I knew someone in school that had a CD-i and I was excited to try out the Zelda game… I made a terrible mistake as did the people that made it. It’s probably still a cool collector’s item, but man it was bad.
zod, CD-i is what all true programmers strive for!
To think the CD-i, 3DO, and Jaguar were all “next gen” only to have the PlayStation/N64/Saturn (hey it did really well in Japan) absolutely blow their doors off is hilarious in hindsight.
Granted, it was a very uncertain time in gaming. And maybe these high dollar systems weren’t trying to directly compete with the younger market of Nintendo/Sega. What did the mature gamer want? More bits? CD-ROM multimedia adventures? Something you can put on your entertainment center on top of your VCR that isn’t just for the kids? These were all promising directions at one point in time.
Ultimately, the PlayStation and Saturn would come along and refocus on the games themselves, making 64 bit gaming seem irrelevant and essentially killing FMV-based gaming. The arrival of the N64 would solidify this.
It was an interesting time in gaming. Units like the CD-i and 3DO commanded huge sums of money and offered very little back in the way of quality gaming. Some people bought into the hype thinking they were buying into the next generation when the industry took a very different direction.
Hey, thanks for the 3DO shout-out, although I’m not sure it falls into the same category of failure. When my dad was getting his shit together (at least, somewhat together), he got to work with those guys before getting a more stable job. While it’s certainly true about FMV gaming, their demise in particular is attributed more to business practices, like utilizing costly third parties for hardware- ironic since they all seem to do that now.
Many of their games hold up, though there aren’t very many and the only solid IPs got cross platform releases or ports (e.g. Gex) especially after it was clear 3DO was tanking. I think playing Star Control II on 3DO might have defined who I am as a gamer, and I highly recommend playing subsequent rereleases (it was PC only without 3DO!)
During Covid, I had to sell a childhood treasure: my JVC X’EYE, still complete with original controller and power supply, fully functional.
But the shop owner did right by me, cleaned up my old discs, and we went through them one by one before I left, as he’d never seen one in person, either.
My favorite part is that it was the cheap, knock-off alternative when I was a kid, but now it’s crazy valuable because it was so rare.
Hey don’t hassle the CD-i, it was trying to do something no one had done and probably shoudn’t have.
but it shipped, didn’t it! Looking at you pippin.
but it shipped, didn’t it! Looking at you pippin.
I remember being in a vacation park with my parents. All the bungalows had a CDi player, and you could rent games at the reception. I also remember thinking that all those CDi games were glorified DVD menus…
That’s feels like an accurate description.
To be fair, the graphics were a step up from the 8bit (or 16bit?) games I was playing at the time.
I have one. It no longer reads media :(
I remember playing a demo unit of a CD-i at Rich’s while my mom shopped (this was back when department stores still had electronics departments). Whatever game they had available on it was so boring that it was only slightly better than following her around looking at clothes. I also remember, at other times in the same place, playing Sonic on Genesis and messing around with MS Paint on a Windows 3.1 PC. Of the three experiences, the CD-i experience was by far the least fun.
Interesting, was this a next-gen competitor for the likes of 3DO?
We had these in school one year. Of course, it being school means that all of the games available were educational. The school actually let parents rent them for like a month at a time, which is something my parents did. Too bad we couldn’t keep it.
My cousin had one. The games were wired.
