The Apprentice

The Apprentice is for sure one of the absolutely best games available on CD-i, this is a must have and a must play title!
This platformer game from The Vision Factory (1994)  and published by Philips Media is graphically perfect, with amazing animations!

The story
You are Marvin, the apprentice of the castle’s sorcerer, and you will play 1 week in Marvin’s live and will make all sorcerer’s dirty work… The sorcerer will always find things for you to do, and you will do them always with a high level of joy! Find a book, find again the same book that falls into a well, find the sorcerer’s cat, get some ice cubes for the sorcerer’s drink, find the sorcerer’s crow and find the sorcerer’s teddy bear!

The game
This game is full of fun, but also extremely hard!! With bosses to defeat at the of each levels!

6 levels with 3 stages each, so 18 stages in total, plus all 6 bosses and bonus stages after defeating all bosses!
Hours and hours of fun in this amazing jewel!

Take a look at the screenshots!

Level 1 + Boss

Level 2 + Boss

Level 3 + Boss

Level 4 + Boss

Level 5 + Boss

Level 6 + Boss

You have 10 minutes to reach the end of each stages, and 1 or 2 check points are available to avoid starting from the very start of the one you are playing. In most part of the levels you go from the bottom to the top, except for level 2, were you start from the top and go to the bottom,as you are inside a well.
You use button 1 to JUMP and button 2 to FIRE. Using buttons 1+2 will PAUSE the game and let you decide if you want to quite the game.

A very smooth game, easy to control the character and no bugs at all, like in some games a character fall when he is still on the platform because of 1 or 2 pixels… This DO NOT APPEND here… a perfect game…!

As I said, the game is very hard. At the beginning it is quite easy, but it is just to let you get some experience and skills… The more you continue into the levels and stages, the harder its becomes! All stages are beautifully designed and calculated to be smoothly played.

After all 3 stages of each levels, you will reach a boss, and all of them are hard to defeat, but all of them have a trick 😉
And after defeating a boss, you will reach a Bonus Stage, where you can win an extra life collecting letters M-A-G-I-C.

The game features a Save Game option what is great! and only use a very small percentage of the CD-i system memory, a Hall of Fame is also showing the 20 high scores and a Demo mode that activate himself after a few moment.

I also must talk about the the fact this is also a CD-i Ready title format. For the ones that still don’t know what is a CD-i Ready disc, let me explain.
This is a format designed by Philips in the mid 90’s and is easily recognizable as after inserting the disc into your CD-i player, a “Play Audio” besides the “Play CD-i”.
On this special type of CD-i, the CD-i data track is stored in pause sectors preceding the track 1. That way it’s possible to play a CD-i on any Audio-CD player, including your car CD player!

This game uses a Digital Video Cartridge (DVC), but it is just optional. What does it mean? It means you can play the game without a DVC, but you will not be able to listen the Sound FX of the game. Only the background music.

Another important point to talk about is the fact CD-i Emulator has been developed by one of the guys who worked on the game 😉

Tips & Tricks
This part is awesome! Tons and tons of cheat codes!

Level select:
To enable the level select, hold down button 2 on the title screen and press Up, Up, Down, Down, Right, Right, Left, Left.
You will also get options for invincibility and choose the number of lives (if invincibility is set as off).

Marvinvaders Mini-game:
To play the “Marvinvaders2 mini-game, hold down the button 2 on the title screen and press:
Up, Right, Down, Left, Up, Down, Left, Right.

How to defeat all boss:
Boss 1:
Go to the second level, shoot, avoid projectiles, jump and go down.
Again more times.

Boss 2:
Shoot the tentaculs until the bandage appear.
Don’t forget to avoid fish-bones going up, to left and right.

Boss 3:
Go up, stay on the border and shoot jumping to avoid missiles and bombs fragments.

Boss 4:
Go up as you can, shoot until the seal move buttock to shoot the snow ball.
Go down 2 levels back, center and go up again.
Beware of stalactites falling.

Boss 5:
Shoot on the string of the bell always moving from the left to the right to avoid the bird and the spider.

Boss 6:
You must shoot the head.
The most difficult is to destroy the arrows (2 shoots for 1).

Nudalities:
At the game over screen, hold the button 2, and input the following codes to show special animations. These codes must be entered before Marvin stops walking across the screen.

Animality 1 – Up, Right, Down, and Left.

Animality 2 – Up, Left, Down, and Right.

Fatality – Down, Right, Left, Left

Nudality 1 – Right, Right, Down, Left, Up, and Up.

Nudality 2 – Left, Left, Down, Right, Up, and Up.

Nudality 3 – Right, Left, Right, Left, Down, and Up.

Nudality 4 – Left, Right, Left, Right, Down, and Up.

Nudality 5 – Down, Down, Right, Up, Up, and Left.

Good Points:
– 1 player.
– Any addicted gamer will love this game, a must have in your collection!
– DVC optional (to get Specail FX).
– CD-i Ready disc playable on any Audio-CD player.
– Great music
– Lot of cheat codes.
– Easy character control.
– Beautiful graphics.
– Fully compatible with the latest version of CD-i Emulator.

Bad Points:
– Who dares…

EVULUATION:
Graphics 10/10
Music 10/10
Gameplay 10/10
TOTAL 10/10

Contact: omegalfa@theworldofcdi.com
Twitter: @omegalfapt

Written by omegalfa, © 10/04/2020