I love it when retro games are brought to current platforms. It makes life easier - for a couple bucks you can boot up these CD-i titles on PC (most likely all via DOS ports).
This time of year, Steam has deep sales - allowing you to snag some games for as little as $1!
Following up the consumer distributed "Bell Atlantic Info-Active Electronic Directory", a kindly dev named Jefferson Ogata brought to light another rare gem(!) in the Interactive Dreams Facebook group - a Bell Atlantic-branded kiosk demo centered around the Washington DC area - titled "Bell Atlantic InfoTravel: Washington, D.C.".
Take a good look CD-i collectors! You'll never see this one again :)
Much like the Info-Active Electronic Directory, the kiosk disc is a thorough, well-laid-out-flow of information that's a breeze to navigate. InfoTravel's multimedia (videos and voice-over commercials with hip-bouncin' stock music) capture the point-in-time with all it's nostalgia... well see for yourself. Kicking things off with an intro from Bell spokesperson James Earl Jones:
A few neat things in the video:
At 15:05, I spy Kramer hanging up on the wall!
At 15:28, here a disinterested Euro who sounds high on heroin promo Bardo bar!
At 22:40, calling the White House, I got a complaint or two to make!
At 25:30, The Philips Collection art museum.
I lost track of time while browsing through this multimedia disc, in the process recording almost 40mins of video. I'd say that's a good sign of a well-put together product. You'll also see in the video an event-based calendar which is an interesting thought, and presumably would have resulted in regularly-updated discs being sent out.
A few interesting interactions... You may notice this disc has options to:
Make number based selections from a remote.
Initiate a phone call(!).
Print!
The later two functions are the first time I've seen these thoughts demo'd and were a neat addition.
Another shoutout to our hero Jefferson Ogata for making this disc come to light and sharing it with us. Developers are the make-or-break for these obscure items to either be preserved forever, or shut away forever.
Preparing for the almost-inevitable rise of society's multimedia console future, Bell Atlantic released one heck-of-a-good info-directory!
This image is an asshole and won't center for me.
The Charm: A thorough and well put together reference for the areas of Washington DC, Maryland, and some other state I've never been to. The highlights here for me is the "showcase" section - poke around seating sections at the ballpark and follow the multimedia-Metro lines! Searching for names and places - querying ain't half bad!
Watch below as I take a journey testing out the disc's ability to look up important information and services:
The Fail: Not a lot in the way of sound and no motion picture or cartoons to accompany.
