The CD-i (short for Compact Disc Interactive, also known as Green Book), was a multimedia format released in 1991, created primarily by Philips and to a lesser extent Sony, though only Philips proceeded to market products. A CD-i player, initially priced around USD 400, was capable of playing interactive CD-i discs (its native format), Audio CDs, CD+G (CD+Graphics), Karaoke CDs, and Video CDs (VCDs), though the last of these required an optional "Digital Video Card" to provide MPEG-1 decoding.
Early software releases focused heavily on educational and self-improvement titles, with only a handful of video games, many of them adaptations of board games like "Connect Four". Later attempts to develop a foothold in the games market were rendered irrelevant by the arrival of cheaper and more powerful games consoles, such as the Sony PlayStation.
In 1994, system sales started to slow and the product line was dropped in 1998. Philips never managed to create the public interest in the capabilities of the CD-i that it had hoped for. It is noted for having several video games that are normally found exclusively on Nintendo systems, though they were not developed by Nintendo. Hotel Mario featured Super Mario characters and three Legend of Zelda games were released: Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Zelda's Adventure.
With the home market exhausted, Philips tried to position the technology as a tool for kiosks and industrial multimedia, but there too it found little success.
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Last updated: 10-22-2005 02:09:01
