The line between the best CD-i games and the worst CD-i games is a fine one. While there might not be any real killer app for this strange multimedia/education/gaming console, there are a couple of games worth checking out if you ever come across a Philips CD-i in the wild. Let’s take a look at a couple of “winners” in today’s list!
- . NFL Instant Replay
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NFL Instant Replay is a strange “video game” with video game in heavy quotations. Still, the game probably does the best to show off what the Philips CD-i was all about and what it could do that other consoles couldn’t (at the time). Essentially, NFL Instant Replay is quiz game that’s created out of full motion video.
You play as an NFL referee in training and are tasked with answering questions about a given play that is shown. The game features 300 video clips from various NFL games making it a unique piece of NFL history. Once the video of a play ends you are tasked with picking one out of the four given options, with only one being correct.
NFL fans will probably really enjoy this game and it would hold up just as well today as it would have back in the day. You can also really learn about the details and gain a better respect for the NFL referee. There are a lot of options to choose from and it makes for a pretty fun time, especially with a group of friends. NFL Instant Replay is the closest the CD-i has to a killer app. The NFL would do well to re-release a game like this for fun on mobile devices!
- . Hotel Mario
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Nintendo and Philips partnered after the big N dropped Sony from helping them create their CD add-on to the SNES. The Philips deal also fell through when Nintendo decided to stick with cartridges. Buy unlike Sony, Philips walked away from the deal with the rights to a couple of huge Nintendo properties. One of these was Mario!
Philips had two games in development without Nintendo involvement. One was a traditional sidescroller that used Super Mario World assets that never released and the other was Hotel Mario. Taking Mario and sticking him in a puzzle game had been done before and the plumber was known to experiment with other jobs, but Hotel Mario was unique.
It featured Mario going on vacation and checking into a hotel that has been overrun his all his enemies. You guide Mario and defeat all the enemies using elevators and doors to move about the floors on the single-screen stage. It’s actually a decent concept but one that is let down with the random nature on enemy spawns and the repetition that felt more at home in the early arcade and NES days.
- . Burn Cycle
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The closest thing that CD-i has to a killer app, Burn Cycle actually helped to sell the machine to a lot of people with its unique promise. This point-and-click adventure uses FMV to tell a crazy cyberpunk story about a hacker who gets a computer virus implanted into his head.
You have a real two-hour countdown until the virus kills you and you must travel your world and the virtual world in order to find a way to stop it and find out who put it in your and why. The game won the “Best CD-i Game” award in 1994 and most outlets reviewed it favorably stating it was the first game to show off the potential the CD-i had as a console.
If there was a single CD-i title that should get some sort of re-release for modern consoles and computers, Burn Cycle would be it. It might not look like much in 2024 but if you were around in 1994 and cutting edge meant Super Mario World and Sonic The Hedgehog type games, Burn Cycle would have blown your mind to see on the same shelf.
- . Lucky Luke
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Lucky Luke is a strange game from a strange series. Originating in Belgium, Lucky Luke is a popular cartoon character that lives in the wild west of America. It’s been around since the 40s and is still going strong in comic format today. In that time a lot of video games were released with the most notable coming on the the original PlayStation.
The Philips CD-i got it’s own Lucky Luke game that actually holds up pretty well on all fronts. This side-scroller action game is a lot of fun with bright and colorful visuals and a slick CD soundtrack to boot. Sprites are large and the action is fun with a very Sunset Rider sort of feel to the core gameplay.
Controls are a pain mostly due to the dang CD-i remote, but Lucky Luke is still a fun western romp, especially if you have a traditional CD-i game controller. The game might feel a little slow at times and enemy AI can feel cheap, but for the CD-i this is a true hidden gem.
- . Tetris
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Look, it’s Tetris. What can really be said about the worlds greatest puzzle game that hasn’t already been said. Nothing. Still, the version on the CD-i is pretty cool. While it’s about as bare-bones as Tetris can get it’s also the most unique in style and feel.
Instead of innovating the Tetris formula, the game simply adds full-motion video behind the play-field alongside come super chill folk/spirit music. This is one of the most relaxing video games you can play on any console. Shame the actual Tetris is super basic and relegated to a sliver of screen real estate, but what can you do.
- . Pac-Panic
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It’s strange to see a major license see some love on the CD-i. Pac-Man is a household name and has survived the transition from arcade classic to puzzle and even into 3D to great success. Pac-Panic might seem like a special title developed only for the CD-i, but in reality it’s simply a port of the SNES and Genesis puzzle game Pac-Attack.
We have no idea why the name was changed to Pac-Panic, but we have a feeling that it was meant to make it seem like the Philips CD-i had its very own exclusive Pac-Man title. Clearly this didn’t work and while not a great puzzle game by any means, it was well above most of the trash that was released on the CD-i.
Pac-Panic is essentially a Tetris/Puyo clone. It’s a fun enough game but does nothing to show the value or power of the Philips CD-i. As user SoshiTheYoshi said: “this is the best CD-i game. And even then, there are better versions of Pac-Attack”
- . Link: The Faces of Evil / Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon
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The other Nintendo series that Philips had the rights to play with. The Zelda series got three non-canon games released on the CD-i with Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon being built on the same engine and released on the same day. The games today are best known for their insane animated cut-scenes that live on as memes decades later.
Gameplay takes the form of Links Adventure with standard side-scrolling action. The issue if that is doesn’t work well because the team had no idea how to design a video game as they coded the game to work on top of painted backgrounds. This means you never know what is a platform and what isn’t because there is no clear separation like in every other game.
It should be noted that there is no Master Sword in the series with Link wielding the Smart Sword. This was a programing trick that made it so that you can’t harm or kill any character the game deemed friendly. While not great the CD-i lacks more traditional action games and for those that it does have, these two are probably the best. Some of the music is actually fire though.
- . Ultra CD-i Soccer
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Most people don’t even know that the CD-i got a soccer game. Less people know that it actually got two separate soccer games with Ultra CD-i Soccer being the better title. The game is what amounts to a clone of the legendary Sensible Soccer and plays pretty well, for the most part.
What’s interesting here is that this is one of the very last releases for the CD-i, releasing sometime in 1997 during the height of the PlayStation and Nintendo 64! Ultra CD-i Soccer didn’t feel very ultra and about a generation behind everything that was coming out at the time. At least it was a competent game and you could have some fun with it if you liked old-school soccer titles.
- . Atlantis: The Last Resort
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An FPS is the last thing you would expect to see on the Philips CD-i. The console simply wasn’t built to handle that type of 3D title. The developers of Atlantis: The Last Resort didn’t get the memo on this and decided to make one anyways.
The funny thing is that Atlantis: The Last Resort isn’t the worst. Sure, it isn’t anywhere close to being a DOOM killer, but it does hold it’s own with so many cheap DOOM clones that released on the PC/DOS during the same time. We consider it outdated yet still impressive for the console.
In reality this is more Wolf 3D than DOOM, something old even by the standards of the day as Quake was already around, but it’s impressive to see the CD-i get its own FPS as most people figured it never had to power to render one.
- . Escape From Cyber City
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Escape From Cyber City is what happens when you release a light-gun title on a console that doesn’t feature a light-gun peripheral. Based on an arcade game Freedom Fighter which used footage from the Anime Galaxy Express 999, Escape From Cyber City is a hodgepodge of media that could never be made today.
This is a short game, taking on a couple of minutes once you understand the patterns and wrangle your fingers to move that infernal CD-i remote, Escape From Cyber City is just plain weird. Most people who played the title never even got to the end and there is little chance that this one will ever see a re-release to remaster because of the rights and just how weird it was.
It’s really only on this list because as far as we can tell this is the only traditional anime video game to release on the CD-i at a time when anime in any form was pretty rare. It’s also rendered in full-screen which is pretty impressive. Fun Fact: there were lots of light-gun games on CD-i and they all stunk.
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