Gadgetory

this may look like an ordinary compact disc but actually it's an interactive encyclopedia a stimulating match with a tennis pro an interactive adventure through fantastic world in the history of gaming there has been some expensive consoles probably the most notorious of which in recent memory is when the ps3 first launched for $600 but when you reach further back that is absolutely nothing compared to the Philips CDI released back in 1991 the original model of the CDI launched for $1000 adjusted for inflation today that is just over 1,800 that is almost four times the price of an xbox one X now the reason for this insane price point is because when the CDI was originally conceptualized and marketed it wasn't supposed to be just another gaming console was supposed to be new this idea of a multimedia device that is somewhere between a gaming system and a PC and Mac where yeah it'll play games but you can also listen to music watch videos that have all kinds of different kind of educational apps and even Madonna karaoke yeah I'm not doing this basically the CDI was trying to do things during the fourth generation of gaming that really didn't become normal or popular until the sixth or even seventh generation was way ahead of its time it even was one of the first systems to offer an online component where you could buy a separate accessory with a modem that related to connect to the Internet to do some browsing or even shop online now despite all these different things that it could do and it's insane price tag at launch it's not really known for any of these things still there's really only one thing to see the eye is still popularly talked about today and that's what it did with Nintendo why'd you do that I just saved you from Ganon you did not back when Nintendo was developing the Super Nintendo one of the things that were working on possibly doing was a CD attachment for the system similar to something they had done back with the original Famicom called the Famicom disk system and something that we saw Genesis do with the Sega CD except this plan never actually came to fruition now when they were working on it there were two main companies they worked with Sony who would be making the actual hardware for the system and Philips who developed the media format they would be using all the discs CDI now for numerous reasons this didn't end up happening and because of some of those reasons Sony went on to make their own gaming system - PlayStation which is a whole nother story but for Phillips's and they were already planning on making the CDI but as part of their deal to Nintendo they got licensing rights to using some of their properties which they did to horrible effect princes restore the celestial signs and rescue rained fire the CDI has a number of games based on Nintendo franchises including a bizarre arcade game called Mario's hotel but probably even more famous is a number of Legend of Zelda games they made which to their credit Summerlin progressive because they actually featured Zelda as a playable protagonist but this was all heavily balanced out by the fact that these games were awful let's go play one all right let's give this a try so I at least know how this starts because I've seen this opening cutscene so many times the internet and it is an abomination this is I found out actually eventually that this wasn't done in house with the company that made the game this was all outsourced to an animation company in Russia and so that's why it's kind of this weird disjoint between how this looks and how everything looks in the actual game is just it's bizarre enough how about a kiss for luck you've got to be kidding squadala we are off yeah this is weird I've heard some organs before this is actually kind of a good game if you ignore the cutscenes because those are just bad but it's hard for me to believe that why play this I think I'm a little biased because for the timing of when this came out this game is based on the play style of Zelda 2 The Adventure of Link which is all the weird kind of side-scrolling style and I just don't really care for that at all it's sorry to tell it's really going on in this game it's weird too because you get hit by all these things and you you don't react like you don't fall back or anything you just kind of keep getting a hit and like you have a shield which I think you can kind of block with but you can't move it except by dodging or crying or jumping or crouching so this one in particular this is a link the faces of evil where this is the one game where you do plays link there were two other Zelda games they made one was kind of a companion piece to this where you play as zelda called zelda the Wando Gamelin i think and then there's a third one that's just called Zelda's adventure and that one's like a top-down but from what I understand that's somehow even worse than this yeah yeah the guy was it called what's bizarre about it too is that I don't feel like I really have in any of what I'm supposed to be doing like at least in Zelda games when they give you very little information you kind of figure it out along the way it's it's intuitive this is just weird oh you talk to people by hitting them with your sword that makes sense and then they pop up and this is weird-looking FMB game standing for full motion video games were really popular during the late 80s and early 90s and it was alternative to more traditional games that were basically interactive movies they didn't offer the same amount of actual gameplay as more traditional games but they offered visuals well beyond what a lot of their competition could do thanks to the CD I actually being a more of a multimedia system they were able to support a lot of these kind of games including ports of really popular arcade ones like dragon's lair and Space Ace and even had some really successful original ones like burn cycle but this was basically too little too late because while these games were cool they still require to you to buy a very expensive system and that wouldn't actually even run them out of the box you'd have to buy a separate component called a digital video cartridge which would enable the system to run videos as well as FMV based games like these otherwise any other games you played on the CDI were honestly pretty lacking the FMV support was cool but other games it just didn't have any of the processing power to do anything interesting or better than its competition well the initial price tag was insane Phillips did try to control a little bit by releasing a lot of different sub models of the CDI down the line including a cheaper option that was meant to be more like a straight-up game console the 450 which is actually when we got the set up right over here still though even with these cool FMV games and cheaper models made available later it was enough to counter all of the lost investment in the system where the CDI ended up being abandoned in 1998 after Phillips reported having a total loss of a billion dollars making this not only the most expensive console to buy when it came out but even one of the most expensive consoles to make