CD-i Nintendo Games

I saw the avgn review on the gameplay, the controls are an absolute trainwreck

 

That's what happens when your controller is a fucking TV remote.

 

Basically. For some reason, someone thought this to be a good idea...

 

All memes aside, Faces of Evil had a fucking great soundtrack.

 

That is nice, yeah...

 

http://hardcoregaming101.net/zeldacdi/zeldacdi.htm

There's an interview with the people behind the Zelda CD-i games, and it's... pretty interesting.

 

"Some people complain it's impossible to avoid enemy projectiles without getting hit, resulting in repeated deaths. Not so! If you had read the booklet, you'd know that Link or Zelda's shield only become active if you stand still. That's right. Do nothing, and all those enemy axes, rocks and spears will simply bounce off. Once I started doing this, I found it possible to traverse stages without taking any damage - you must resist the temptation to constantly move.

Another complaint is the flying enemies, which people claim harass you relentlessly. Not so! If you stand still and continuously kill them (resulting in a lot of useful rupees), they will eventually stop. Between twenty to thirty need to be killed, but once done there are no flying enemies until you change stages. Furthermore, you can buy loaves of bread which will distract them, and you can also later acquire a bell which allows you to freeze them in mid-air (making them ripe for a quick, easy killing)."

Someone should have told The Game Grumps this...

 

Certainly would be interesting to do that. Something that calls attention to what we all remember well, but also redeeming itself in gameplay that you may come back to a few more times!

MY CAKES WILL BURN!!!!

All this time, nobody has done the joke of having a drive by shooting occur and show that it was Zelda inside the car who did it! Maybe have the window roll up after she says "Good!"

Seems like Philips put more money into music than anything else. The soundtrack to their Tetris game for the unit is also worth checking out (yet it's so unlike what one could expect to hear in a Tetris game).

I suppose for some gamers, it's fun not knowing what you're supposed to do in these cases.

 

Larry Bundy Jr once said that the console itself was decent, but the problem was that pretty much every game released for the system was lousy. It's also kind of sad that the CD-I apparently did sell around 1 million units, yet is consistently ranked as one of the lowest selling consoles of all time in listicles despite not even being in the top ten lowest selling consoles.

 

Seems like they just didn't know what to do with it. I used to see these demo'd at Service Merchandise thinking they were kinda cool, not knowing how crappy some of these titles were, but I thought it had potential.

 

"Gee, it sure is BORING around heeeere."

The CD-i games will always be funny to me, even if they're over a decade old when it comes to memes.

 

It's just very memorable lines!

This peace is what ALL true warriors strive for!

 

I recall discovering the CD-I through an infomercial that would run before Saturday morning cartoons. I'm working from memory, but I believe it involved a man and a HAL-9000 like computer talking about the meaning of life, and how it ultimately ties into the CD-I. The hardware includes a battery encased in a chip that will disable the system from working once it runs out of power, so I guess the meaning of life is that it's chaotic, fragile, and doesn't last very long. Rates feels.

 

Oh, it's this!



There was yet another infomercial made a few years later with a different scenario.


And while the "Video CD" thing didn't catch on in the US, it became something of a standard in Southeast Asia into the next century.


I recall CD-I units being used even in places like Kmart for a video demo thingy in their auto dept.

 

And since I was a dumb kid and really hadn't accepted the idea that video games could be bad (even though several regretful Blockbuster rentals told me otherwise), I wanted one. It says a lot about the quality of the CD-I when you can legitimately call it one of the worst 90s things to run video games (though it's probably unfair to hold it up to dedicated video game hardware) in the era that birthed the Jaguar and 32X.

 

The irony of the CD-i was that it was meant to cash in on the "Multimedia/Interactive" craze brought on by CD-Rom technology. Games weren't really what they were marketing these to, but ended up going where the money was sooner or later.

Radio Shack even had it's own version too!

 

In a way, the CD-I sums up what 90s video game developing was about; going hog wild over new technology that nobody really knows how to properly use and then fucking up and moving on ASAP, resulting in products which were mind-blowing for the time and painfully dated now. Remember when digitized live-action cutscenes were a thing? Or digitized sprites and audio? Or pre-rendered CGI? Or voxel-based 3D modeling?

 

Yeah, we all bought into this mess. It was quite a step from where they were in the 80's when you barely got 16 colors on screen at once.