My Mom was an artist for a small game developer in Bermuda (of all places…) In the 90s.
Not only did they have one of these in the office, which I would spend a lot of time at after school, but she had one at home as well. So I spent a formidable part of my childhood trying to learn CD-I games.
The two we had at home (I do not know their names and I’ve tried looking them up) were:
Photorealistic Ultraviolent Cyberpunk… It was like an FPS and Point and Click adventure at the same time. Lawnmower Man vibes.
Japanese Feudal Defence Simulator… Another FPS where you would defend a castle from waves of approaching samurai with a Bow.
The controller was a wackadoodle Trackball design and honestly a pain in the ass to use, but superior to my NES which I had (as my only comparison).
We never bought more games as… Well… They weren’t sold on the island.
Edit: I’ve also played the Zelda game at the office, but honestly it was like they tried to make a Mario game using Zelda, and as stated below: it was awful.
This is the kind of story I was hoping to hear in this thread.
Did you enjoy it at the time, or was there a sense of it not being a great console? I know that we were much more forgiving of janky games back then, so it’s hard to look at it fairly from 2025.
Graphically it was superior to anything else I had played (SNES and Genesis were the two available at the time) but it definately lacked polish, even to 8 year old me. The real kicker is that everything about it just looked… Different from what was being pushed by Nintendo and Sega with their consoles.
I also had access to PCs which would play Wolfenstien3D, so I would say the game play was also somewhat superior, but the CDi lacked depth with the games. (Or I was too young to advance in them beyong the first levels due to difficulty)
I also just remembered that there was another game which was incredibly well made… And it was all 90s western cartoon styled about a knight trying to save a princess from a dragon.
I also just remembered that there was another game which was incredibly well made… And it was all 90s western cartoon styled about a knight trying to save a princess from a dragon.
I think you’re talking about Dragon’s Lair– I wouldn’t necessarily call it well made. It was designed as an arcade game to munch through your quarters, so the gameplay felt pretty unfair with very short timing on everything.
My Mom was an artist for a small game developer in Bermuda (of all places…) In the 90s.
Not only did they have one of these in the office, which I would spend a lot of time at after school, but she had one at home as well. So I spent a formidable part of my childhood trying to learn CD-I games.
The two we had at home (I do not know their names and I’ve tried looking them up) were:
Photorealistic Ultraviolent Cyberpunk… It was like an FPS and Point and Click adventure at the same time. Lawnmower Man vibes.
Japanese Feudal Defence Simulator… Another FPS where you would defend a castle from waves of approaching samurai with a Bow.
The controller was a wackadoodle Trackball design and honestly a pain in the ass to use, but superior to my NES which I had (as my only comparison).
We never bought more games as… Well… They weren’t sold on the island.
Edit: I’ve also played the Zelda game at the office, but honestly it was like they tried to make a Mario game using Zelda, and as stated below: it was awful.
This is the kind of story I was hoping to hear in this thread.
Did you enjoy it at the time, or was there a sense of it not being a great console? I know that we were much more forgiving of janky games back then, so it’s hard to look at it fairly from 2025.
Graphically it was superior to anything else I had played (SNES and Genesis were the two available at the time) but it definately lacked polish, even to 8 year old me. The real kicker is that everything about it just looked… Different from what was being pushed by Nintendo and Sega with their consoles.
I also had access to PCs which would play Wolfenstien3D, so I would say the game play was also somewhat superior, but the CDi lacked depth with the games. (Or I was too young to advance in them beyong the first levels due to difficulty)
I also just remembered that there was another game which was incredibly well made… And it was all 90s western cartoon styled about a knight trying to save a princess from a dragon.
I think you’re talking about Dragon’s Lair– I wouldn’t necessarily call it well made. It was designed as an arcade game to munch through your quarters, so the gameplay felt pretty unfair with very short timing on everything.
That’s the one.
I mean, it was better made than the other games I had access to.
And yes, its Ninja Gaiden levels of difficult.
Is your first game “Burn Cycle”? https://www.mobygames.com/game/3962/burncycle/
or maybe Freedom Fighter? https://www.mobygames.com/game/21664/freedom-fighter/
Burn Cycle! Thank you!
I’ve never really tried searching for the game names. This thread has been great!
Maybe I should set up an emulator and get some nostalgia flowing.
Glad I could help!
I never got through that stupid asteroid field in Burn:Cycle