If you ever happen to have a discussion with someone regarding the CD-I, it's almost
certainly going to revolve around the terrible and often mocked Nintendo games released on
the system.
It's rather unfortunate because when the CD-i was active, these were seen more as a
novelty whereas the real discussion revolved around a handful of incredible ports and exclusive
games such as Thunder in Paradise, Mutant Rampage: Bodyslam and Burn Cycle.
Philips CD-i was brutally expensive at launch costing Six hundred and ninety-nine dollars,
and that didn't include Gamepads or costly hardware add-ons required for some games.
The main issue with the initial console is it wasn't designed or marketed as a standalone
gaming system, nor did they actively try to pursue video games as a selling point for
the CD-i until it was past it's prime.
The end result is a console that's mostly misunderstood and defined by games for their
comedic badness rather than an appreciation for its positive offerings.
Though the CD-i debuted in 1991 the price was slow to drop until 1994 when it was finally
slashed to two hundred and ninety-nine dollars.
The last official game Solar Crusade released in 1998 giving a great lifespan to a system
oftentimes sighted as a failure due to the reported one billion dollar loss Phillips
took on the project as a whole.
With such a long lifespan, it seems almost inconceivable that there would only be a handful
of unreleased games on the hardware.
However, after looking over every bit of the very limited sources that covered the system
while it was active, it appears that's the case.
A big part of that comes down to a lack of any support and Phillips handling responsibility
for the vast majority of the software released on the system including ports of big budget
titles such as Seventh Guest.
So enjoy this One shot and be sure to let me know what you think when it's done.
There are a couple things to note before we get started.
I will not be discussing any edutainment or other non video game titles that remain unreleased
for the system.
The rules for inclusion are simple, the game had to be in development while the system
was still supported and under official license from Philips.
There has to be some proof that the game was in development.
Be it an article in a magazine, know copy of a prototype, a retail order sheet, an interview
with a developer, etcetera.
With that, let's get started.
This is retro impressions Unreleased CD-I
Ask a fan of the CD-I what their top ten games for the system are and it's almost guaranteed
none of the Zelda released will be on it, but the Apprentice will.
It was a typical early 90s platformer with a humorous story tossed in.
A sequel was put into development with art and a demo created to serve as a proof of
concept.
By the time the game was ready to expand to a full team, Phillips was winding down the
CD-I and canceled the Apprentice 2.
I think it's worth noting that the original Apprentice was once again being discussed
a decade later due to someone discovering passwords within the game that unlocked nudity.
While that might not seem out of order on a system such as the CD-I or 3DO, this was
nudity inside a game that was initially rated E for everyone by the newly established ESRB.
In August of 1994, a deal was announced between Phillips and Interplay to bring three games
to the CD-i.
Battle Chess, Lost Vikings, and a still unknown title.
Battle Chess was chosen because Interplay felt it would be a cheap and easy game to
move from the PC to the CD-I.
The project was handed off to a Philips studio called Accent Media who had prior experience
with the system releasing Joker's Wild and it's sequel.
Months were invested in producing a complete game that ran slowly on the hardware and exhibited
odd bugs.
Like many Majohang and Chess games, the engine the game was built on came from an outside
source making it nearly impossible to optimize for the CD-I's specific needs.
The game was canceled two weeks from going gold as Philip closed down their Santa Monica
Branch and the development houses associated with them.
The nearly finished prototype was eventually found, but remains undumped.
Not much is known about the Lost Vikings port or if it was even started, but it's assumed
to have been canceled as part of the Santa Monica closure as well.
In the end, the interplay deal resulted in zero games being released.
Breaker was a well-known MSX breakout clone that was ported to the CD-I in 1994 by The
Vision Factory.
It's unknown why it never released and beyond a few screenshots, nothing else has been found.
In addition to breaker the same studio also started development on another port for the
shooter Scramble.
One that also remains lost with only one screenshot remaining.
In 1995, Phillips showed Dead End for the CD-I at E3, it was touted as their new killer
app, One that would boost sales and extend the life of their dying system.
The game was a Full Motion Video racing experience that featured a new tech called Continuously
variable frame rates allowing the player to speed up and slow down the car while the FMV
background kept pace.
The tech proved hard to implement on the aging hardware, so the variable frame rate was dropped,
a gun mounted to the car, and it was turned into a shooting while driving action game
. Dead End transformed from a system seller to something mundane and was eventually canceled
due to this reason.
Discworld on the CD-I caused quite the controversy on its way to becoming an unreleased CD-I
game.
It was announced for the system in 1995 and leading up to it releases a rave review for
appeared in the UK version of CD-I magazine issue 18.
The game was touted as a must buy and would be releasing very soon Not appearing on the
same page was a footnote about the review.
"At the time of going to press, the CD-i version of Discworld was in the final (beta-testing)
stages of development.
We, therefore, had to use the PC version of the game for this review.
According to our sources, though, both versions play identically, the only differences occuring
in the speed of the game as a whole, and a few cut-backs in background animations on
the CD-i version.
If there's anything else we'll let you know."
What?
How could any reputable publication allow this to happen?
While people continued to focus on this review over the next decade, the real story has become
the game's disappearance.
No one seems to know why the game never released, and unfortunately, a prototype has ever been
found.
Microcosm was considered a fairly technical game when it released in 1993 so it's no
wonder that Phillips would push hard to get it on the CD-I.
As with nearly every game ported to the CD-I Phillips took full responsibility for porting
the game and assigned it to their Freeland Studio.
The game would continue development in Dorking England into 1994 when Phillips started closing
down projects and consolidating their development houses.
Microcosm actually survived the cut and was moved back to America to finish development.
Porting the game proved to be extremely problematic pushing it's released back into 1995.
By the time the project was wrapping up, Phillips decided the market had shifted and would no
longer accept a game like Microcosm so it was canceled.
Space ranger looks to be some sort of side-scrolling shooter.
I say looks to be because there really isn't any info out there on this game describing
what it is.
Its existence was actually unknown until gooddealgames and Older Games obtained an alpha build and
released a limited pressing to the public.
The demo contains only one level and was developed in-house by Studio Interactive.
Why it was canceled or never announced is unknown.
While Phillips relationship with Nintendo tainted the CD-i's reputation with the release
of questionable games, one was actually met with a Luke warm reception.
Hotel Mario was the start of what Phillips saw as a Mario Trilogy of sorts.
Three games were put into development by different studios hired by Phillips to produce something
unique.
Each game was to focus on a completely different style of interaction with high hopes that
one would become a hit.
The first to releases was Hotel Mario, a puzzle game about keeping doors closed.
The second title scheduled for release was Super Mario's Wacky Worlds developer by
Novalogic.
The game was designed as a sequel to Super Mario World on the SNES with the main change
being the setting of each level would not revisit any areas from prior games.
Phillips allocated a healthy budget for the game, and Novatrade in turn used that money
to fund unreleased projects they intended to publish themselves.
The Mario game was left with a skeleton crew allowing them to show Phillips some progress
was being made whenever they sent their representative to check on things.
The hardware was a pain to work on with limitations that severely held back progressions.
Even Yoshi had to be cut from the game due to the technical constraints of the hardware
which was never designed to handle sprite-based animations.
As time wore on, Novatrade made life for those working on the project hell.
With a minimal amount of resources committed to start and those resources slowly being
moved to other projects as Novatrade took larger and larger chunks of the Mario money
and reallocated it their own game thing were not looking good..
The team assigned to Super Mario's Wacky Worlds eventually would grow tired of working on
a project after it became clear Novatrade never intended to finish it.
One by one they left the company killing the game with their departure as Philips caught
on and pulled the funding.
It's a sad story of money, fraud, and corruption ensuring a game would never see release.
The only silver lining is that a few prototypes have leaked to the public forever preserving
the work that was accomplished and showing off what could have been the most promising
CD-I games never to see release.
The final game in their trilogy was all but forgotten and undiscussed until 2014 when
a developer who worked on the game posted a reply to a forum thread that had sat unanswered
for 8 years.
The game was called Mario Takes America and was developed by the Canadian Startup Cigam.
It was an ambitious projected that aimed to mimic the style of the movie Who Framed Rodger
Rabbit by using the Same animation in Hotel Mario to represent the characters and placing
them over footage taken in real locations.
A number of the levels were on rails experience including a New York Skyscraper Helicopter
Ride and Louisiana Bayou Speedboat race.
Over the course of two years, six of the seven planned on-rails stages plus a number of additional
levels focusing on platforming where finished.
The project was cutting edge and overly ambitious creating a number of issues related to the
CD-is memory restrictions.
This made it near impossible to complete sections of the game on time, as intended, and within
the budget.
Feeling the game was a lost cause, Phillips pulled funding and cut their loses.
The game, however, wasn't quite dead.
Cigam would continue development on the project replacing all Mario referenced with ones from
the Sonic series in hopes that Sega would pick it up.
It's unknown how far these negotiations went as the company wouldn't last much longer
declaring bankruptcy shortly after with all assets being seized by the Canadian Imperial
Bank of Commerce.
Today, there is word that a short making-of document was put together during the creation
of the game, and that copies of it along with the nearly finished game still exist.If true,
there's a real possibility of seeing what would have been at some point in the future.
When I think about obscure games, not much comes close to Urban Murderfiles Episode 1.
Even though the game was released for the CD-I it's almost as if the game never existed.
No video, photos, or reviews remain in any public form.
The game was a point and click adventure that oddly enough had a squeal in the works.
It was canceled in 97 as support for the system was discontinued.
What really makes this story interesting is that with the launch of the ill-fated Ouya,
the developer once again reformed the original company called OmniBell and announced the
rereleased of Episode one along with the release Episode 2.
Issues with licensing fees and royalties lead to the project being scraped with neither
game releasing for the Oyua or any other console.
3DO had Plumbers don't wear ties and CD-I had Crime patrol?
That's the typical comparison.
Actually, there is another game that stands more comparable to Plumbers don't wear ties
and was fairly popular when released spawning a sequel.
The game?
Voyeur.
A experience with similar play mechanics to Night Trap along with the simulated voyeurism
angle, but with more legit adult themes earning it a well deserved M rating.
The CD-I sequel was rumored to be finished even though it was never release, but nothing
surfaced leading to doubts by man as to if it had ever been in development.
In 2007 disc one was discovered, but it was a rare case on the CD-I that required having
both discs to start the game meaning it couldn't be tested.
In 2013 both discs for the game were dumped online with the following message.
"Today I saved box with CD-i games from the thrash at work.
I don't have much knowledge about CD-i so I don't know if there is anything really interesting.
The box was a mixed bag of seemingly retail, test, beta and burned CD-R discs.
I don't know all the games work, especially the CD-r versions.
My 21TCDI30 player, the TV one with builtin CD-i which I also saved from the trash at
work a few years ago, seems to have some disc reading problems, even with the retail discs
I tried (I need to check if there's something I can do about that)"
Unfortunately rare games ending up in the trash heap is a common story so I remain thankful
every time I hear of someone rescuing a piece of history and putting it back into the hands
of the public to enjoy.
Thanks for watching.
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