cd-i – Page 10 – The World of CD-i

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!

Source:
Nostallgia (Brazilian Blog)
Sonic Scene

Thank you Topxicemu and good luck!

Our Open-Source responsible Topxicemu, is leaving The World of CD-i team.
Belgian but living in Canada, this CD-i addicted have to say good bye to us.
His job and new projects don’t let him focus into the CD-i scene as much as he would like to.
He was always working on the shadow but did some great work along the years since I meet him 15 years ago.
He is the responsible of the still not concluded “CD-i Repair Guide” in French. We worked together to increase the information on the guide. Some websites and forums share the pictures of the guide, with the original file we will add it on The World of CD-i translated to English.
During the year 2019 he was mostly giving support to our user’s hardware problems.

At The World of CD-i, we are now 6 in the team, I will share with CD-i Fan the Open-Source section.

We wish you the best for your new career!
Thank you Brother!
Stay safe!

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!

The Crayon Factory – Printable Painting Book

The Big Box version of The Crayon Factory included a 8 Crayola crayon set, and a painting book with the game’s characters and themes.
Thanks to Marco Parisio Java who sent to us the Italian Big Box version, we proudly invite you to download the PDF Painting Book and then, print it to let your children paint it just like in the 90’s!
16 draws ready to be print and paint!

You can download it right here:
The Crayon Factory – Painting Book

It is also available on The Crayon Factory page on the Download tab.

Watch Digital Video on CD-i and Video-CD under VLC player

Seventy7 from Preserve CD-i wrote and shared with us a very interesting guide that will let you quickly watch on a VLC player your Digital Video on CD-i & Video-CD discs.
To do that you will need to download Isobuster and VLC.

The guide is now available on our Downloads section in PDF format.

Website Improvement

The Word of CD-i as been improved in the right side menu.
Now you can select titles using different filters as:
– By the number of players for Games, Kids and multimedia as Head-to-Head or Alternatively.
– If a Digital Video Cartridge (DVC) is needed or optional.
– By Music or Movies that are Video-CD or Digital Video on CD-i.
– By catalogue number from each country code.

Also, from now on, when you use the search toolbar, beside the result, you will also get the cover or picture of what you are looking for, to help you define quicker what you need.

More changes will com during the year, we hope you will enjoy this website improvement!

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