Unreleased title – The World of CD-i

Evidence – Another unreleased title

After another information on our Facebook group from Roberth Rivero (Thank you again!) who post a picture of a French article from CD Consoles. It makes me remember about another article I remember to see in the 90’s in another French magazine dedicated to the CD-i.
We are talking about an unreleased game called Evidence – The Last Report from Microïdes, the same producer of Secret Mission.

With a released date scheduled to early 1995, the CD-i version never saw the light of the day (just like for the Atari Jaguar CD). The only 3 released version went for DOS, PC CD-ROM and PlayStation 1.
One of the programmer of this game is the same who made the CD-i version of Secret Mission, Nicolas Gohin.

The Story:
The game is a classic crime story… an intense detective adventure. You play Daniel Singer (friends call him “Dan”), a reporter for Channel Z. Sarah Hopkins, Dan’s ex-girlfriend, has been murdered and Dan, unable to control his anger at her innocent death, finds himself being dragged into the desperate case. He launches his own investigation into the heinous crime but the job isn’t going to be easy… There are people in high places who don’t want Dan to uncover information which could implicate them in Sarah’s murder and destroy their careers.
The real-time 3D scenes slam Dan right down the barrel of a gun with high-speed pursuits, deadly shootouts and cat-and-mouse boat chases. In stark contrast to the action, a lot of the people Dan meets aren’t too interested in helping him out, so he’s got to use a bit of tact to get what he’s after. It’s times like these when a slick tongue and lots of cash go a long way. But Dan knows one fellow he can trust: Peter Rugler, DEA inspector. He’s there to back Dan up and supply him with whatever he needs to solve the crime and put the murderer behind bars for good.

The action of the game takes place in a big American city. There is a municipal election coming up and anarchy reigns in the streets. Under this dark backdrop Dan must quickly solve the brutal crime of the murder of the woman he once loved…

You can watch the Introduction and gameplay of the PC Version:

Credits:
Information from Roberth Rivero
Screenshots and video from Squakenet.com

Return to CyberCity BETA version

Last week, we’ve got a very exciting comment on our YouTube channel on our Escape from CyberCity Full Play.
Justin from Dallas (Texas – USA) saying this:

“I just found a CD case at the thrift store titled RETURN TO CYBERCITY. Inside is a burned disc labelled the same as the title as well as ‘BETA 95.03.17 for PC-REALMAGIC’ Does anyone know if a sequel was even planned? WTF is this thing?”

Yes, indeed, a sequel was planned, and we even have some pictures of the artwork of this Return to CyberCity sequel has been shown on different CD-i related magazines.

I answered him, and he very kindly contacted me back by email… with some pictures!

This is the 1st time I see a BETA disc about it. It is on his way to Hidden Palace for preservation, and I am awaiting to see if I can get a copy of it to test and take some screenshots or even a video of gameplay.
It was already known Fathom Pictures was behind this work, as it is the same company who made Escape from CyberCity.
As the CD label says, it is a PC version and needs an MPEG playback card to run under a Windows 3.1 OS.

The question is: Does a complete PC version has been published? As far as I know, no. But this BETA was also unknown to me, so… we never know…

With a physical copy, we will try to see if a reverse engineering is possible to get a CD-i version of it.

Take a look at those pictures from Return to CyberCity artwork I found in one of my many old HDD 😉

Take a look at the similarities between the BETA cover and the artwork pictures:

You can see Fathom Pictures at the bottom right side, and “CyberCity” letter type is the same.

Even if this is a PC version, this is a very exciting moment for the CD-i Community!
Thank you very much Justin!

Sonic Eraser – Unreleased CD-i game?

I couldn’t confirm this information on any magazine articles from the era, so I can’t say if this is true story.
In 1991 Sega decided to jump into the online gaming, not like today with multiplayer online games, (this is a CD-i revolution with Ram Raid) no, just to download exclusive games.
To be able to do such a thing you needed some quite specific things.
– 1st, you needed to live in Japan or Brazil.
– 2nd, you needed a Sega Mega Drive.
– 3rd, you needed a Mega Modem add-on.
– 4th, you needed a Meganet subscription.
– 5th, you needed a game called Toshokan (or Sega Game Library).
This is where Sonic Eraser was available to download.
Well, nothing really special… very easy…

So what does it have to see with CD-i?
I found over the net some sites who claims that a Game Gear and a CD-i version was planed (as I said, I still can’t find any proof of that).

This is game developed by Sega, up to 2 players like Columns or Puyo Puyo.
The game was only available for a very limited world zone, so unknown for almost everybody until February 2004 when Sonic KulT website managed to get the Rom.
It will be hard to confirm the possible CD-i project due to the specificity of the game (Japan/Brazil zone & Online).
To be true, this means CD-i could also get a game from Sega Mascot, Sonic! Just like Philips did with Zelda’s and Mario!

You can try the game using the online emulator from Let’s Play Sega!