Author Archives: omegalfa

Shikotei’s The Apprentice Free PC version!

Shikotei, our website member, have just completed a completely insane project!
9 years ago he got this crazy idea to convert a CD-i game into a Windows game… Yes… 9 years of intensive work!
The game selected was The Apprentice of course! This game is for sure one of the best you can find on CD-i and maybe one of the best platform game of the 90’s!

CONGRATULATIONS Shokitei for this amazing work!
You are crazy and we need more crazy guys like you!

Shikotei:

After having started almost 9 years ago in Excel, porting this to PHP, porting that once again to Director in Lingo, and finally porting everything to Unity in C# this game has come a long way!

The Apprentice remade for PC is the project of just me whose idea of a challenge is programming everything from scratch. No black boxes, no bug-free engines, no such thing of any kind. Stupid? Perhaps.. but it got me knowledge beyond what I thought I needed to make a game! Knowledge that should enable me to make another one if I ever finish this one.

My version of The Apprentice requires an ISO of the original CD-i disc to run. It is needed because all the sprites, backgrounds, music, sound effects, and level layouts are stored there. None of them are aboard the game itself because that would be a copyright infringement. It is my way of trying to protect myself against those who hold the rights to the Apprentice.

Every asset I extract from the IMG file is kept in memory and so nothing is actually stored on the hard drive.

Download the PC version game right here!

For more information about how to play it and also other Shikotei projects, please visit his website at www.shikotei.com!

A forum topic has been created so Shikotei can answer your questions!


Latest additions on the site – September / October / November 2019

The World of CD-i website is in constant updates.
We are always adding information like new titles, covers, screenshots, videos, etc…
Our website members are a great value for us, this is why we encourage you to register, this way you’ll be able to add yourself new stuff. We always add credits to our contributors!

NEW ENTRIES:
Games
QuizMania (Italian covers, booklet, catalogue number & EAN)

Multimedia
Beeld van Nederland
De Hogesnelheidslijn in Nederland
Dizionário Universale Multimediale – Grolier Hachette

CD-i Professional
CD-i & Training (Catalogue number & EAN)

Video-CD Movie
A Fish Called Wanda
Benny & Joon
Beverly Hills Cop
Crocodile Dundee 2
Top Gun

Digital Video on CD-i Movie
Top Gun (DV on CD-i)

UPDATES:
Games
Dragon’s Lair™ (Catalogue number)
Link™ – The Faces of Evil (Italian catalogue number & EAN)
Strip Poker Live (Booklet)
Super Test (Booklet)
Tangram (Italian covers, catalogue number & EAN)
The Palm Springs Open (Italian booklet)

Multimedia
A Revolution in Color (Italian covers, Catalogue number & EAN)
Dutch Masters of the 17th Century (Italian covers, catalogue number & EAN)
Harvest of the Sun – Van Gogh (Italian covers, catalogue number & EAN)
Mozart – A Musical Biography (Italian cover, catalogue number & EAN)
Portrait of a City – Venice (Italian covers, booklet, catalogue number & EAN)
The Art of the Czars (French back cover & CD)
The French Impressionists (Italian covers, catalogue number & EAN)
The Renaissance of Florence (Italian covers, catalogue number & EAN)
Time Life Photography (Italian covers, catalogue number & EAN)
UEFA® Champions League (Italian booklet)
What’s that Bird? (Covers & booklet)

CD-i Music
Pavarotti – O Sole Mio (Italian covers, booklet, catalogue number & EAN)


USA complete CD-i released titles

With 205 titles listed at this moment, this is the most accurate list you can find on the internet.
You can find them listed below or under “MORE” on the right menu choosing “USA Release”.
The list is in constant update, it as been verified by several worldwide collectors.
A special Thanks to Stacy Burns and Blazers also members of this website, that is currently in the Guinness Book Records for his USA collection, all systems included.
Alan_CDiZone, our team member, have been a  very important pillar to confirm, add and remove titles from this list!
The following list include titles like Games, Kids, Multimedia and “Digital Video on CD-i” (movies and music), not necessary published by Philips, but surely published in the USA. The list do not include Video-CDs (movies and music).

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The 7th Guest – Remastered


Well, as we are in the middle of Halloween festivities, here is some creepy news!
The Israeli game developer company MojoTouch released the 20th Anniversary of The 7th Guest in a remastered edition!
The game has been released in 2015 for Android, available at Google Play for 4,59€, and game received its latest update on 29th February 2016 for version 1.0.0.8-11.

Number 2 in the USA and Top 10 in more than 84 countries, the success made MojoTouch decide to export it for Windows and made the 25th Anniversary remastered version in 2019 for 8,19€ (this year)!

Released on 14th April 2015 for AndroidReleased on 2nd April of 2019 for Windows

Watch the official android Trailer:

But how did they manage to make it?
They just found the right guy to make this job… Luc Rooijakkers, ex CD-i programmer from SPC Vision company.
The World of CD-i talked to him in exclusivity about his work for The 7th Guest – 20th Anniversary Remastered.

Luc Rooijakkers:

In July 2014 I got contacted by someone from MojoTouch, an Israeli game company.
They were developing the 20th Anniversary Edition with the IP licensed from Trilobyte and he was looking for someone to extract good quality voice tracks, and also German and French versions.
They were basing the Android version on the PC version, using the existing open-source ScummVM game engine.
Unfortunately quality of the PC audio files left something to be desired and it was only available in English.

He had already gotten out most of the videos using online tools but wanted more.
We did some back and forth on it and agreed on a price after I did some analysis of the game.
It turned out that many audio and video assets where in “processed” CD-i formats and thus not readily extractable using standard tools. After a considerable amount of reverse engineering I was able to extract almost anything that he wanted, except for some games that simple weren’t on the CD-i disc for space reasons.

This included all audio in three languages as well as a number of text screens in those same languages.
At the end of August, after I received payment, I delivered all the extracted assets (many hundreds of megabytes).
We had some general correspondence after that but my work was basically done.

I also provided him with all the game videos in CD-i MPEG format, but they ended up not using them.
The PC video files were a bit better resolution, looked somewhat less “blurred” and with less muted colours.
This came out better after upsampling and conversion to the format they were using.

Interestingly, I found out during the reverse engineering that the CD-i game uses a kind of “compiled” game scripts for all the interactivity, with a very general format and functionality.
It did not in any way look like the ScummVM code, not even in the “opcode” list based on the PC version assets.
My guess is that the CD-i makers re-used an existing “script compiler” architecture and/or game engine and wrote or recompiled all the scripts from scratch.

Due to the generality of the script codes, you could create many different “FMV” games using the same engine; the actual game as released is almost completely data-driven.
This could even be a “portable” engine, all the asset manipulation is in the CD-i specific parts outside the basic script engine and called using generic operators.

In January 2015 I got the official beta version of the 20th Anniversary edition for Android as a courtesy, and it is this version that the screen shots I sent you earlier were taken from.

Earlier this year a 25th Anniversary Edition also appeared on Steam, but it seems to be English audio only with subtitles.

Luc provided us with some pictures taken from the original game files, enjoy!


Mad Dog McCree™ & Fast Draw Showdown Cards Collection

Following RetroMan’s pictures contribution to “The World of CD-i”, here is something really special!
A cards collection from American Laser Games, those cards are from “Fast Draw Showdown” cabinet. Mad Dog McCree™ appears as the most dangerous outlaw.

Tom Anthony from our Facebook Support Group shared with us the following flyer, you can clearly see the cards set.
Who never dreamed to play on an arcade cabinet like this one…?
The cabinet could include a Ticket Dispenser or a Trading Card Dispenser for the American Laser Games Trading Cards.

The cards are thicker than a Panini sticker but thinner than a playing card.
A complet full set of 100 cards, all uniques, only with personages appearing in “Fast Draw Showdown”.

Each personage have his own description i.e. what he likes or hates, skills and classified under 3 categories: Deputy, Sheriff and Marshall.
3 Categories just like the same number of game options.

This cards collection wasn’t for sale as you car clearly see “For Promotional Use Only” on each back side of the cards.

This collection is under the name of “Gunfighter Series”.

Take a closer look of Mad Dog McCree’s card, the number 99…
At the back side you can see a difference between the CD-i game name and the cards collection…
On the CD-i game, you will find a ™ (trademark) at the end of the name. But at the end of the same name on this specific card, you will find a ® (registred).


Once again, we thank you RetroMan for this contribution and Tom Anthony for sharing the flyer!

More to come…