Philips CD-i - the future is interactive
Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2025 9:46 pm
That's right, I took the guide's provocation as a legit challenge. Let's talk about the Philips CD-i, the world's most poorly-understood gaming system.
Is the CD-i the world's best gaming system? Definitely no. But are the memes about the CD-i overblown? Yeah actually! The CD-i has some genuinely good games, a bunch of games that are just so weird they're fun to talk about, and yeah it's got the just plain bad games that are fun for being bad. So let's talk about more than Zelda and Mario memes!
This forum being what it is, I figure people might be interested in the furry-leaning games, like the excessively furry Cyber Soldier Sharaku. It's a Japanese-only interactive movie/mystlike, following the story of a futuristic cyber-soldier who chases a cyber-criminal to the backwater planet of Earth during the Edo period... and also everyone's furries. Really fun game with beautiful art, and very accessible if you don't speak any Japanese.
I'm also a big fan of Wuzzo Goes on Holiday, an interactive storybook about a bird named Wuzzo and his many failures to get to the airport on time for his vacation. It's a kids game, but it's really funny and charming - I had a great time.
I also really like Laser Lords, an extremely weird claymation western RPG where the main game mechanic is collecting nouns that people bring up in conversation. It's weird and unpolished with frankly pretty frustrating combat, which is to say it's like a lot of DOS-era western RPGs too. If you can come to terms with the frustrating bits there's not much else out there like it.
And if you want to actually try CD-i for yourself? Actually a lot easier than it used to be! MAME has pretty good CD-i emulation these days, and MAME frontends like Retroarch should be able to play most games just fine. There's also a paid CD-i emulator with even better compatibility.
Is the CD-i the world's best gaming system? Definitely no. But are the memes about the CD-i overblown? Yeah actually! The CD-i has some genuinely good games, a bunch of games that are just so weird they're fun to talk about, and yeah it's got the just plain bad games that are fun for being bad. So let's talk about more than Zelda and Mario memes!
I also really like Laser Lords, an extremely weird claymation western RPG where the main game mechanic is collecting nouns that people bring up in conversation. It's weird and unpolished with frankly pretty frustrating combat, which is to say it's like a lot of DOS-era western RPGs too. If you can come to terms with the frustrating bits there's not much else out there like it.
And if you want to actually try CD-i for yourself? Actually a lot easier than it used to be! MAME has pretty good CD-i emulation these days, and MAME frontends like Retroarch should be able to play most games just fine. There's also a paid CD-i emulator with even better compatibility.