Philips CD-i

The CD-i (Compact Disc Interactive) was a standard created by Philips and Sony, and the first players were released by Philips in December 1991. Philips sold it as a multimedia player for the whole family rather than a games console, with educational discs, encyclopaedias, music titles and interactive films alongside games.

An optional Digital Video Cartridge let later players show full-motion video and play Video CDs. Other manufacturers, including Magnavox, Sony and Goldstar, also made CD-i players, and many of the 400 or so titles made use of video.

Philips had worked with Nintendo on a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo. That deal fell apart, but it left Philips with the right to use Nintendo characters, which led to Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, Zelda’s Adventure and Hotel Mario. Their quality became famous for the wrong reasons.

The CD-i sold around one million units and was discontinued in 1998. It is still hard to emulate, and MAME is the most complete CD-i emulator available today. You need a CD-i BIOS file.