@paulspydar At the moment, I have no other links. I know that some prototypes are shared in a torrent pack online, but this one was not part of it. If I get hold of more, I'll be sure to put them up as well. Most are a fair bit bigger though.
Please Please Please Please! Can u do a video of the cd-i prototype sequal to Escape From Cyber City? The prototype is called "Return To Cyber City.
Ps. Sorry for so much pleases, But I really like EFCC and I would REALLY like to see the prototype. And also do the thing where we can try it ourself like u did with Joe Guard?
Interesting looking game. I love the fact that they ripped off the Sonic SFX but loved the fact that you mis-pronounced: "stingy", yet it actually came out better as a result, even more! :D
I keep having a weird daydream/fantasy involving becoming a famous (if self-destructive & weird) musical performer, and starting a side-project creating new games for obscure old systems, which would be funding by doing some decent but cheaply made releases for current-gen systems (including no less than 5 "Dragon's Lair" ports in the space of 7 years). This would include some "professional homebrew" for CD-i, including a FMV-heavy "Yu-Gi-Oh" game (why I want to do this, I don't know). I am odd!
Excellent and informative video. It actually looks like a half decent game. I don't know much about the CDI but this video makes me want to learn more.
@TheFrugalGamer CD-i may be an awful games console, but it's an interesting piece of gaming history, I mean the format did spawn the PlayStation format ;)
I have a history video about it on here somewhere. It's pretty old and crappy, but might still be interesting to go over when new to CD-i.
I'm not sure about the worst checkpoint ever. There's a checkpoint in Skulljagger that places you right in front of an enemy so you die in almost less than a second.
This was really informative and interesting to watch. There must be some homebrew game makers out there who really love the CD-i and are willing to complete this game by giving it some background music, attacks, and more stages arent there? I would love to see a complete version of this for sure. Love the sonic sounds in it as well. Great research there Seb and I hope that the Zelda review is coming along without too much stress.
It's very hard to program for the CD-i, since it's very limited with CPU and memory power, especially without the DVC expansion. Music + effects + actual gameplay = near impossible, at least with a decent framerate. If some group were to take this project on, it would be awesome to see a complete version of this game. But it would make for a very tough challenge!
The Zelda video's will be coming, I've had a hard time finding a time to record them.
@darkburstcanon Hah, yeah, kind of an odd thing to find, and I bet they were intended as such, but still very strange! There's a bit of Sonic on CD-i even haha.
Excellent video! It's always interesting to see prototypes in action. This one in particular certainly had potential, but it looks very unfinished in parts, I suppose.
@austinmackert It really feels like a demo of 'what could be'. It's a shame it never made it into a full game, would be interesting for sure, as there are so few platformers on the CD-i.
That was very interesting. It almost looks like a decent game. It would be cool to see what it would be like if they did add in background music and its own set of sound effects.
@CleanVideoGameNerd Yeah, for sure. Looks like it really could have been something cool if they had completed it. Background music would most likely not be added though. It was left out in Christmas Country too, as it would take too much memory, slowing the whole game down to a crawl.
I think I would have liked to seen this as a full game actually. I myself, saw great potential other than the fact that there was no background music, awful checkpoint placement and repetitive sprites and sound effects but it WAS only a prototype,..
@david22428 It was on its way to become a fun platformer for sure, even though some of those checkpoints are placed really poorly indeed. I think they'd work on level design more later down the road.
Background music was a huge problem for the company. They had no license to use the DVC expansion, so they couldn't tap into that extra bit of memory. Adding music during gameplay caused massive slowdown in Christmas Country, thus it wasn't included in there. I imagine it's much the same here.
@paulspydar That really depends on your burner and media you're burning on. I'd say, burn on the speed that works best for your other burns. I just burned it on max speed and it went alright for me. Letter quality discs might need lower speeds though.
Very interesting... it kind of reminds me a little of cross between Castle Of Illusion and Pugsley's Scavanger Hunt. Looks like it was on the way to being a great little game !
@zetanato Good question, I don't really know, my bet is that they do have copyright over it though. But they might have sold their sound effects too, lots of companies used to sell their existing assets to other (often time smaller) developers.
@clays121 CD-i has very little homebrew action. As I understand it, it's fairly tough to make anything worthwhile for the system due to the limited hardware capabilities. This makes is both hard and hardly worth the effort, compared what you can do on other systems.
@HalfBlindGamer I can't say I blame people for not wanting to program for the CD-i, but if people can make demos on the Atari VCS(2600), that are nearly as good as an early NES game, or early C64 game/demo, then I'm sure it can be done, but like I said I can't blame them for not wanting too.
@clays121 CD-i has some serious problems. In essence it's a 16 system, but it's extremely limited when it comes to video processing, this makes it hard to even make 8 bit like games. In a way the NES is more powerful! Simple things as scrolling need trickery to work. There's also the problem of the DVC expansion, this makes the CD-i a bit more powerful, but homebrewers cannot tap into that power.
There is one group who was kind of active on CD-i and made mode 7 like stuff, pretty impressive!
@MrVenom1974 As far as I know, nothing is known about why this project was never further developed. It could be that they ran into some ultimate hardware constraints, maybe the moving platforms did them in for example.
Creative Media produced budget titles, so they had relatively short development cycles. So it could be that hitting a few too many obstacles would wipe an entire project off the table. That's just pure speculation on my part though.
I would love to leave a constructive comment, but i somehow can't. I just wish there would be more demos and prototypes of games to test on the newer consoles / the PC, since most games get a commercial instead of a playable demo... for the most part.
I would have loved to play Joe the Hedgehog, as it seems to have a lot of promising elements, especially for a CDi. It's odd how good and how bad games can turn out, lol.
@Bonemiath I always love seeing these kind of games that never saw the light of day. Some can be quite good actually, others are clearly better off left unfinished ;) With modern consoles there are probably a lot of these kind of discs out there too, problem is that you'll need debugging devkits/debugging units to play them.
It's surprising to see some games that get release though, so many are worse than some projects that were never released!
thanks for the image , just burnt it and gave it a try , can you provide a link to some more burnable iso`s? thanks
paulspydar 5 months ago
@paulspydar At the moment, I have no other links. I know that some prototypes are shared in a torrent pack online, but this one was not part of it. If I get hold of more, I'll be sure to put them up as well. Most are a fair bit bigger though.
HalfBlindGamer 5 months ago
@paulspydar thanks, & if I find any good links RE cd-i I will forward then to you also,
paulspydar 5 months ago
Please Please Please Please! Can u do a video of the cd-i prototype sequal to Escape From Cyber City? The prototype is called "Return To Cyber City.
Ps. Sorry for so much pleases, But I really like EFCC and I would REALLY like to see the prototype. And also do the thing where we can try it ourself like u did with Joe Guard?
thepirategamerboy12 5 months ago
@thepirategamerboy12 If I can find/get it myself. If it was never dumped to an image, then it'll be hard to get a hold of it.
HalfBlindGamer 5 months ago
Interesting looking game. I love the fact that they ripped off the Sonic SFX but loved the fact that you mis-pronounced: "stingy", yet it actually came out better as a result, even more! :D
Good vid, Seb!
AtsumaKarin 6 months ago
@AtsumaKarin I did? Ah, way to point out the errors lol, didn't even notice that I think!
HalfBlindGamer 5 months ago
I keep having a weird daydream/fantasy involving becoming a famous (if self-destructive & weird) musical performer, and starting a side-project creating new games for obscure old systems, which would be funding by doing some decent but cheaply made releases for current-gen systems (including no less than 5 "Dragon's Lair" ports in the space of 7 years). This would include some "professional homebrew" for CD-i, including a FMV-heavy "Yu-Gi-Oh" game (why I want to do this, I don't know). I am odd!
MattTheSaiyan 6 months ago
@MattTheSaiyan LOL sounds like a fun filled night of dreams at the very least :)
There was some homebrew action on the CD-i front, but it has died down a bit unfortunately. So it could certainly use some new inspiration!
HalfBlindGamer 5 months ago
LOL...love the ripped off Sonic sound effects!
vintagevideogamegeek 6 months ago
Excellent and informative video. It actually looks like a half decent game. I don't know much about the CDI but this video makes me want to learn more.
TheFrugalGamer 6 months ago
@TheFrugalGamer CD-i may be an awful games console, but it's an interesting piece of gaming history, I mean the format did spawn the PlayStation format ;)
I have a history video about it on here somewhere. It's pretty old and crappy, but might still be interesting to go over when new to CD-i.
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
@HalfBlindGamer I will check that out right now!
TheFrugalGamer 6 months ago
@TheFrugalGamer Oh dear, what have I done haha. I checked it out after posting that, and those video's are horrible lol. Good luck :D
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
@HalfBlindGamer Ah they can't be that bad...hahaha.
TheFrugalGamer 6 months ago
I'm not sure about the worst checkpoint ever. There's a checkpoint in Skulljagger that places you right in front of an enemy so you die in almost less than a second.
XarboyMkII 6 months ago
@XarboyMkII Never played that, but yeah, that does sound awful lol.
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
This was really informative and interesting to watch. There must be some homebrew game makers out there who really love the CD-i and are willing to complete this game by giving it some background music, attacks, and more stages arent there? I would love to see a complete version of this for sure. Love the sonic sounds in it as well. Great research there Seb and I hope that the Zelda review is coming along without too much stress.
lukemorse1 6 months ago
@lukemorse1 Thanks Luke!
It's very hard to program for the CD-i, since it's very limited with CPU and memory power, especially without the DVC expansion. Music + effects + actual gameplay = near impossible, at least with a decent framerate. If some group were to take this project on, it would be awesome to see a complete version of this game. But it would make for a very tough challenge!
The Zelda video's will be coming, I've had a hard time finding a time to record them.
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
Wow I can't believe they used sound effects from Sonic... yeah I hope they're place holders too lol.
darkburstcanon 6 months ago
@darkburstcanon Hah, yeah, kind of an odd thing to find, and I bet they were intended as such, but still very strange! There's a bit of Sonic on CD-i even haha.
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
love the colorful graphics here
henryblazer20 6 months ago
@henryblazer20 Yeah, the artist who worked on it did a pretty neat job. A really wacky style. The art in Family Games is also pretty neat.
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
Excellent video! It's always interesting to see prototypes in action. This one in particular certainly had potential, but it looks very unfinished in parts, I suppose.
austinmackert 6 months ago
@austinmackert It really feels like a demo of 'what could be'. It's a shame it never made it into a full game, would be interesting for sure, as there are so few platformers on the CD-i.
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
That was very interesting. It almost looks like a decent game. It would be cool to see what it would be like if they did add in background music and its own set of sound effects.
CleanVideoGameNerd 6 months ago
@CleanVideoGameNerd Yeah, for sure. Looks like it really could have been something cool if they had completed it. Background music would most likely not be added though. It was left out in Christmas Country too, as it would take too much memory, slowing the whole game down to a crawl.
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
So the CD-i has no built-in prevention from it playing burnt CD-Rs? Not that I'm planning on pirating the games, just curious.
Crowley9 6 months ago
@Crowley9 CD-i has no copy protection, it was made in a time where this wasn't a problem yet ;)
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
CD-i finally!
chupapicosconchetuma 6 months ago
@chupapicosconchetuma Whooohooo!!! Sorry for the long wait :) Hope to have more soon!
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
Thanks for the CD-i links and glad to see a new CD-i video from you Seb
bwilliamswyn25 6 months ago
@bwilliamswyn25 Thanks :) Glad you enjoyed it and it was fun doing some CD-i stuff again!
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
I think I would have liked to seen this as a full game actually. I myself, saw great potential other than the fact that there was no background music, awful checkpoint placement and repetitive sprites and sound effects but it WAS only a prototype,..
david22428 6 months ago
@david22428 It was on its way to become a fun platformer for sure, even though some of those checkpoints are placed really poorly indeed. I think they'd work on level design more later down the road.
Background music was a huge problem for the company. They had no license to use the DVC expansion, so they couldn't tap into that extra bit of memory. Adding music during gameplay caused massive slowdown in Christmas Country, thus it wasn't included in there. I imagine it's much the same here.
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
Thanks a bunch for the website link. IT sure will be very enjoyable to check out.
ZOMGX3 6 months ago
@ZOMGX3 They have loads of very interesting articles on CD-i. If you like to read up on the system, it's a goldmine!
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
whats the recommended burning speed? thanks
paulspydar 6 months ago
@paulspydar That really depends on your burner and media you're burning on. I'd say, burn on the speed that works best for your other burns. I just burned it on max speed and it went alright for me. Letter quality discs might need lower speeds though.
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
Great video dude :)
trentsmate 6 months ago
@trentsmate Thanks!
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
Did you buy another CDi Seb?
LarryBundyJr 6 months ago
@LarryBundyJr I bought like five of the buggers, and two of them actually fully worked, imagine that!
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
@HalfBlindGamer Nice, that's a bit of luck :D
LarryBundyJr 6 months ago
I would like u to do a vid on the microcosm cdi prototype.
thepirategamerboy12 6 months ago
@thepirategamerboy12 Cool, I'll put it on the 'to do' list for sure :)
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
@HalfBlindGamer Is the microcosm prototype cd image available for download as well?
thepirategamerboy12 6 months ago
Nice review!!
SushiSunshine2000 6 months ago
@SushiSunshine2000 Thanks a lot!
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
Very interesting... it kind of reminds me a little of cross between Castle Of Illusion and Pugsley's Scavanger Hunt. Looks like it was on the way to being a great little game !
mathowlett 6 months ago
@mathowlett Nice comparison and quite a feat for CD-i standards haha. Such a shame it never saw the light of day as a complete product :(
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
interesting cdi prototype
davidhass3lh0ff 6 months ago
@davidhass3lh0ff Yeah, for sure, platformers are rare on the system, so it's an oddity !
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
nice keep the vids comming
burakasno1 6 months ago
@burakasno1 Will do my best, thanks for watching!
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
Interesting. Thanks for the info!
MaximumRD 6 months ago
@MaximumRD Thanks for the watch Rob! Glad you found it interesting :)
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
I wonder if Sega can/did copyright those sound effects. I mean, they are very much associated with Sonic games.
zetanato 6 months ago
@zetanato Good question, I don't really know, my bet is that they do have copyright over it though. But they might have sold their sound effects too, lots of companies used to sell their existing assets to other (often time smaller) developers.
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
Cool video, would like for you to show some of the homebrew scene, if there is any to show off.
clays121 6 months ago
@clays121 CD-i has very little homebrew action. As I understand it, it's fairly tough to make anything worthwhile for the system due to the limited hardware capabilities. This makes is both hard and hardly worth the effort, compared what you can do on other systems.
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
@HalfBlindGamer I can't say I blame people for not wanting to program for the CD-i, but if people can make demos on the Atari VCS(2600), that are nearly as good as an early NES game, or early C64 game/demo, then I'm sure it can be done, but like I said I can't blame them for not wanting too.
clays121 6 months ago
@clays121 CD-i has some serious problems. In essence it's a 16 system, but it's extremely limited when it comes to video processing, this makes it hard to even make 8 bit like games. In a way the NES is more powerful! Simple things as scrolling need trickery to work. There's also the problem of the DVC expansion, this makes the CD-i a bit more powerful, but homebrewers cannot tap into that power.
There is one group who was kind of active on CD-i and made mode 7 like stuff, pretty impressive!
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
Thanks for the infos about this prototyp. I also think that this game had potential as a neat platformer (and a maybe a better future than Sonic...).
It is known why this project was discontinued?
MrVenom1974 6 months ago
@MrVenom1974 As far as I know, nothing is known about why this project was never further developed. It could be that they ran into some ultimate hardware constraints, maybe the moving platforms did them in for example.
Creative Media produced budget titles, so they had relatively short development cycles. So it could be that hitting a few too many obstacles would wipe an entire project off the table. That's just pure speculation on my part though.
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago
I would love to leave a constructive comment, but i somehow can't. I just wish there would be more demos and prototypes of games to test on the newer consoles / the PC, since most games get a commercial instead of a playable demo... for the most part.
I would have loved to play Joe the Hedgehog, as it seems to have a lot of promising elements, especially for a CDi. It's odd how good and how bad games can turn out, lol.
Bonemiath 6 months ago
@Bonemiath I always love seeing these kind of games that never saw the light of day. Some can be quite good actually, others are clearly better off left unfinished ;) With modern consoles there are probably a lot of these kind of discs out there too, problem is that you'll need debugging devkits/debugging units to play them.
It's surprising to see some games that get release though, so many are worse than some projects that were never released!
HalfBlindGamer 6 months ago