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Need Help - Philips CD-I


locvez

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Hi all, Can anyone advise if they have found a way to setup retroarch or any other emulator to run Philips CD-I games / media ? I've downloaded a few hundred Gb's of ISO's + CUE's for archiving but I was interested to find out if anyone knew of a way to run them? Thanks in advance
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I've had them run successfully in the CD-I emulator but it is only the free demo version and you can't play long. The guy who wrote the emulator wants $35 for it and that's why I don't have it. I've tried to use it through MESS before but I didn't have any real luck.
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Yeah I saw the payware option, if it were accurate and able to play all the files i'd jump on it, but it looks like development stalled a looooong time ago :( I've started downloading the mess/mame CHD's for CD-I - it also runs at 160-odd Gb but this is another area where I have no experience, I don't know how to "work" mame / mess. I really hope @SentaiBrad does a tutorial on MESS / MAME :D
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Yes MESS is the suggested Emulator which sucks because it's a MESS. CDiEmu is the alternative but not suggested. There's not much to be done sadly. From EmuGen "Comparisons Cdiemu is payware that hasn't been updated since 2006. Its compatibility isn't very good and it only responds to mouse movements for control, making most games unplayable unless you use an additional program called Mah Boi. MESS has support for CD-i, which is also incomplete, but much easier to control, and it actually emulates better audio than Cdiemu in some cases. It is recommended to start the emulation with the game already loaded, either with the game picker or through a soft reset after mounting the disk."
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CADScott said From what I have seen there is only one CD-I emulator that is actually working well and compatible with most games, cdiemu, and it is paid software, costing 25 euro. I have not used it, but it does have a time limited trial, so it would be worth trying.
Sadly it's not at all worth it and not compatible with most games.
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I've had stopped development of my MESS module for Lightspeed at this point, as I'm refining things on the Mame side right now, but CD-i is one of the systems that seem to be working quite well in MESS (aka MAME). You just need a mouse to use it. I'm planning to get back to it some time soon, tweak things a little more and soon put it in one of the future Lightspeed betas. I want to break this notion that it's so messy to the point that it's unusable. My program will do the hard work for you and import a clean collection of MESS systems/games ready to be played under Launchbox. I'm getting a good chunk of systems working quite nicely under mess at this point, including the CD-i. Cartridge based Sega systems work great. -Kris
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As @SentaiBrad said MESS is a mess, I have tried to get multiple systems running in it and had absolutely no success, and always gone back to a standalone emulator or Retroarch. You might find that most of the CD-I games were actually released on other systems, so if you really want to play them, look at the Sega CD, Daphne Emulator and Saturn, there were a lot of FMV games released on those platforms.
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  • 2 years later...

I have successfully emulated the CD-i with the few aforementioned methods although most of the games I wanted to play required the as-of-yet unemulated Video Cartridge. I don't want to criticize CDiemu too much because the author put a lot of work into it, but it didn't have enough compatibility or features to be competitive. My main issue is he wants $35 or so for it which is an insult to the community. In the end I turn to the 3DO for the CD-i experience; lots of shared titles, similar experience, etc. I remember when Cruisin USA was first added to MAME and watching it crawl through the CPU Board Test and gameplay so choppy it looked like a slideshow when I had the fastest PC my budget could build. Hopefully, the CD-i will get continued development. Poor as the system may be, it is a part of gaming history.

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