One of the things we expected that could never happen on CD-i: A realtime first person shooter like Doom, including online functions. But it did happen, thanks to the amazing brains at Philips Research Redhill, UK. The same engine later was used for Atlantis: The Last Resort. The game was included in Lost Boys CD-Online disc 02, released in 1997, right before the launch Atlantis: The Last Resort. It was given away for free, as long as you had a paid CD-Online subscription, to internet via your CD-i player and the 14k4 modem.
The second edition of the CD-Online Disc (by Lost Boys, the team who brought us The Lost Ride) included a revolutionary game on CD-i: RAM RAID was an original first person shooter which could be played over the Internet, which was hot in 1996. Simply called "The Game" you could enter the demo room from the main menu. Unfortunately the CD-Online server is dormant these days so you are limited in playing the Practice levels of RAM RAID, which give you an idea how this was the top of CD-i gaming.
Yes, you could connect the CD-i player to a modem (a derival of the announced CD-i Interlink, a device that never was produced), clocked at 14k4 (can you imagine!). The modem made a connection to the internet and the CD-Online discs contained a browser to browse online. That was a great alternative to the PC which was at that time sometimes hard to follow. The modem was packaged in a so-called "CD-i Internet Kit", holding the modem (capable of 14.400 bps) and the disc itself. In Europe the service was called CD-Online, the USA had Web-i for this subscription. As Web-i never got off the ground in the USA, RAM RAID was only available in Europe from 1996 up to 2000, the year CD-Online closed down.
After RAM RAID, Philips went for more and created the at-that-time highly anticipated Atlantis: The Last Resort, the offline version of RAM RAID. Atlantis was built in a different setting and new enemies, but the engine was completely the same. The online part was just left out. Now that CD-Online is dormant, you can only play the practice levels accessing "Practice Arena" and "More Practice".
As in Atlantis you have the possibility in RAM RAID to listen to your favourite music while playing online. The game contains a total of 9 levels but only accessible through internet because some data files were stored at the CD-Online server. Just the two practice levels are on the disc itself.
The RAM RAID game was promoted with an official T-Shirt which you can see on the picture here. We spoke to an old RAM RAID veteran who shared some nice memories of RAM RAID: "You couldn't play directly against others, as how it worked was you picked someone on the scoreboard (with a higher score than you) and then picked which level you played so if you won then you would get a score increase based on the difference on yours and the other persons score, and so would work up your score rating, i'm also positive that the larger the score difference added to the difficulty of the level, because i remember on the first comp that there was just a few of us overtaking each other as there was a MASSIVE difference between the top 6 and the others,and only a few managed to catch up.
[Thanks, Catawiki, Retro Gamer, Black Moon, William]