Video Game Gazette

CD-i Archive

Philips CD-i 3/4 view

The Philips CD-i 220 was released in 1991. It was the first video game system to have a wireless controller as standard equipment. Like many systems of the early 90s, it used Compact Discs. Rather than being pitched as a video game system, the CD-i was marketed as an educational, multimedia system. Like many such systems, it did not fare well and went out of production in 1996.

Philips CD-i controller 3/4 view
Philips CD-i controller top view
The CD-i uses a 68070 cpu running at 15 MHz. It came with 1 megabyte of ram, and could be expanded to a total of 2.5 megs. The bios was stored on 512 kilobytes. The system boasted a screen resolution of 768x560. It has a palette of 16 million colors. The sound was naturally 16-Bit, stereo, at 44.1 KHz.

Philips CD-i front view
The system has reasonably few ports. There is an epansion slot for the VideoCD Cartridge. It has AV-out.

The joystick is one of the more unusual aspects of the system. It looks very much like a remote control with a thumb stick. The stick featured proportional movement, so that more further you pressed in a direction the faster the cursor would move.

The CD-i was the first third-party system for which Nintendo developed games. These included three Zelda rpgs, and a Mario adventure game.

Hotel Mario
Philips CD-i Hotel Mario case 		Link The Faces of Evil
Philips CD-i Link The Faces of Evil case 		Zelda The Wand of Gamelon
Philips CD-i Zelda The Wand of Gamelon case
The Apprentice
Philips CD-i The Apprentice case 		Lemmings
Philips CD-i Lemmings case 		Tetris
Philips CD-i Tetris case
Zombie Dinos from Planet Zeltoid
Philips CD-i Zombie case 		Chaos Control
Philips CD-i Chaos Control case 		Alien Gate
Philips CD-i Alien Gate case


The following is a list of CD-i games.


Magnavox CD-i
Magnavox CD-i front view
Magnavox CD-i 3/4 view
Magnavox CD-i back view
Magnavox CD-i wired controller