No need for a witty title: Let's play the Philips CD-i!

When you think of a multimedia CD player, which when used in conjunction with your television, opens up a gateway for interactive content (such as games, educational and children titles) what do you think of? Maybe the Tandy Video Information System, or the Commodore CDTV? Maybe even 3DO? What if this system later had full MPEG support so you could watch movies from many (potential) Hollywood studios? Maybe even play some (probably crappy) FMV games? What if this system was the one that had all those shitty licensed Zelda and Mario games? Now you must know! It’s the Philips CD-i!

After I was done with Link - The Faces of Evil, I wanted to avoid doing the Zelda version so I asked what game I should do next. It then hit me that most people don’t know the games that were released on the CD-i besides those Nintendo ones (Or the ones Angry Video Game Nerd has talked about), so I figured now would be a best time to dive into the rest of the CD-i library and LP some of the other titles. Let’s just say that if you thought those Mario and Zelda games were crap… yeah... :-(.

Now some of you may be wondering, “Oh my god is he going to LP every single CD-I game? DON’T DO IT SAVE YOURSELF/DO IT I’LL BE FUNNY TO WATCH YOU SUFFER!” Don’t worry, I’m not going to. Here’s why I’m doing the LP like this; games like the length of “Link: The Faces of Evil” are few and far between. Most “games” that were released are pretty short, with only an hour or two of game play. I figured that by lumping them all into one LP, it would allow me to go through these shorter games while avoiding the queue lineup.

Also, there are some games that I could do a full LP on, like Dark Castle, but are so horrifically bad that I can’t beat them. In which case, until someone else really wants to slog through it (or if I figure out a way to get beat it), I’ll show you as much as I can.

Here are the list of games I plan on going through in this thread (more may be added later):

Cartoon Carnival
Cartoon Jukebox
Chaos Control
Dark Castle
Hotel Mario
Girls
Golden Oldies 1 and 2
International Tennis Open
Jack Sprite Vs The Crimson Ghost
Micro Machines
Mystic Midway: Phantom Express
Mystic Midway: Rest In Pieces
Moses: The Exodus
Noah’s Ark
Pinball
Space Safari
Solar Crusade
Super Mario’s Wacky Worlds

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Thunder In Paradise (Staring Hulk Hogan!)
The Joy of Sex
Voyeur
Vegas Girls
The Wacky Wolf of Miniature Golf (Staring EUGENE LEVY)

If there is any game on that list that you want me to do first, just reply and we'll what everyone wants. After each LP, we'll have a mini-vote to see which one goes next. If no one cares, then I'll just pick.

So that's pretty much it, now let's play some games on the Philips CD-i! :-)

And as a special bonus:

I can only imagine what this will be like. Is it based on the book?

OH MY GOD THAT DINOSAUR.

This thread is going to be rad as HELL.

Yes, and it's... well... it's a disappointment, or totally awesome depending on your perspective. The title leads you to think that it gives more than it does.

Also to say it right now, when I get to "Girls" and "Vegas Girls" (Two totally different games), they are softcore porn games... BUT unlike other systems which had those kind of games like the 3DO, the CD-i was fully uncensored, so you see "Tits and Vag", as it were. Not sure how I'm going to LP those games (Lots of NSFW or censoring), but it must be done!

As stated in the Youtube title, he is from the game "Zombie Dinos From Planet Zeltoid". I won't cover that game in this thread because it is long enough that I can do a full LP on it. But with that song, I had to upload that now :-).

Hang on to your space helmets!

If I'm not mistaken, is that Cam "Liquid Snake" Clarke doing the dinosaur's voice?

This is really the first game to play.

We need to kick some brain back to where they come from (back to where they come from) to the far side of the moon.

Er.. you know he's done a few things before that right?

Let me remind you: I'm NOT doing Zombie Dinos From Planet Zeltoid IN THIS THREAD. That's most likely getting it's own LP because it's long enough. It will be done, just not at the moment.

Now if we could all go back up to the list of shorter games and pick from that, everything will go just fine

Well I don't really care, I just had to laugh seeing the title. Hell, my parents have the book, it's about 20 feet away from me right now, and I even remember them encouraging my older brother to read it several years back. ahahahaha

Do Super Mario's Wacky Worlds, since it was never released.

I don't see EUGENE LEVY'S WACKY GOLF on that list, sir. Prepare for pain!

If possible, could you do all those images as links, even if they're censored? Or make a separate thread for the porny games?

Otherwise it seems like the thread will probably become unnecessarily dangerous . . .

Like, say, if someone who hadn't read your description above clicked on this thread, went to the most recent post, and suddenly had an unexpected eye-full of naked human flesh. I don't think everyone who sees the title "Let's Play Philips CD-i" immediately assumes they'll be stepping into a world of (even censored) full frontal nudity.

Leave the naughty bits uncensored but put them behind clearly-marked links. Everybody wins!

Also: wow, how did that dino game get approved? Dear lord. At least we have the song!

A friend of mine makes a show all about CDI games called Crap Digging Investigations.

Right now I'm hacking away at the Super Mario's Wacky Worlds footage, but while I do that, have another bonus video!

Yeah, he's like the... really ubiquitous person... of voice acting.

Alright, now it's time to play Super Mario's Wacky Worlds:

Here's some background for those who don't know about this unreleased game:

In the early 90s, Nintendo and Sony signed an agreement to product a cross-platform console. Sony's "Play Station" would have Super Nintendo cartridge support, and Sony would develop a CD addon for Nintendo which would support Play Station games.

All was well and good, until Nintendo saw that Sony would retain the rights to both license and retain publishing profits from their system; in essence they were going to create a more open system. Nintendo hated this as they wanted strict control over licensing, so they killed the deal off... but neglected to tell Sony.

Sony announced at the 1991 CES their new cross-compatible CD system, the Play Station. Later, Nintendo would announce their new CD addon for the Super Nintendo... coming from Philips Electronics. Now, instead of the SNES playing Sony Play Station games, it would be compatible with Philips upcoming CD-i multimedia console. Nintendo would retain exclusive control over software licensing and Philips gained licensing over Nintendo characters (Such as Mario, Zelda, Link, and so on).

In the end, seeing how other CD based addon systems were doing in the market, Nintendo never released their addon for the SNES. Sony continued to develop their addon and, after scrapping and renewing the project, released the Playstation in 1995.

As for the CD-i... yeah, it did not do well at launch. As we will discover later on, the platform had massive amounts of problems from the start. The children games and educational self-help titles were not selling, and Hollywood did not embrace the VideoCD as Philips had hoped. But Philips still had licensing control over those Nintendo properties, and by 1993 decided to use them to push the CD-i toward gamers. Among those games were Hotel Mario, and the three Zelda titles. But along comes "Super Mario's Wacky World's", a direct sequel to Super Mario World.



Developed by Nova Logic over a frantic two weeks, this represents the 30% of the game they finished. So what happened to the game?

Yeah, it was not going to happen.

But enough talk, let's play!

The first level I picked was Greek 1





As you can see, the Greek Koopa Troopa kinda just disappears when hit.



There are pipes around, but...



None of them work





Interesting, they don't fall... they also don't hurt you. There is no way to die in this game.





Time to enter the horse (By resetting the system and selecting Greek Level 2)!



Some Koopa Troopa Centurions.



And ah, walruses? Fair enough.





There are two ways out of the horse, but they don't lead anywhere.



Greek level 3 crashed my CD-i, so we can't see it :-(

And with that, we reset the system and head off to Egypt. This wacky enough for ya?

Man, those Centurions really get around eh? The Greeks invaded Egypt.

After jumping on the Koopa pharaoh things, we run into the desert:



FOR FORTY YEARS!!!!



Until we come across another set of pipes that don't work. I would just reset the system and go to Egypt 2, but it also crashes the CD-i, but the third level works. However, that's just a a one panel desert shot.

Also, I want to make a quick note here: The controls are so slippery, you don't really feel you have total control over Mario. That being said, it's better than 90% of CD-i games.

Next, I went to the Pipeworks level:



Complete with vomiting Koopa head!





We also get to see the giant McDonald's\Mario sign. This, I assume, was going to be a portal to go to the next level, or back to a world map.

Next, we head off to the Arctic!



Looks like Mario and the Arctic Koopa are getting a little close :-)



The water effects don't look "that" bad, but a SNES can do this just fine... and so much more.



A door leading to nothing; also note the Greeks have invaded the Arctic as well.



Hey! A slanted jump!



Go right through it :-(.
Wonder why that happened? Let's go to Neon City!



Well, it's Neon all right. This stage was not finished, but we can see how their engine worked.

The blue spaces are solid and you can't go through them. The light green spaces you can jump through, but can't jump back down. But as you can see, there are no diagonal lines, so any slopes won't work correctly. Instead, everything has a stair step effect. With time, I'm sure this would have been fixed, but in the demo levels they used slopes a lot, so Mario tends to float off in space.

In the cave level, we see our old Faces of evil friends come back

As we fly through the rest of the levels (most of which have nothing of interest in them, or don't work), we come across what has to be a protest on the Bhopal disaster.



Next we go to the haunted ship



There are no enemies in this level (If there were, it would probably be those damn Greeks)



Slants that don't work.



Oops, I hit a bug. Can't report it now I don't think :-)



And lastly, the portal out of the level (which does not work)

There are other levels to show, but again, most don't work or are just repeats of other levels. I have video footage I'm going to upload to youtube, but otherwise I think this LP is done.

Overall, it plays a hell of a lot better than most CD-i games... That's not saying a lot, but at least their intentions were somewhat in the right place.

It's the same as Neon City; I know, I was hoping for more too :-(

These actually look pretty cool. It would've been interesting to see fully completed, and on a non-crap system, of course.

Oops, forgot a screen shot: This is from the Haunted Castle



What the hell? Were they planing on tying Mario up? Or was this level suppose to be viewed in conjunction with The Joy Of Sex?

This song needs to be on Rock Band right now!

This is the next game I'm going to LP. After this one, I'm going to set up a web poll for the next one (because I'm indecisive ;-) )

Moooom, the singing jukebox made my brain feel like burning.

Nightmares. Oh god, i'm not looking forward to trying to sleep after seeing this.

Alright, Youtube was being stupid with some of my videos, but now it seems everything is uploaded. So let's get started!



Now as you can tell by the opening video, this is not really a "game" but "Interactive Education/Entertainment" for children. In it, you color in characters on screen with your remote, then watch as they preform a song. There are some interactive games, but it's limited.

Let's begin with the first song, Pop Goes The Weasel.



First, we got our monkey. Looking a little bland there, so lets spice him up.



What can I say, I got skills



We also got our weasel (Very important)



And our cobbler.



Gotta make sure the house is stylish.



And ah... whatever this will do.

So we colored everything we could in, so let's watch the video:



I would just like to point out one image



Memories, I tell ya.



Next up is The Wheels on The Bus: This time I did not color every object, mostly because I did not want to mess up the original footage too much....

We got our Bus driver.



Our ah... Old men?



A very large Smurf



And her effeminate husband.



and last but not least, a women with her alien babies

Let's begin!




This one is a bit long, so let's go through some key moments.





OH MY GOD DRIVER WHAT ARE YOU DOING!



That old man has that stare again :-(



Even the bus hates children



They are outside the bus, with no seat belts! What the hell is going on in the UK!



Man, he means it.



What's weird is that on the title screen, the bus seemed happy. What happened?

Next up, we have "When The Saints Go Marching in!"