|
This is the Philips
CDi section. I have a small selection of Philips CDi Games, as well as Philips CDi Consoles and
Power Packs in the Hardware section. Click any of these links to take you to the appropriate
section.
The CD-i or Compact
Disc Interactive is the name of an interactive multimedia CD player developed
and marketed by Royal Philips Electronics N.V. CD-i also refers to the
multimedia Compact Disc standard utilized by the CD-i console, also known as
Green Book, which was co-developed by Philips and Sony in 1986. The first
Philips CD-i player, released in 1991 and initially priced around USD $400, was
capable of playing interactive CD-i discs, Audio CDs, CD+G (CD+Graphics),
Karaoke CDs, and Video CDs (VCDs), though the last required an optional "Digital
Video Card" to provide MPEG-1 decoding.
Early software releases in the CD-i format focused heavily on educational and
self-improvement titles, with only a handful of video games, many of them
adaptations of board games like "Connect Four". The most popular games for the
system were The 7th Guest and Burn: Cycle. Later attempts to develop a foothold
in the games market were rendered irrelevant by the arrival of cheaper and more
powerful consoles, such as the Sony PlayStation. CD-i is noted for the release
of several spinoffs of popular Nintendo video games featuring characters
typically seen only on Nintendo consoles, although those games were not
developed by Nintendo.
Hotel Mario was a puzzle game that featured Super Mario Bros. characters and
three Legend of Zelda games were released: Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The
Wand of Gamelon and Zelda's Adventure. Nintendo and Philips had secured an
agreement to co-develop a CD-ROM enhancement for the Super Nintendo
Entertainment System, and Philips was contractually allowed to continue using
Nintendo characters after the deal fell through.
Although extensively marketed by Philips, consumer interest in CD-i titles
remained low. By 1994, sales of CD-i systems had begun to slow, and in 1998 the
product line was dropped. With the home market exhausted, Philips tried with
little success to position the technology as a tool for kiosks and industrial
multimedia.
|
