game. This game has Warp pipes. :D I remember it having a constant lag, but that also maybe because I played alot over the remote. The cable controller didnt feel much better though. It could have been awesome, if they just put more thought into it.
i feel very lucky growing up in really was the golden years of video games, the early to mid 90's were a thing to behold almost new consoles every 3 months, i think it's very hard for younger peopple to understand how much competition was around back then not only in hardware but in software to, it's the one thing i really miss about the good ol days the amount of choice you had how developers had to really push to get your attention and money
The Mario and Zelda games are like Mario teaches typing. I loved that game and would have the CD-I games if they had been presented to me very young and in a family environment. The gripes the nerd talks about are just things you have to learn.
It seems that animation studio who made the cutscenes for the Nintendo-licensed games were much better with the fighting game cutscenes because they've have more knack for grotesque stuff.
Although I love the CD-i, but i do have a major complaint about it. Why oh why did they have to go with a time keeper chip to keep all the game saves. I can no longer save any game data cause the battery in the chip died many moons ago. It would have been nice if they had this chip on a socket but its soldered directly to the motherboard. About the controllers. I remember someone on ebay selling an adapter for that plugged into the controller port of the CD-i and it allowed you to use Sega mega drive control pads. This was a long time ago and have not searched ebay for CD-i hardware in a long time.
I think its admirable that you want to show the world that the CDi is a lot more than the mess that gaming youtubers have mocked for over a decade. But as someone who repeatedly watches console gaming collections CDi is subjectively, and even if i had the money back then, not worth it for the maybe the 2 or 3 good games it had. Feel a lot stronger about for 3DO, but to a lot lesser extent for Sega MS/GEN/CD/32X/SS except for Arcade & Dreamcast releases.
@@HistoricNerd Hey, it works! Looks pretty cool too! You would have 100% gotten away with it if you didn't move slightly off center at one point, thereby turning part of the green to white. Must have been those meddling kids. ;-)
I owned a CD-i as a kid and I never really considered it 100% a gaming console to be honest, so I agree its marketing was probably its biggest mistake. The few games I had I did enjoy a lot so I only have good memories of it even if it never was a popular system (I never met anyone else in my neighborhood or school who also had it). I don't think the bad rep is deserved in this case. There are probably much worse failures in games consoles history than the CD-i...
You know, with all the mentions of his professional wrestling career... I would actually like to see just how our favorite Top Hat Gaming Man is in the ring. I wonder if he has videos where one can see his matches or if he may decide to create a separate channel, just for that.
He does, search for 'Richard Parliament' for his matches from previous years. He was also in a series of 'TNA Boot Camp' on TV (back when Impact was called TNA at least).
I got some mild entertainment out of Hotel Mario, once I surgically removed the thought of trying to play it like a Mario game out of my head. It was the definitive way to play Dragon's Lair, I feel. And Burn Cycle was cool
Every game console had its good and bad points. Some just have more bad points than others. I tried Sewer Shark when I saw the CDI for the first and only time in Radio Shack; it was SO bad that I laughed at the nearly $700 price tag they had on it.
I heard about the CD-I in 2002 and it was not spoken well of. Btw if it plays video games, it is a video game console. The PS2 played dvds and cds, its still a game console.
