CD-i Demonstration Discs, Etc ~ Photo Dumping Ground

Nothing particularly incredible here. Just posting a bunch of Demonstration photos for blogger archiving purposes.








 

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Preservation Loan #008

 Another fat batch of goodness comes courtesy of our dear friend at The World of CDi, omegalfa. Dozens of undumped discs in this batch, with UnlockerPT heading the dumping / datting effort!








Tons and tons of rare multimedia in here! Arte Rupestre, Divination, Japanese Gifts to Behold, Triumph of the Baroque, and on and on.

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Preservation Loan #007

Another fine batch of CD-i titles finds its way temporarily into my clutches via Blazers, the other half of the CD-i preservation godhead.

 


Among the batch is the cool baby smoking the cigarette (the baby is waaay cooler than you'll ever be, admit it), SOLAR CRUSADE the super expensive late game release in the CDi catalog, a fistful of other Euro exclusive games - Wimbledon Challenge, Whack A Bubble, Magic Eraser, No Problem All The Fun Of the Fair, Tetsou Gaiden, as well as a handful of jewelcase editions of USA titles that were also released on longbox (as part of a research experiment to find USA software revisions), Alice In Wonderland (just another game title we needed to cross off the USA games miss list), and the retail version of CD-i-branded VCD release "Wings Over the Gulf" (which we've confirmed matches the white label demonstration disc release).

This batch touches on a few of the milestones we should be coming up to in the next few months:

  1. Finishing dumping Euro exclusive game titles!
  2. Finishing dumping USA games!
  3. Deep research on USA Longbox vs USA Jewelcase revision hunting!
As a result, I see this batch as Part #1 of a targeted mission to specifically accomplish these HUGE preservation milestone/goals.

C-ditabac: Faits et Méfaits du Tabac (cool baby cd)
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Preservation Loan #006

Courtesy of the legendary omegalfa and the premiere source of CD-i knowledge - The World of CD-i -  our Portuguese chapter of Preserve CD-i! has been loaned a massive tower of games to dump! UnlockerPT took on the massive workload of properly dumping, capturing ring code / barcode / serial numbers, and submitting the info to redump.org ~ with his hard work, the games were dumped in a day!








Of particular / undumped interest to me is a handful of Iberoamerica-region variants, an Italian Link: The Faces of Evil, verifying the Euro English language release, Archeon CD-i Quiz, a good chunk of 690-USA style serial Euro releases, and undumped serial variants.

Europe is always tricky for variant hunting due to the many serials. So it is extremely helpful to have a large batch of games to mine through to cross these serials off the needs list. It helps us discover new versions as well as confirm cross-serial verifications.

Thanks again to omegalfa and UnlockerPT for preserving these titles until humanity manages to extinct itself 💖

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CDI Karaoke Japan, Done

Well it's been a short, tiring journey but the CDI Karaoke Japan set has finally run its preservation course. 

Out of 172 discs, 10 were deemed unable to be properly dumped. Off they were shipped, to the ever-helpful savior of discs - superg - and his beastly, industrial grade resurfacer.


If this can't save your fucked up disc, nothing can.

Through the other side of the tunnel, 3 discs were saved. Leaving 7 imperfect dumps in the end. The remaining discs seem to have some kind or another of label damage, so they've been uploaded in best-possible-dump along with the others.

Enjoy! Nyuu ~~!


Thanks superg & Blazers.

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Unlicensed, USA

 "Unlicensed" is a term in the video game world broadly meaning releases unsanctioned by the system's parent company. GameShark and Action Replay come to mind.

However a handful of independent game publishes over the years have taken to self-releasing games. On many consoles, playing such games requires hacking the hardware - or other trickery. However since CD-i has no inherent built-in detection of unofficial games (other than a quirky filesystem), the unlicensed titles released for the CD-i play out-of-the-box. Very convenient! ... if only you could find them.

You see over the years, the handful of unlicensed CD-i titles have fallen into obscurity in terms of availability. Frog Feast for example was limited to run of 50 CD-i discs (ported and released more broadly for other consoles). Frog Feast was released by OlderGames, while all the other unlicensed CD-i titles were released by OlderGames & Good Deal Games - titles including: Go, Go: Special Edition, Space Ranger, Jack Sprite Vs The Crimson Ghost, and Plunderball.

Recently, The World Of CD-i member alphavilleCDi was kind enough to dump their original copy of Frog Feast for us all to enjoy.


Recently, Space Ranger and Jack Sprite Vs The Crimson Ghost are available as well!


Go: Special Edition has been available sometime in the Redump.org Romset. This is the title that brought Blazers and I together many months ago! Apparently sourced from an official USA preproduction disc, since it has matching hashes to it.


For all of your who like plundering balls, have at it!


One more oddity stands out in the quest for info regarding CD-i Unlicensed:


While this version of Go is listed as SOLD OUT on the Good Deal Games site, Bas of Interactive Dreams says it was never released. Since the hash of a preproduction CD-i version of Go matches the Go: Special Edition, it seems unlikely another unlicensed English build would exist.

Special thanks to The World of CD-i for doing their part in disc preservation! Cheers to Blazers for Plunderball!

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Preservation Loan #005

Holy cow, what a beautiful sight!  Another rich batch of goodies from the godfather of CD-i himself, Blazers.


Well there's a lot to unpack in this photo, let's chat! First and foremost we have a plethora of Japanese releases, including the neat as heck Japan exclusive Horoscope:


You might also notice the Yuki Saito "Anniversary" CD-i Ready disc - another Japanese exclusive.

Additionally a big handful of rare Euro goodies! Shaolin's Road, Alfapet, and Foqus (which has a mastering quirk I'm still exploring how to get a proper dump out of).

Plunderball, oh my! (more on that soon). Very soon.

And right on top, one of the rarest Tandy VIS titles - now preserved!

I took cover scans of most everything, so they will eventually make their way up there too when my busy busy with work life slows down.

All praise to Blazers, ramen. Thank you for culturally appropriating all of Japan's CD-i titles for the enjoyment of all.
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