Congrats, I'm giving you the gift of AIDS! Lucky you!
The video kicks off with a rad 90's intro of flashing colors then hops right into an endless quiz - but don't take my word for it - enjoy the exciting playback!
Bottoms up to Blazers, who I'd like to poz'itively thank for filling in this preservation hole with the last load he dropped.
A brand new batch of goodies has landed in my inbox, courtesy of Preserve CD-i's better half Blazers.
We're looking forward to sharing these with you!
A charming title that certainly falls into the rarer category, Gnomes is a unique multimedia title that harkens back to a time when folklore was embraced in children's media (Dark Crystal, Lord of the Rings).
The more naturalized style of art of Gnomes shines on the retro CD-i platform. The title allows the viewer to step-through the world of gnomes in a hand painted storyboard artwork world. In this manner, Gnomes is the exact kinda title I look forward to discovering on the CD-i.
The Charm
Special thanks to Blazers for seeing this release properly preserved!
~ PRESERVATION ALERT ~
A Dutch release of this title also exists, "De Kabouter" - if you own an original copy, please reach out to me about getting this properly dumped.
1) Caesars World of Boxing is a title released in the USA with serial number 310690186-2 (as well as in Europe with different serials, but that's not important here).
2) Ring codes are those little numbers and letters near the center of the disc hole, data side. Part of the Ring Code known as the Mastering Code can often give clues to the software revision of the disc.
Now that we those two facts established... two known mastering codes for Caesars World of boxing are known for USA releases:
I carved out a good 30 minutes to play Zelda's Adventure today for the first time. I found the kitsch of the title charming, but it will be a good while before I pick up the controller again to play this one.
However, the game is something of a hallmark release for the Philips CD-i due to being a Zelda title - and an infamous one at that. It's also has the top commanding CD-i game price on ebay - regularly selling for north of $700.
Other than ebay prices, what makes Z.A. feel different from the CDi releases of Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon is the lack of goofy cartoon cutscenes in exchange for live performance ones.
The title was released in Europe and Europe only. The closest thing to a USA release is a Red Label Demonstration Disc bearing a USA serial number of 310-690-229-2 - which is not uncommon on ebay. We're currently looking to acquire a dump of this version, or I'll just buy one eventually.
The game received two proper releases in Europe, both of which feature gameplay in English Language Only.
Your shipment has arrived - all these goodies I snatched up for you to enjoy. That's pretty rad ain't it? Dumps and scans will be coming - just for you...
The gems of the batch that warranted the lot buy:
It's easy to eye-wag your way through the more common looking titles onto the juicy stuff - but among the batch also has a small handful of rare regional variants - Portuguese Asterix, Italian serial 815 Voyeur (matches 810 dump), & similar.
MAJOR LOVE <3 & THANKS to The World of CDi's omegalfa for making this happen. Lots of local coordination and the pain of overseas shipping a big package is much appreciated! An international network has proven priceless in getting the rare variants preserved from all corners of the earth.
Bradley Fighting Vehicle is a helluva interesting CD-i title Blazers unearthed and was gracious enough to share with the unwashed masses. Read here about it on The World of CD-i.
The year was 1995, oil stocks were through the roof and BP had more money that sense. THANK DOG some of that money was put towards a rad CD-i release and decades later Blazers acquired a copy for us to enjoy.
Making the Grade has an American-enough looking front cover, with that trademark Philips strip on the bottom. However plastered with a couple stickers from UK, a UK phone number printed on the case, and a SONOPRESS ring code, this is no doubt a UK release - starring American actors in full-motion-video.
It starts off interesting enough, you're a new employee at BP, you have a rad secretary, and you're ready to hustle your way up the ladder, then... then... THEN... then my console crashes.
It seems that this title just doesn't play well with my American model Philips 910.
I can't wait to see how this title plays out - if you're out there - listening - someone record a video for us! It's the perfect way to kill time until global warming kills us all. Thanks BP.
Rom & scans here. Thanks Blazers! Enjoy all <3
Karaoke is a bit of a gray area with gaming preservation. By gaming console, Redump and No-Intro dat any kind of release. MAME seeks to preserve and emulate Karaoke more widely, as I very surface-level-understand.
Karaoke releases in general are usually CD+G format - Redbook audio tracks with "+G" graphics subchannel data that displays images (usually lyrics). VCD and even DVD-Video are common platform agnostic Karaoke formats as well.
Philips CD-i branded Karaoke discs I've crossed paths with thus far are CD-i Ready. Karaoke CD-i releases aren't super will documented, and as a video game archeologist who has tracked down countless rare / unknown releases for many systems - these CD-i Karaoke discs intrigue me.
There are at least a handful of Karaoke discs out of Sweden for example, but little documented as Swedish discs have proven tricky to track down in the past as my fellow redump comrades & I completed the preservation of PlayStation 1 Europe releases.
But the more well known / documented releases came out of the home of Philips, the Netherlands.
With the help of a Dutchie gentleman I was able to track down a good handful of the NL releases.
Among the releases is Karaoke Vol(ume) 1-4. Among them, I've found a couple variants - today I show off this one:
Titles like this are what I find straight up neat 'yo! Not only did the CD-i have real alpha cutting edge hardware systems like Bang&Oldson's massive TV entertainment system, but they released WIDESCREEN discs in the era of SD 4:3.
Now the first thing you'll notice about it is the words look really weird! It could be a foreign language because it has made-up funny sounding words like "uitgave van het". But I think these funny words are more likely an elaborate prank to make people think a language some created for laughs is real. I'll have to look more into it, but the words sound too goofy to be real ones.
Hundreds of years ago - back before the dawn of video games - people used to find entertainment through the means of Karaoke. When participating in Karaoke drunk people torture each other with their terrible singing voices to see who can withstand hearing "Don't Stop Believing" fumbled through a dozen times over the course of the night.
Among the Karaoke systems was iKTV by Tao (sometimes "KES Karaoke Station" or "KES Video Karaoke Player"):
Behold! The pride and joy of many fine trailer park residents.
So what makes iKTV so special, and why did it come to my attention? Someone named Fireball said we need to add them into Redump.org for god knows what reason.
This sucker plays CDs, CD-Gs, VCDs, DVDs?, Video CDs (unlikely).
Club iKTV 02, a VCD. Download here.
One day when my 'tism flaired up, I combed through all the different versions of the official iKTV site on archive.org to catalog every disc sold on their site, often branded with the iKTV logo. These were of course, all VCD (although some had a "CD Video" logo on them, that seems very unlikely).
Club KES
Pete Townshed is a name that some really old people might know. He played the harmonica in a band called the Guess Who?, got arrested for cp, but did you know he had a CD-i branded VCD release and an accompanying demo in CD-i Ready format?
[This is where I would normally post a video,
but since it's music, I'd probably end up
doing more time than Pete Townshend did.]
With the CD-i Ready demo you can jam out to the tracks on your audio CD player or enjoy some music videos in your CD-i system.
