Monthly Archives: April 2022

New 10Kg arrival from Italy

Another package fully loaded with CD-i material arrived today from Italy.
10 kilograms that includes CD-i players, titles included games, kids and multimedia, accessories and something special to me… mmmmm… I can’t tell you yet… all right, just one tip: “an Italian collection set”. 😛

Like the other 3 packages, I will keep only a part of it, the rest will be for sell on our Forum’s Market Place!
Everything will be preserved by my brother UnlockerPT, 😉

As soon as possible, I will make all the videos, catalogue everything, and I will also try not to be killed by my wife… 🙂
Another Spanish extra package is expected, but maybe only for June.

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Nobelia selling like hot cakes!!

We at The World of CD-i are very pleased to report that Nobelia has sold over 150 copies to date, since we published details in March of how to get your hands on a copy. This is a tremendous achievement, and speaking to TwBurn, he has been quite surprised at the level of interest:
”The response has been great, better than I dared to hope. The reviews were extremely positive, with some fair and constructive criticism here and there, just as one would expect.”
You can read one of these reviews here: ‘Zelda Meets Bomberman’ In Nobelia, A New Philips CD-i Game – Nintendo Life.

We asked TwBurn: What was the best thing about making this game for CD-i, for you?
”It was a fun project, got to learn a lot of new skills and stuff about the system itself, gave me a whole new perspective on the CD-i.”
Having played CD-i games for 28 years now, I can honestly say that the game has blown me away and kept me coming back for more. The goal to collect all 7 gold coins reminds me of trying to collect all of the Chaos Emeralds in Sonic the Hedgehog, back when I had a Sega Game Gear! We are also pleased to announce that the prize for completing the game and collecting all of the coins has now been claimed, and the winner will be announced soon 🙂

TwBurn has created a true masterpiece on CD-i, complete with cute graphics, a toe-tapping soundtrack, challenging puzzles and a unique style of game for CD-i. The packaging is SOOOO professional – and I’m very excited for the future of CD-i in its ‘2nd life’. Big fans of CD-i will remember back to 2002, when Oldergames announced 4 ‘new’ CD-i games would be released, and we were treated to GO – Special Edition, Plunderball, Jack Sprite and Space Ranger. But TwBurn, having no prior game development experience, has produced Nobelia ‘from the ground up’ and delivered something incredibly special for us – which will be exclusive to CD-i. How unbelievably cool. And we’re confident at The World of CD-i that there will be more to come, so please stay tuned. Also, please do get interactive and post comments on your experience to date with Nobelia – we’d love to read them.

Another promising brand new game for CD-i is Super Quartet, released in demo form in late 2018. Sadly there is no news on whether this game will have a full release like Nobelia, but we will do our best to bring you news on this title.

For many years, I have been jealous of other retro consoles that have been given a new lease of life through homebrew development. Thanks to TwBurn, CD-i is now in on the act – and long may this continue – to make up for the multitude of games that were promised for our beloved system, but sadly never saw the light of day.

Keep enjoying Nobelia – we can’t get enough of it here!!! 🙂

You are still in time to buy Nobelia!


When mail rings with 24Kg of CD-i material

I never play with important things, and when we are talking about CD-i, then, there is no place for bullshit.
I’ve just finished to receive 3 packages from Spain, fully loaded with only CD-i material, 24 kilograms of Interactive stuff. I know what is inside, I just don’t know in which box it is. It includes CD-i players, and tons of software (including some dupes), most of them exclusive from Spain.

SPECIAL THANKS:
I want to thanks from the bottom of my heart Diego, known as diego-rbb-93 who is also working with other preservationists for making it possible. I searched for all the materiel in Spain and he managed to get them all from so many different places (an impressive coordination process), he stored them at home, and then sent to me (Portugal). I am buying things since August 2021… 8 months of research and storage.
Thank you Diego, Thank you, Thank you!

A sign of trust and international help.

I will make 3 unboxing videos, not live, to improve better video quality and edition (by djkoelkast).

Some material are already documented on The World of CD-i, others not…
Still, 2 more extra packages are expected, one again from Spain (not from Diego this time), and a second one from Italy with something really special inside… well, all CD-i related material are always special to me. 😛

All the CD-i titles, will be preserved by UnlockerPT my neighbour, literally.

I will keep some part of what is inside, about the rest, some do have already a destination, and the other part will be for sale on our Forum’s Market Place, otherwise… I am a dead man (she will cut my b*lls!) with so many CD-i stuff!

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Stay tuned and stay safe!


New upcoming CD-i demo under work


After the wide success of Nobelia, Twilight Burn (TwBurn) is working on another project for a possible CD-i homebrew game, this time in 3D, based on SkyRoads from 1993.
You don’t know what is SkyRoads? It is a DOS game, you are a spaceship driving on a road with traps. You must stay on the track by avoiding walls (by jumping) and holes (turning left or right). You also can control your speed but will lose time (points). The goal is to reach the end of the road as fast as possible and get access to the next level. Nothing better than watch for the original game to get a better understanding of what we are talking about!

For now the demo is on a very basic stage. No spaceship is placed, only the 3D roads are in movement. 2 short videos has been shared by TwBurn, the first one is a very primitive 3D rendering, being slower when more objects are shown. The second one is much better, with better graphics and a good speed.

Demo 1, very archaic.

Demo 2, better graphics and speed.

As you can see, for now, there is no FX sound or music and no background image.
He is working on placing a background still image and will try to add an Mpeg video, but as he said, “video could add unpredictable performance as the documentation is very minimal, and it’s hard to test/debug”.

As he is still in a very initial work, he still doesn’t know the name of this game but it might not be SkyRoads.
Will it have enemies to shoot? It is also unknown. He firstly wants to get the demo working, by toying with some tech.

To make this 3D visuals he used a Level Editor where he exported the level, then he used a 3D engine in Javascript to draw it, and finally, he converted it to CD-i graphics.

We can expect a pretty cool game based on quick choices, TwBurn has shown he is capable of premium work.

The Future is bright for the CD-i scene in 2022 with many things in the pipeline.
Many brilliant minds are present in our Interactive Community.


CD-i 2 Bluetooth

Maartje Eyskens is an applied computer science teacher in Belgium, she is one of the many other developers from the Philips CD-i Discord server who are enjoying developing new accessories for the Philips CD-i system.

We all know how expensive it is to get an original CD-i gamepad or touchpad, that is why she has developed a CD-i accessory to connect any Bluetooth controller and let you play your favourite titles with.
Her work is based on Anarterb SNES2CDi and TwBurn Controller Library, but with modification to get the Bluetooth working, and she still keep it as an Open-Source on her GiHub.
But she went further… you can pair 2 Bluetooth controllers and play 2 player games! No need to use the same controllers to play Head-to-Head. Any working controller will be OK (the compatible controllers is on this article).

Visit her personal website at www.eyskens.me to discover all the process done since day 1 until the final product.

You can buy them at the official online store. Depending on your skills you can buy different products:

The complete set-box is for me the best choice you can make as it is a ready to go device, including a Mini DIN-8 pin cable!

Compatible controller list:

  • DualSense (PS5)
  • DUALSHOCK 4 (PS4) controller, both 2013 and 2016 editions
  • DUALSHOCK 3 (PS3) controller
  • Nintendo Switch Pro controller Confirmed by community
  • Nintendo Switch JoyCon Confirmed by community
  • Nintendo Switch Online SNES Controller Confirmed by community
  • Nintendo Wii U Pro controller
  • Nintendo Wii Remote and Remote Motion Plus, including Nunchuk and Classic Controller Confirmed by community
  • Xbox Wireless controller (model 1708, not the Series controllers) Confirmed by community
  • 8BitDo controllers Confirmed by community
  • Android controllers
  • iCade controllers
  • Nimbus SteelSeries
  • OUYA controllers
  • Some TV remote controls, like the Amazon Fire TV

From the first attempt until the final product, it just took a few days… incredible!
She worked on it mostly figuring out hardware issues at first, the biggest challenges were to re-work TwBurn library to work on ARM based micro controllers and debugging behaviour of the latest CD-i devices not recognising the controller due to a timing issue.
Only 3 prototypes where needed to get a final full working device, a very efficient work.

With the help of MrMii6 and Victonator, they designed a PCB, produced a prototype batch. Tested in well. Prepared packaging, shipping, assembly, a website a shipping box was made and a website for selling setup.

Congratulations and thank you Maartje Eyskens,you did an awesome work!

A work done by a lady must have a feminine touch, look at the back of the PCB “Made with ♥ in Belgium for the CD-i community”
A HUGE thumb up for the Interactive Community technical experts who contributed to the final product:
cdifan, Rosewood (retrostuff.org) and TwBurn with helpful tips on the community, MrMii6 with testing.