CDi Fan Appreciation Thread

[+sixersfan105]

I've played Atlantis but not extensively and it's been a while. In case it helps, attached are pictures of the manual, as well as some passwords that a previous owner wrote down on the back of my manual. The ability to "provide your own soundtrack" is a pretty cool feature - I had forgotten about that concept until I read it again in the manual just now. 
 

You definitely need to get a proper gamepad! The official OEM splitters (two player adapters) should be easy enough for you to track down in the UK but yes, there is a fellow making new ones but I believe he's sold out at the moment. More info in the first post of this thread. It's functionally identical to the original. He's also working on a hybrid device that will be a splitter PLUS SNES controller adapter, which is pretty amazing. Lauraiss' Mega Drive/Genesis adapter (single player) is pretty great though, so perhaps look into that? 

[ScottC2010]

10 hours ago, sixersfan105 said:

I've played Atlantis but not extensively and it's been a while. In case it helps, attached are pictures of the manual, as well as some passwords that a previous owner wrote down on the back of my manual. The ability to "provide your own soundtrack" is a pretty cool feature - I had forgotten about that concept until I read it again in the manual just now. 
 

You definitely need to get a proper gamepad! The official OEM splitters (two player adapters) should be easy enough for you to track down in the UK but yes, there is a fellow making new ones but I believe he's sold out at the moment. More info in the first post of this thread. It's functionally identical to the original. He's also working on a hybrid device that will be a splitter PLUS SNES controller adapter, which is pretty amazing. Lauraiss' Mega Drive/Genesis adapter (single player) is pretty great though, so perhaps look into that? 

Fab - thanks for all this info

I watched Black Rain the other day and now making a start on Red October

[ScottC2010]

I was having a look at video by using iso buster too, I managed to extract the video from Star trek 6 - interestingly windows reports the video as 368x272 25fps 1376kbps (About 172 kilobytes per second)

(172 kbs is explained here: The New International CD-i Association (icdia.co.uk) - It is mode2 form 2 - which frees up memory by excluding the error checking)

This doesn't seem correct though as for PAL CD greenbook (whitebook is 352x288 PAL) should be 384x288 29.97fps - is windows not able to correctly interpret the video (It does play fine in windows media player) or is there some other reason for this do you know?

Edited May 23, 2022 by ScottC2010

[+sixersfan105]

Not sure about any of that, sorry. Post on the discord, though - those guys know their stuff!

[ScottC2010]

9 hours ago, sixersfan105 said:

Not sure about any of that, sorry. Post on the discord, though - those guys know their stuff!

Will look into that

[ScottC2010]

Managed to get some uk pal movies - ver good price:

The Krays CDi Movie	£ 4.00
James Bond : From Russia With Love CDi Movie	£ 5.00
Star Trek VI CDi Movie	£ 4.00
The Untouchables CDi Movie	£ 5.00
Star Trek II - Wrath of Khan by Philips	£ 9.00
Star Trek III - Search for Spock by Philips	£ 9.00
Star Trek IV - Voyage Home by Philips	£ 9.00
Face Off by touchstone	£ 5.00
I'll see if I can find out more about the region lock on mine before I order and US ones

[electricmastro]

Dragon's Lair seems to run quite well on CD-i for being one of the earliest CD versions of the game:

 

 

[ScottC2010]

3 hours ago, electricmastro said:

Dragon's Lair seems to run quite well on CD-i for being one of the earliest CD versions of the game:

 

Looks cool, I have this for the sega mega cd and is surprisingly ok on that but much better on cd-i, have you tried thunder in paradise and who shot johnny rock?

 

[Bill Loguidice]

13 hours ago, electricmastro said:

Dragon's Lair seems to run quite well on CD-i for being one of the earliest CD versions of the game:

 

 

It was easily the best home version before the DVD releases thanks to requiring the DV cartridge.

[electricmastro]

On 5/26/2022 at 11:46 AM, Bill Loguidice said:

It was easily the best home version before the DVD releases thanks to requiring the DV cartridge.

I understand the best versions that came out before the 1998 DVD were on PC CD-ROM, CD-i, 3DO, and Jaguar CD. There was also Sega CD, but the colors seemed washed out on that one.

[Bill Loguidice]

On 5/27/2022 at 6:44 PM, electricmastro said:

I understand the best versions that came out before the 1998 DVD were on PC CD-ROM, CD-i, 3DO, and Jaguar CD. There was also Sega CD, but the colors seemed washed out on that one.

Don't believe it. The Jaguar one is no good with a lot of dithering. The 3DO one is much better, but still doesn't hold a candle to what the CD-i version could do. Again, without some type of FMV enhancement, stock systems really couldn't do a truly great version of the game. When enhanced with the DV cartridge, the CD-i's full motion video was unmatched in the era save for PC's equipped with something like REALmagic hardware (which never got much support), and even then I feel like the CD-i version wins out.

[mario64]

I hope this is an appropriate place to ask this question. I can't seem to find an answer anywhere. Does the 490 model contain a timekeeper chip? I assume all CD-I consoles do but wanted to confirm. Thank you.

[+sixersfan105]

5 minutes ago, mario64 said:

I hope this is an appropriate place to ask this question. I can't seem to find an answer anywhere. Does the 490 model contain a timekeeper chip? I assume all CD-I consoles do but wanted to confirm. Thank you.

The 490 does NOT have a timekeeper chip. No 32KB RAM models have one. And that's certainly a good thing, as those chips are the worst. 

[mario64]

14 minutes ago, sixersfan105 said:

The 490 does NOT have a timekeeper chip. No 32KB RAM models have one. And that's certainly a good thing, as those chips are the worst. 

Oh wow! How cool. Thank you very, very much for that info ?

[+sixersfan105]

25 minutes ago, mario64 said:

Oh wow! How cool. Thank you very, very much for that info ?

Sure thing. Do you have a 490? They're supposed to be great players. 

[mario64]

I have one coming yes ?

[+sixersfan105]

59 minutes ago, mario64 said:

I have one coming yes ?

Congrats! That model seems particularly hard to come by, especially in the US. Guessing you got the one that was recently listed for sale on eBay for $550 and the seller took your Best Offer of $500? Crazy how pricey these systems have gotten lately! Note that with that model, you'll need a port splitter if you want to be able to play two-player games. Be sure to use S-Video (Y/C) for upgraded picture quality over composite. If you have any questions as you dive into the CD-i scene, don't hesitate to ask! I also happen to have some spare CD-i software (games, reference, edutainment and movies), so feel free to PM me if you'd like a list of what I've got available.

[electricmastro]

Apparently CD-i has the first home game to have a CGI intro:

 

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by electricmastro

[+sixersfan105]

@electricmastro wow, that's some neat trivia. I'll bet you no one would have guessed that. Cool!

[electricmastro]

14 minutes ago, sixersfan105 said:

@electricmastro wow, that's some neat trivia. I'll bet you no one would have guessed that. Cool!

It had games having CG intros years before CG movies like Toy Story came out, yet it seems to be an underplayed aspect of the system. I think it's worth mentioning if nothing else.

[electricmastro]

Just found out that the CD-i version of Micro Machines has background music, which I understand is uncommon for a game that had no music on other systems otherwise:

 

 

 

 

 

[Петър]

[+sixersfan105]

On 11/14/2023 at 12:19 PM, Петър said:

Looks like you've got a CD-i 220, nice! Tell us more about your Panasonic Video CD player (only seeing the display and not the player in that pic).

[tsgthesportsgamer]

Owned an NTSC CD-i (One of the 200 numbers) years ago but sold it and a fairly crummy lot of games (stuff like CD Shoot and the golf game) awhile back. Recently got back into it more seriously, picking up 450 and 470 PAL (470 has CD-drive issues, might be the motor, still need to diagnose it) models along with cobbling together some of the more "serious" games. Here's a snapshot I took for a Reddit post but I've added a few more to that lot. The game library is actually much deeper than it is perceived to be (basically a non-entity) to those lacking perspective on the true breadth of the CD-i's catalog. It didn't really give us any true classics but there are easily 10-20 (arguably 30 or more if you really dig through the catalog) games that are worth playing and can at least be fun for a playthrough. The fact that it has poor emulation support (basically non-existent for games requiring DVC support) makes it more interesting to me from a preservationist's aspect (i.e. we really need to care for the original software/hardware)

[louhiana]

Hi! I'm hoping you can help me?

 

As kids my sister and I had a CDI 210 and played a fair bit until about the age of 9. It was the only games console we ever had. A couple of years ago we dug it out and played for a few glorious hours at my sisters house. Evoking lots of wonderful memories 🥰. But as life tends to get in the way, back to dad's it went and Dad sold it (!) Thinking we'd never use it again! (He'd stored it 20 years at this point so why the sudden sale I don't know!) Anyway, the time came when we went to get it again for another play, and noting our disappointment when we discovered it was gone, Dad rebought us a phillips 450. Now I have no recollection as to whether we actually got this replacement console up and working... (I have a smart to HDMI adaptor and I seem to remember getting the 3 red/white/yellow to scart working but can't be sure). Fastforward to last week, when I though I'd have a go and there's nothing. Power comes on, disc spins, but nothing works on the Tele. Trouble shooted and it might be that the HDMI port on my Tele doesn't work. But I have an old Tele with a scart input, so plugged in the 3 wire to the scart (no adapter needed) and still nothing. 

 

So I thought the console dead. This may still be the case...unless you know of something I'm missing wire wise?

 

My heart was still yearning for those old school memories...and for ONCE in our lives, we HAD to compete Zelda Wand of Gamelon. We just had to. So I but the bullet bought a CDI 210 on ebay...complete with the exact same controller as we had as kids etc... (ah the glorious reminiscing). Plugged it in and all is great, scart to scart on the old Tele. Fab. Decided as a warm up, (and now that I have a grown up brain), to tackle Lost Eden first...which we had zero understanding of the concept back when we were 6/7. So last night I spent a couple of hours playing my little heart out...and the same less-ideal flashbacks came back all too quickly... 20 minutes in, and the error message about "disc dirty" came up, kicked me off the game and ejected the disk. At this point I'd completely forgotten to save (rookie error) so had to start all over again. So I played for another 10 mins, saved the game, quit, ejected disc and reloaded. Fired her up and there it was!!! Game 1 saved and ready to go for me to pick up where I left off! Thrilled! So this time I'm religiously saving every new person/land/object I gain... and a few hours in and I'm further than I've ever been and super content on my journey to tick the box I've never managed to tick in my last 34 years!!!! 

 

Finish work today, tidy the house and get ready for another epic session, ready to dominate the dinosaurs 🦕, disc in, fire it up and WHERE THE HECK IS MY SAVED GAME??? Absolutely devastated to discover no game 1 available

 

What do I do? How do I fulfill this childhood dream of actually finishing these games without sitting at the TV for days straight? 

 

Your help would be massively appreciated!! 

 

Louise, 34, UK, (absolutely no technical know-how at all).