2015/12/26: Philips CD-i: Caesars World of Gambling, Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia

[Tim]

I was planning on getting a CDI near to Xmas in the early 90's, but I changed my mind and waited for the 3DO instead. My Mum had already bought me Zelda: Wand of Gamelon, so she had to take it back - kind of wish I still had that one! I remember playing Caesar's World of Boxing at my friend's house; it was really just a port of Evander Holyfield's Boxing on the Megadrive, but the presentation had been "CDI'd" - ie. you had a blonde sexy FMV trainer! You might want to track it down for that Dave - one element that made it better than the MD version!

[VideoGameCritic]

Tim - you had me at sexy blonde! I will track that one down.

[Rookie1]

I have been contemplating getting a CDi for a while now. I just want it for the Zelda games though. They look pretty terrible, but I think it might be worth the buy.

[LoganRuckman]

I'm actually really disappointed that this isn't about the city, the hip hop culture and artists like N.W.A., or its history of gang violence. Late '80s-early '90s Compton would be an interesting setting for a REAL video game, though I guess San Andreas kind of came close with its take on early '90s L.A.

[pacman000]

An encyclopedia on the CD-I? Well, I guess it makes sense. After all, the CD-I was a multimedia system. That means it has games and MORE.

We have some PC-based encyclopedias on CDs, and they can be useful. They're older, but I trust them more than Wikipedia, and they don't need an internet connection to work.

Only 5000 articles? That's bad. I have a single-volume printed encyclopedia with 25,000 articles. They're not in-depth articles, but this program isn't in depth. It sounds like Compton dedicated too much space for the interactive elements and too little space for the actual encyclopedia.

[Shapur]

They are easy to mock now, but CD encyclopedias were super cool for nerds of the 90's. All that information, with pictures AND video! I'd spend hours on it. Of course, I was one of the only kids who would just thumb through the actual print encyclopedia for fun.....

Parents always thought all that educational stuff would really help their kids become over-achievers. No siree, just filled our heads with lots of useless facts.

[Rev]

I mean if you think about it, the CD Encyclopedia is basically a 90's version of Wikipedia. It may not be as good (in any way) but it has a ton of random articles, pictures, videos, etc. I know a lot of people who spend a ton of time going through random articles on Wikipedia either at work, in school, whenever their bored... I can definitely see the appeal of something like this although nowadays it is nothing special.

[Retro STrife]

CD-i reviews! Always glad to see those, even if the titles are a bit, er, unexpected. Hope to see more in the coming months.

I second goldenband's comments. The CD-i was a system I bought very early in my collecting life (early 2000s), so strangely enough, it's one of my favorite classic systems from a collector perspective. I'm always happy when you post new reviews for it--even an interactive encyclopedia!

Unfortunately, I'm not much use for recommending games, Critic, because I used your reviews as a guide when I was deciding which CD-i games to buy for my collection! From a collector perspective, the two biggest omissions I see on your CD-i game list are Zelda's Adventure and Super Mario's Wacky Worlds. I've never owned Zelda's Adventure, since it's cost-prohibitive, and I assume that's the same reason for you. Super Mario's Wacky Worlds isn't a complete game and you'd probably have to download it on the internet to play it--but it is possibly the most curious/interesting unfinished game ever made, so your review would definitely be of much interest to readers (even if you had to do an NA score).


Looking at the list of 133 games that Goldenband linked to, Christmas Country and Christmas Crisis look interesting (I've never heard of them, but I know you're always looking for more Christmas games). For Monty Python fans, there the interesting curiosity known as Monty Python's Invasion from the Planet Skyron, which was a game exclusive to the CD-i (although it's status as a "game" is limited). I bet there's a few other decent games hidden on the system, but the problem is that there's so little info on the internet since so few gamers have explored the CD-i library.

[VideoGameCritic]

Thanks for the recommendations Retro Strife! If I can get a hold of those two Christmas games I'd love to include them in next year's edition of the Christmas review special. Also, the Monty Python game sounds like a good time.

Yes, Zelda's Adventure is just too rich for my blood. Plus it doesn't look very good.