omegalfa – The World of CD-i

Catalogue numbers confusion and titles languages mixed up!

Our good friend Retroman called me last day and showed me something that made a tilt in my mind…
Look at those two What’s That Bird? copies and discs. Both have the same catalogue number 8100016.
The one on the left just says “What’s that bird?” and the other on the right says “What’s that bird? – Britain and Europe”.
When we look at the discs, the one from the left says “What’s that bird? Europa” and the one from the right keep saying the same as the cover.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the disc from the left one…
We have an European catalogue number (8100016), an English title (What’s that bird?), a Dutch/German/Spanish (?) name (Europa) and all the copyrights texts are in French. What a confusion…

Retroman did put the disc on his CD-i player and both titles are exactly the same, 5 languages selection (French English, German, Italian and Spanish). So what happened with other titles out there, happened also here. The same version has been used for different countries.
The confusion here is about “Europa”. In 1992, Philips Media affiliates in Europe was emerging, the way how catalogue numbers should be given might still not be clear at that time, and being a multi-language one, “Europa” might be to embrace more than one country.

This discussion came a few days before MrMii6 and Seventy7 tagged me in the Discord server about Link™ – The Faces of Evil cover variant, using the English title for the Dutch version (with Dutch catalogue number).

I have another title for you that is Dutch that uses the European catalogue number, Body Contour.
But in this case, both discs (this is a double disc title) and the booklet, are using the Dutch catalogue numbers.

Another example are the Video-CD’s, you can easily find this kind of format over the internet, and many of them are subtitled for other languages.
Retroman also showed me one title from of his enormous Video-CD collection, Fine Things, an English language with Dutch subtitles.
This movie is using an European catalogue number (810****) instead of a Dutch one (814****).

Felix the Cat – Review

Thanks to Steep Haywire, without his charity and good graces the world would never be able to play this unreleased CD-i title! Not only did he share it with us, but he jumped through all of the hoops to try to get the best dump possible.
THANK YOU Steep Haywire!!

Also a Very Special Thanks to Seventy7 and his Preserve CD-i website for sharing every time with us titles in first hand.

Created by EMG Publishing, this game actually never got released to CD-i but Philips Media did gave the catalogue number 8100250 to the title, so it was meant to be released in 1995, but for some reason didn’t make it. Only the PC-CDROM got published by Philips Media in the same year, still a CD-i prototype version exists but was very well kept!
The Adaptation for CD-i was in charge by Gary McGroarty and the CD-i programmer was David Armstrong.
The complete game’s name is Felix the Cat’s Giant Electronic Comic Book.

Read the complete review!

Website Mega Improvement

The website is being improved at this moment (and since a few weeks now).
Slowly you will see some “little” changes that will definitely blowup the way you use to surf over the site for your searches. I am sure many of you have already noticed some changes…

This will take at least 4 months to conclude… but you can be sure you will enjoy it!
We will announce when it will be finished. For now, you will still be able to visit the website as normal.

Othello & Mega Maze catalogue numbers

If you take a closer look at both discs calatogue numbers, you will see they match. But as they are completely different titles, this can’t happen as Philips Media always gave unique numbers for each titles.
But there is more… Othello® and Mega Maze shares the same number twice.

Othello – Testing Phase 1 uses 8100083 (1993/11/26)
Mega Maze final release uses 8100083 (1993/09/13)

Mega Maze – Testing Phase 1 uses 8100163 (1993/03/04)
Othello® final release uses 8100163 (1993/??/??)

We will assume the final release title as the correct catalogue number.

This is not the first time we saw those kind of errors, look here.
Typo from Philips Media? A change of catalogue number in the middle of the way?
That is not a problem as we saw it and defined how to pass through this issue.

Digital Video Cartridge bottle opener and key-chain

MrData, posted on the Original CD-i Discord Server this picture!
He worked with one of his friends to create this absolutely gorgeous bottle opener and key-chain.
This is the image of the Digital Video Cartridge (DVC) logo used by Philips on many of the CD-i titles who required a player equipped with a DVC module to be able to play Full Motion Video games/movies or titles that required it.

You want one? Sorry…
Only 2 of them have been made by his creator, and the lucky owners are MrData and me (Merci beaucoup Monsieur Data).

To reach this final result, the original DVC logo (provided by Jorne / Mrii6 from the same server) to be worked digitally to get a better quality. It has been completely vectorized using affinity designer software and the final result is just wonderful! MrData, you can congratulate your friend!

Professional designers will of course find some differences from the original one, but come on… who cares?
It is an amazing detailed quality picture, required for the final application. Using a lower quality one on a printable object will result in a even lower final result quality.

Future possible prints? Who knows… for now, as said before, only 2 have been made. His creator doesn’t seams to be interested in selling as he just made them for fun.
I am waiting to receive mine and will post it on the site (forum) as soon as I put my hands on!