Alan_CDIZone – The World of CD-i

In focus: The Kyocera Pro-1000s CD-I player

One of the hardest CD-I players to find, and very easy on the eye, is the Kyocera Pro-1000s CD-I player..

It comes with a wired remote as pictured but does not have a screen nor the option to upgrade to DV – so the Kyocera will only play base case titles. It is an NTSC system, so plays Japanese and USA titles perfectly, that were designed for NTSC format.

The Kyocera connects to the TV via 3mm stereo phono cables for audio and video (or there is an S-Video output).

The player has a unique shell compared to other CD-I players – it recognises the title of the CD-I being played – a very nice touch. Sadly, as can be seen by the photos, the battery has long gone, meaning game scores can no longer be saved.

The unique player shell has many other features, as can be seen in the pictures.
There is a fab clock display, you can use the calendar to mark birthdays, dates 🙂 and other ‘forget me nots’, and you can tinker with the general options to meet your needs.

Where the Kyocera struggles in comparison to other CD-I players, aside from the lack of DV, is in its playback of discs. Games can crash at regular intervals, and some will not play at all. It is also slightly noisy at times in its reading of discs.

I’m not sure if the CD-I title pictured was ever bundled with the machine, but it may well be that it was 🙂 Following in the footsteps of the Manna Space CD-Is, and many others that were only available when you bought a CD-I player.

Overall, the Kyocera Pro-1000s is a compact, unique CD-I player which, if you have some of the prized Japanese titles, will serve you nicely (if you do not mind the occasional boot out!). If you see it, don’t hesitate to grab it 🙂

Nobelia winning prize claimed!

Huge congratulations to our member RetroChris who has claimed the winning prize for completing Nobelia in the quickest time, collecting all 7 gold coins on the way!

Alan_CDIZone caught up with Chris recently, to ask him about his achievement, his prize, and his love of Philips CD-I.

Alan: What are your thoughts on Nobelia as a whole, your favourite aspects of it, things you found most difficult (without giving anything away of course in terms of solutions 🙂)?

Chris: Since Philips pulled the plug on the CDi back in 1997, we as long-suffering fans were given a final few titles that were worth playing such as Solar Crusade and Tetsuo Gaiden . Although we’ve had some new releases since then, when the Nobelia demo was released, I knew I was playing something of real quality. Buying the full version was a no brainer and even at that point of pre-ordering it I was wondering about the physical quality of the game case etc. A few weeks later the post arrived and when I opened it up I was absolutely amazed with just how high quality the whole packaging was and couldn’t wait to play it. I went straight upstairs to the retro room and settled down to play the first CDI game I had been excited about playing for what must be 24 years….ish. The graphics are great, the soundtrack is bang on and the challenge was good enough to keep me glued to the game until I collected all the gold coins the game had to offer and with the announcement that TwBurn would be giving away a special prize to the person who collected the gold coins the quickest I was pleased to submit my time to him with the screenshots of the gold coins’ collection. What a game!

Alan: How long have you collected for CD-I?
Chris: I have been collecting CD-i since 1994. My parents bought us a CD-i after seeing ‘Palm Springs Open’ in Dixons and our package was the 450 with DV complete with Tennis, 7th Guest and Palm Springs Open. I’m still collecting now in 2022 and must have over 500 titles now including the films and reference disks.

Alan: Did you enter any CD-I magazine competitions and did you win any? And/or did you ever apply to appear on Gamesmaster, to win a coveted Golden Joystick??
Chris: No I never entered any competitions back in the day to be honest. Although would love to win a Golden Joystick! I’ve been doing well on the CD-i version of Tetris lately so perhaps Gamesmaster could honour my commitment with one 🤣

Alan: What prize did you win for being the first to complete Nobelia? 🙂 And what was your completion time?
Chris: I won a signed copy of the game and on top of that TwBurn sent me some amazing Nobelia models that were hand made by his girlfriend – something very cool that I will cherish. (TwBurn describes the prize as ”clay figurines of the protagonist, coin and a bomb – each beautifully modelled by my talented girlfriend”).

Alan: What is your favourite all time CD-I game and why?
Chris: This is a difficult one to answer as I have a few shall we say ‘core’ CD-i games that I still play to this day. I strongly believe that if more money had been spent at developing further titles based on these then the CD-i story would be very different today. Here are my Top 5 in no particular order:

The Apprentice, The 7th Guest, Tetris, Dimo’s Quest, Hotel Mario.

Alan: If you could have any game produced for CD-I, what would it be?
Chris: It would have to be along the lines of The Apprentice 2; we know a sequel was mooted, so would love to see someone release a physical version.

My huge thanks to Chris, and of course to TwBurn for producing such an incredible CD-I game, and TwBurn’s girlfriend for creating the stunning prize.

Will there be a prize for TwBurn’s forthcoming new CD-I game I wonder…? 😉 Can’t wait to find out!

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!