ScuzzBlog: Diaries May 2018
Entry 10th May 2018: Post: 1
Philips CD-i 220 - Can't blame them for trying
Costly adventure this for Philips. Think I read somewhere that
they lost around 1 billion dollars before giving up the system.
I can recall visiting my local gaming store and seeing one of
these for the first time and kinda felt slightly confused. The
store had given over the basement to the platform and showed
extensive footage of the CD-i in action. As interesting as it
was I just didn't see the computer in all of this, and kinda was
turned off by the thing.
My understanding is that prior to the PS1 SONY hooked up with Nintendo
to develop a CD based gaming console. Whilst Nintendo signed up
to a deal they quickly backed out. SONY were working with Philips
in the development of the interactive format and somehow Philips
finished up with the intellectual rights to using some of the
Nintendo property. Unfortunately Philips appear to have farmed
out the development of the games to another company who created
games that were designed to feature the CD-i's functionality at
the cost of some poor game play. Zelda I believe was released
in various forms and none were successful. In truth I don't think
Philips ever realised the full gaming potential of the machine.
For me it was just another dumb TV entertainment centre for
casual relaxation and kinda missed the point of utilising the
CD as a creative tool with great utility value in the form of
data, information and library content. Video for me was way way
superior at this time and having just shelled out £1000 on a
SONY camera I wasn't about to buy anything that didn't let
me transfer, edit, store and copy video. Pretty pointless and
that is why I call it a dumb machine. Interestingly it took me
all the way to 2007 before I purchased a SONY DVD player with
hard drive for using discs to store video. And I still use my
video tape player... every single day.
The machine feels very lightweight, not just in physical weight
but also what it has to offer. Other than the Digital Video MINI
Cartridge, which is fitted, there appears to be very little you
can do with this. The machine suffers from a serious lack of
understanding how a controller should work. May sound a little
odd, but nobody has ever understood how a controller should work.
The test is simple, can the controller allow full use of all
functions whilst I am holding a cuppa tea in my left hand and
not need to look down at the controller.
Inside there is very little going on and you can see that the
actual functionality as a computer is scarcely visible. The unit
is a CD player that can read optical data. I don't blame Philips
for having a go, and I can see why SONY tagged this idea for
their own benefit in developing the very very successful PlayStation.
I do have one of the later models also, which is equally boring.
Sorry... but I rarely ever watch TV. Just not my idea of
entertainment. I just have never been able to give away that much
of my life just to being fed TV imagery. I can take around
ten minutes of sitting watching a TV before I seriously get very
very irritable. Give me a computer screen and a mouse and a way
to interact in a meaningful way and I can sit eight hours straight
without even getting up. I can watch films but generally once in
the summer and a couple of times at Christmas. So you can see
if the unit was only capable of playing stuff then it really
wasn't worth the money. Games also relied on a rich stock of
product to give choice, given the 80% plus margin of crap games
that has always existed in the industry. Who was it that
said there are five good films released each year, five good
record albums, and five good games... Think it was me. If
you reflect on any year... pick a year I am betting you could
at most remember three of each for each year. It's that bad.
So with so little games for this unit.... never gonna fly.
And never did... Like I say, couldn't blame em for trying.
Philips CD-i 220 from around 1991
Using the Philips SCC68070 running at 15.5 MHz
Memory is 1 MB and the OS is something called CD-RTOS
CDi 450
I have just one more of these CD players
to feature which I will do tomorrow.. and
I am not talking about the 450 above which...
... is trapped in a tall stack
of plastic storage tubs
Below this... A KIM-1
So more from the vault tomorrow
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