Info*Travel* to the Kiosk!

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.

Link to scans and rom.

*Ring* *Ring* That's the future* of Multimedia calling!

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.

Thanks to Blazers for this loan out!

Scans and rom available for download here.

Bavaria Film

A neat interactive studio tour of Bavaria Film, a massive European film production studio.

In this program, you click around a map of the lot to find the different areas where films were made.

Scans and rom at archive.org

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

There is precious little time in this world, so I'd rather not have to do a blog post everytime a new video is uploaded to our channel.

To ensure you don't miss any fun playthroughs of multimedia etc. Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Enjoy fresh videos served up surprisingly somewhat regularly.

Demonstration Discs: Spotting the Real and the Fakes

Interactive Dreams took a pretty good stab at how to identify fake "Demonstration Disc"s, but I've had a hankering to do a guide with more pictures.

Behold, a real / official Philips CD-i Demonstration Disc.

White Label "Demonstration Disc"s are particularly vulnerable to faking, because A) There are known to be real / official Zelda ones and B) Blank, White Label CD-Rs are available to buy readily.

Print your own Zeldas and you too can become rich!

So how do we know what is real and what is fake?

Here's a look a a couple tell tale aspects of a real, official White Label Demonstration Disc.

Above: Unlike white label CD-Rs, Demonstration Disc labels don't extend all the way to the edges, leaving a silver ring at the center and the outside. Sometimes the center ring is slightly off-center even, which is fine.

Above: Near the ring codes, you'll find a very distinctive USA CD-i way-of-doing things. One long bar with two little square dots. I've seen many ring codes in my life, but none I remember with this pattern other than CD-i. Sometimes there will be additional text such as "MADE IN USA" and/or a random letter stamped as a ring code in addition to the main mastering code style you see above.

Additionally, you'll notice that the above color of the data side is a clean silvery color, whereas CD-Rs usually have an aqua or rainbow color:

Distinctive CD-R data side color.

------------------------------QUIZ------------------------------

Here's a question you won't find in 3rd Degree, which of the following sets of discs off eBay are real and fake?

Set A

Set B

------------------------------ANSWERS------------------------------

Set A is fake.

Set B is real.

The giveaway, is the distinctive silver rings in the center and outside of the disc label.

------------------------------Scammed? Fight back!------------------------------

Have you been scammed on ebay? Report the seller and start a refund. You will get your money back. If you do not, you're just setting up another person to be scammed and are as bad as the scammer yourself. Sending pictures of the CD-R side to ebay support and sharing this article with the ebay support should be a reasonable enough evidence.

Antonio Vega: Oceano De Sol

Would you invite Antonio into your hole sol after a drink of scotch?

Antonio Vega is a Spanish musician. I haven't heard of him before but he's got a Wikipedia page translated in 8 different languages going for him, so there's that.

So what is there to say about this neat little obscure gem? The Scotch commercial has a hell of a catchy jingle with a lovely lady that likes to do hair whips. See it for yourself:

Track 2 contains a truncated, audio-only version of the Track 1 promo video / interview.

Another one from the Blazers collection. Scans available on archive.org.

The Memory Works For Names And Faces

"The Memory Works For Names And Faces" has a pretty self-explanatory title. It's a memory specifically geared towards remembering peoples' names and matching them to faces and vice-versa.

It serves its purpose well. If I needed to remember names and/or faces, well I'd certainly use it.

The Charm: What makes the release neat other than it's intended purpose is the fun animations in the CDi-signature style - you know - Zelda - squadallah! Granted, the game isn't loaded with them, and you'll only find them in one of the sections ("Name & Face Mnemonics") - but they're in there! And heck that's pretty rad in its own right. Now mnemonics are devices where we come up with silly visual images - and it delivers:

This lady does not fuck around.

What happens if you mess around with the lady above her.

Oy vey, look at that schnoz!

Hey stop picking on people with big noses!

Take acid, become the may queen.

The Fail: I wish there were more interactivity in the quiz-your-knowledge scenarios. We're supposed to "grab a pen and paper" instead of some in-game quiz functionality. A real lost opportunity for the devs. But all things considered, of the two I'd rather have the neat-o animations!

Watch the playthrough below, the animations start at 10:43.

Worth a note: The packaging is interesting and well put together. Not only do you get a pamphlet style-book with it, but the in-case booklet has color and is nicely put together for it's own purpose. Between the pamphlet and the jewelcase, I'm not seeing a barcode - we have it on authority that a big box exists for the release as well.

Scans are available on Archive.org. Rom preserved with Redump.org. Another fine gem from the Blazers collection.