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Console Debate #25 CD-i


fox

How do you rate CD-i?  

38 members have voted

  1. 1. How do you rate CD-i?

    • 10/10 GOAT. Greatest console of all time.
      0
    • 9/10 Bad@$$. One of the best.
      0
    • 8/10 Exceptional. Everyone should play it.
      0
    • 7/10 Superior. More than a few games you like.
      0
    • 6/10 Good. You might occasionally enjoy playing it.
    • 5/10 Average. Smack dab in the middle.
    • 4/10 Mediocre. Not something you will go out of your way to play.
    • 3/10 Inferior. There are better alternatives to this.
    • 2/10 Poor. Barely worth turning on.
    • 1/10 Trash. No redeeming features.
      0
    • Haven’t played, but interested.
    • No interest in it.

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  • Poll closed on 05/07/2021 at 07:00 AM

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2 hours ago, Koopa64 said:

I've been a CD-i owner for a grand total of two days now. I've tried a few games including Hotel Mario and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. Honestly they're not terrible games, pretty good actually. Zelda has a fair bit of challenge to it, but it's nothing compared to the worst examples on the NES like Battletoads.

I haven't played the CD-i Zelda games but they seem challenging based on clunky design so hard in a bad way.

 

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First time so far that I've selected "no interest."  Technically I'm always at least a little interested in a console if it's gen 2 - 5, but this one, I think, takes the qualifying cake for being required to fall into my lap for a song and dance in order for me to own one.  If I knew someone who had one I'd certainly give it try though...

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Wow lots of opinions formed on something from perception vs actual ownership...not cool.

Zelda Wand of Gamelon/Link Faces of Evil isn't clunky.  It largely moves and plays like Zelda II, clearly the designers went in that direction for whatever reason as old Zelda 1 where it flips per screen would have worked too.  The challenge in those games is the lack of health/restorative drops and where it kicks you back to when you run out of the few lives you get, it's just challenging, but not in a sadistic badly made game way.

Again though, it's rough taking pot shots at this as it was never intended to be a console, it just as a large bid of side action also handled some games.  There are some lackluster games, some even steaming piles too, who doesn't right?  But as far as A-B tier games go, it has enough to keep a normal person more than amused.  IF you're some rabid gamer who like crack needs more crack and more fixes each few days, week, you'll run out sooner than later definitely as the library just isn't massive.  The games that played to the strengths worked quite well, some even fairly well hid the load times too which was nice.

Would I recommend owning one now though?  Maybe, but definitely not a yes or a no.  I'd pivot it off of owning one that doesn't have any automatic loading mechanisms as the stuff in that era was piss poorly made by most makers.  I'd also limit it further getting a model with the DVI cart built in, I've seen they can get expensive and some really good stuff uses it.  Also I'd base it on getting a new battery put in, better yet and easily replaced battery coin slot holder (similar to the dreamcast mod.)  But if any of that is a pain in the ass, I'd suggest emulation if that's up to par, I've never looked.  The system has some really good games, some of them being upgraded nicely done ports from other areas too, yet it has some unique games that are as an owner a must pick up to really slug it out with.  Sure you could skip it and not be worse for wear, but it has some stuff that's quite nice.

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12 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Wow lots of opinions formed on something from perception vs actual ownership...not cool.

 

I suspect there's a lot of people in here who have never played a real CD-i, or the Zeldas and Mario game for it. I can confirm your thoughts on Zelda Wand of Gamelon / Link The Faces of Evil. Not clunky at all, it's no worse off than Zelda II NES in many ways. In fact I'd say it's a bit more forgiving, the combat in Zelda II is beyond hard.

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Editorials Team · Posted

@Tanooki You gave the Wii U a 2 and you gave the CDi a 6.  I'll never play either one, so humor me:

Is the CDi library significantly better than the Wii U library, and how confident are you that you can defend that position?

I only press the issue since several individuals seem bamboozled by everyone else shitting all over this waste of space curiosity piece.

And how much are two second-rate Zelda II knockoffs worth in sizing up a console's library anyway?  Surely not more than a point's worth...

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8 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

@Tanooki You gave the Wii U a 2 and you gave the CDi a 6.  I'll never play either one, so humor me:

Is the CDi library significantly better than the Wii U library, and how confident are you that you can defend that position?

I only press the issue since several individuals seem bamboozled by everyone else shitting all over this waste of space curiosity piece.

And how much are two second-rate Zelda II knockoffs worth in sizing up a console's library anyway?  Surely not more than a points worth...

OMG... the Wii U's library is 100X better than the CDI's library.  I have both systems.

Edited by tbone3969
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2 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

@Tanooki You gave the Wii U a 2 and you gave the CDi a 6.  I'll never play either one, so humor me:

Is the CDi library significantly better than the Wii U library, and how confident are you that you can defend that position?

I only press the issue since several individuals seem bamboozled by everyone else shitting all over this waste of space curiosity piece.

And how much are two second-rate Zelda II knockoffs worth in sizing up a console's library anyway?  Surely not more than a point's worth...

If I were to rate the WiiU based on what remains of the games stuck on there that have not been wisely put on 3DS and Switch, then CDi is better.  If I'm not allowed to, it's kind of hard to ever say that random games, even good ones, would tend to beat 1st party Nintendo releases.

Variety wise sure, but quality, nope.  It is a curiosity piece most definitely, and some people just seem to give it false praise over that very point, far more crap on it for the same point too.  I just get tired of seeing it crapped on for being one, an actual console, and two, held to that same standard with the usual cheap digs taken by people who just haven't owned one, or by some means invested some real hours into it.  It does have some solid variety and a good many fun games, but objectively, I can't say it has better games, but then it also doesn't have actual Nintendo games either, first party.  You remove that single factor from the WiiU library, then the CDi wins on games.

You did get me curious so I just fired up the wiki.  Pretty sure this is what I used to have:

Burn Cycle, Caesars World of Boxing, Chaos Control, Dragon's Lair, Escape From Cyber City, Hotel Mario, Lil Divil, Link Faces of Evil, Lords of the Rising Sun, Namco Museum(Arcade Classics), Mutant Rampage Body Slam, Pinball, Space Ace, Tetris, Voyeur.

I know I had my hands on some others before I liked, just never bought them (SNES came first to me still), 7th Guest, Dragon's Lair II, Inca, Kether, Lemmings, both the MadDog McCree games, Flashback, Rise of the Robots, maybe a couple others.  Either way I can say none of these were poor games, or anything worse than average.

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3 hours ago, Koopa64 said:

the combat in Zelda II is beyond hard.

What!?!?!  You've got like up thrust, down thrust and two forward thrusts (up and down) and d-pad up and down to raise or lower your shield to block.  Zelda II's combat is ahead of it's time for the era and pretty bad-ass.  I loved it back in the day and I love it now.  One of the two of us is on crazy pills, and I don't think it's me...

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14 hours ago, mbd39 said:

I haven't played the CD-i Zelda games but they seem challenging based on clunky design so hard in a bad way.

Yeahh, but it's in a somewhat inoffensive way. Like, the CD-i Zeldas aren't frustratingly bad, they are bad but in a mostly entertaining way. The clunky design manifests itself mostly in awful and misleading hit detection, all of which can be adjusted for when you keep it in mind.
Though they model themselves after Zelda II, they effectively play out more like adventure games of the time (ie. go to this area to acquire this item, go to another area and use it to gain access to a new place, and so on), and while that part isn't amazingly entertaining, it's not excruciatingly bad either. The game beautifully sprinkles the nightmarish animated videos here and there throughout the game which makes it consistently entertaining in an unintended way.

Compare Hotel Mario which is just an absurdly long winded, repetitive and boring game, with much longer distance between each video clip. You're better off just watching them in sequence on YouTube.

8 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

And how much are two second-rate Zelda II knockoffs worth in sizing up a console's library anyway?  Surely not more than a point's worth...

Definitely the reason I gave it 3/10 over 2/10

Edited by Sumez
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14 hours ago, Tanooki said:

If I were to rate the WiiU based on what remains of the games stuck on there that have not been wisely put on 3DS and Switch, then CDi is better.  If I'm not allowed to, it's kind of hard to ever say that random games, even good ones, would tend to beat 1st party Nintendo releases.

Variety wise sure, but quality, nope.  It is a curiosity piece most definitely, and some people just seem to give it false praise over that very point, far more crap on it for the same point too.  I just get tired of seeing it crapped on for being one, an actual console, and two, held to that same standard with the usual cheap digs taken by people who just haven't owned one, or by some means invested some real hours into it.  It does have some solid variety and a good many fun games, but objectively, I can't say it has better games, but then it also doesn't have actual Nintendo games either, first party.  You remove that single factor from the WiiU library, then the CDi wins on games.

You did get me curious so I just fired up the wiki.  Pretty sure this is what I used to have:

Burn Cycle, Caesars World of Boxing, Chaos Control, Dragon's Lair, Escape From Cyber City, Hotel Mario, Lil Divil, Link Faces of Evil, Lords of the Rising Sun, Namco Museum(Arcade Classics), Mutant Rampage Body Slam, Pinball, Space Ace, Tetris, Voyeur.

I know I had my hands on some others before I liked, just never bought them (SNES came first to me still), 7th Guest, Dragon's Lair II, Inca, Kether, Lemmings, both the MadDog McCree games, Flashback, Rise of the Robots, maybe a couple others.  Either way I can say none of these were poor games, or anything worse than average.

Of the games you mentioned, which are exclusive to the CD-I? According to your own standard you use as a flaw of the Wii-U, the ports of games should not count towards the score, such as 7th Guest, Lemmings, Tetris, Namco Museum, etc. 

How do those games fare against games like Zombi-U, Star Fox Guard, Kirby's rainbow curse, Nintendoland, Funky Barn, and a few more titles I feel are pretty solid?

That being said, for all the hate, Hotel Mario looks like a blast from the videos I've seen. The Zelda titles look pretty subpar, though, like worse versions of Wonderboy.

All together, I have little to no interest in playing CD-i.

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Not that I'll ever get to go near one in a million years but I kinda find the 90s luxury console movement pretty fascinating.  As well as any sort of "non-video game" stuff on a video game console (though I imagine the idea was for these to be what, a hybrid multimedia sort of deal and just so happens to be able to do video games, maybe?) I mean imagine being rich enough back then to actually take the plunge on one of these...though it'd be cheaper in most cases just to get all of the then "big three" (NES/GEN/SNES).  Sure they may have been "just baby's toys" but I think we all know which gets the most attention in terms of history/nostagia.

I guess with the help of the Mega Everdrive Pro I can at least protake in the Sega CD stuff...though that was an add-on, not a console.

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Gave it a 6.

I would have voted 5, but the console is too interesting for just being "smack middle and nothing else to say".

Not that it's really good, but I would love to spend just an afternoon or even a full day just trying every game and piece of software they released just to satisfy my curiosity.

A store downtown Montreal had kiosks with both the 3DO (which I owned, still own and still enjoy today) and a CD-i so I was well aware of these 2 machines in their day. 

If I'm honest, even in 1994 I knew this was bad, no one ever saw the poorly acted FMVs and thought "Wow, this is better than Donkey Kong Country". The LD games like Dragon's Lair is really the only strong selling point. Every other type of game is done better on the popular consoles.

To this day I still wonder who did the market research on these types of consoles. Who thought an interactive disc about flowers or animals would captivate the mainstream audiences? 

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On 4/25/2021 at 3:54 PM, Kguillemette said:

Of the games you mentioned, which are exclusive to the CD-I? According to your own standard you use as a flaw of the Wii-U, the ports of games should not count towards the score, such as 7th Guest, Lemmings, Tetris, Namco Museum, etc. 

How do those games fare against games like Zombi-U, Star Fox Guard, Kirby's rainbow curse, Nintendoland, Funky Barn, and a few more titles I feel are pretty solid?

That being said, for all the hate, Hotel Mario looks like a blast from the videos I've seen. The Zelda titles look pretty subpar, though, like worse versions of Wonderboy.

All together, I have little to no interest in playing CD-i.

Of those the 3 Nintendo games of which a 4th is broken bad, pinball, caesars world of boxing, kether, inca 1 and 2(had a sequel), mutant rampage body slam, escape from cyber city, and I think voyeur.  Mind you there were others, but can't speak to quality, and probably not worth researching either. 😄  And yeah ported stuff isn't uniquely trapped to it, so they shouldn't count other than by name at best.  Shame too, there were some that only after it failed Philips popped on PC like Burn Cycle, Lil Divil, and Chaos Control.

As far as the quality of the unique games, I'd think some would hit par with those WiiU stuck games, others surely wouldn't, but tastes vary.

And you're right about Hotel Mario, it is, but other than the so broken it can't handle music+sound fx at the same time Zelda's Adventure, the other two are pretty smooth and fun to play as they parrot Zelda 2 fairly well.  I have little interest now in playing CDi, but it's the price and hardware barrier more than lack of fun to bother with.  If someone would care enough to properly emulate it, I'd go ISO fishing.

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Is this similar to how the GBA library is on par with the SNES one? 😄 

Seriously, it's incredibly hard to find one game - one game on the CD-i - that isn't really bad and borderline broken by any reasonable measure. And if you rule out the Zelda ones, it's probably impossible.

Games like Burn Cycle, Kether and Mutant Rampage makes CT Special Forces look like a run'n'gun masterpiece in comparison.

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On 4/24/2021 at 11:02 PM, Dr. Morbis said:

What!?!?!  You've got like up thrust, down thrust and two forward thrusts (up and down) and d-pad up and down to raise or lower your shield to block.  Zelda II's combat is ahead of it's time for the era and pretty bad-ass.  I loved it back in the day and I love it now.  One of the two of us is on crazy pills, and I don't think it's me...

Just because there’s a lot of moves doesn’t mean it’s easy. Zelda II is one of the hardest NES games I’ve ever played. It’s the sort of game where you either get the feel for the combat or you don’t, I just can’t. Zelda 1 is a million times easier. 

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50 minutes ago, Sumez said:

Zelda 1 is a challenging game, I'm not sure I'd say it's easier than the second. I definitely have a notably harder time with it, especially if I don't get the ring as early as possible.

In my opinion, the challenge of Zelda 1 wasn't the combat, though blue wizrobes can kick your ass real hard if you let your guard down. The challenge was just figuring out where to go. It took me years as a kid to find the entrance to Level 7, for example. I had to burn down every tree and bomb every rock wall until I finally found everything I needed.

I think the combat in Zelda 2 is far more challenging, but navigating the game itself is much more straightforward.

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Oh I'd definitely say Zelda II is by far the harder of the two.  As said above your post there sumez, you either get used to the control or you do not, it was kind of a hot-cold situation game.  But that aside, if anything makes one easier than the other, hearts, or lack there of.  Zelda II has no common restorative at all.  Very rarely placed random fairies in dungeons or more so a little on the overworld.  You had to first get far enough to find, then earn LIFE, and then rank it up too.  Yet it still was tied to a limited shared pool of MP so you couldn't use it much at all.  There was no room before the boss to spam the hands to get hearts, or an ability to carry a few bottles of juice like SNES had just after.  The game was hard, had long painful runs in places, etc.

Also not sure what the dig about "Games like Burn Cycle, Kether and Mutant Rampage makes CT Special Forces look like a run'n'gun masterpiece in comparison." this was about, but it's fairly not accurate or fair... at the least with Mutant Rampage.  I had a lot of fun with that one, it was kind of like a console smaller version of Mutation Nation on neo-geo in some ways mixed with Final Fight.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/25/2021 at 3:48 AM, Reed Rothchild said:

Every other console library.

The N64 and Wii U took a lot of shots in these debates for their library sizes.  Both are absolute powerhouses in comparison to the CDi.

How about these:

Game King

Game King III

Watara Supervision

Super A'Can

N64DD

MiWi

Vii

Liko 

And the list keeps growing, I could do this all night. 

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Editorials Team · Posted

@fcgamer Feel free to vote in this poll, and then rationalize to everyone why you gave the CDi a higher score than SNES.

You definitely won't come off as a contrarian troll.

And we're discussing real consoles that are getting dedicated threads from Fox.  Not whatever bootleg Chinese bullshit that no one cares about.

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7 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

@fcgamer Feel free to vote in this poll, and then rationalize to everyone why you gave the CDi a higher score than SNES.

You definitely won't come off as a contrarian troll.

And we're discussing real consoles that are getting dedicated threads from Fox.  Not whatever bootleg Chinese bullshit that no one cares about.

Well actually you're wrong, as usual. I voted that I never played it, though would be interested in trying it. Philips is a Dutch company; one of my buddies over there mentioned that there are actually some good games on the machine. Similarly though, he mentioned that it made a lot more appearances as a media player, in business meetings and stuff, so I think @Tanookiis spot in with his fair analysis of the machine.

I've held my opinion about the SNES for years, it's one of those sad realities that grew over time. After NES, N64 would have my vote, in terms of Nintendo home consoles.

SNES is eye candy, well the games are. They bring nothing new to the table since NES times. The machines didn't age well, with a huge fail rate imo, and the awful yellowing of the plastic.

And what about the games themselves? Have you looked at that library closely? In terms of shovelware and crap, it's essentially a predecessor to the Wii. 1500-1700 games, what part of that is actually good? 5%? 6%?

it seems that a lot of folks agree with this sentiment as well. SFC games are a very very hard sale, even for decent / good titles, no one wants them even if being sold for dirt cheap. Sega MD gets much better prices and has much better demand.

Finally about the other comments, leave your ethnic prejudice crap at the door, please. First off, n64DD is Japanese, and it's an official Nintendo product.

With Liko, and Super A'can, those are original gaming machines, with their own original libraries of games licensed by gaming companies. One of them even got licensed by a baseball team. So they're not bootleg by any means, and they're also Taiwanense machines, not Chinese.

Watara was from HK but had a worldwide presence back in the day, again with a full library of original, licensed games.

The Game Kings, MiWi, and Vii are the only ones on that list that have any semblance of bootleg, and ironically enough those are the only ones on the list that are truly Chinese-made. The games are generally derivative, but still original to a degree.

finally though, just because you personally don't care about these machines doesn't mean that others don't. A lot of people collect game king and watara, and I'd reckon that by now the lions share of acan games are sitting in collections abroad, outside of the country where the machine was made.

Learn to think a bit before spouting off on things you dont know about, and as mentioned earlier, I will call out your prejudice views when I see them.

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