There are very few unreleased CD-i projects that have shown footage on an official demo disc and were never covered in the CD-i community. In 1996, the dutch CD-i Magazine was bundled with a "CD-i Demonstratie Disc", a demo disc that had video clips on it about upcoming CD-i titles. This was one of the most interesting discs to me, as it had the very first footage of The Lost Ride, Zenith and Creature Shock. But also on this disc was a video clip of Tom & Tim. It was never mentioned in a magazine before as far as I know it. It showed a village in the Tom & Tim style and invited you to explore it. It was meant for children, but the "open-world" idea always impressed me (Think of the scope like in the Richard Scarry an Sesame Street CD-i titles, but now in Digital Video style in the Tom & Tim universe). In the end, it never happened.
Tom & Tim started as a kids series on the Belgian television, broadcasted by Ketnet on TV1. Tom & Tim are a young boy and his dog, built out of colored building blocks. Tom is inquisitive, mischievous and playful, while Tim follows Tom everywhere. The two of them have many adventures. Next to television, their adventures were published on VHS tape as well as in books. The first episode was aired in 1994. His first words were, of course in Dutch: "Ik ben Steven, ik ben 20 jaar en ik zeg ja tegen het leven".. The first episodes were about "De kleine ijsbeer", "Dag Sinterklaas", "Tom & Tim".
In 1996, the producer Tom Neuttiens and the animation company Compani developed an interactive version for the CD-i. Their selling point was a kids title on CD-i that was suitable for various ages. It was literally going to grow with your kids.
The first part was offering digital video stories of the classic Tom & Tim episodes. Each episode was less than 5 minutes. In these episodes, Tom & Tim were always building something, to be able to play with it it afterwards. In the end of each movie, Tom & Tim are clearing up the blocks again in the box.
These episodes aired between 1994 and 1997.
Next, it would offer these episodes to pause and let kids click on the objects that was being built. In that way, a separate movie started about that vehicle, object or animal.
The menu offered six movies to play and explanations about the subject of that specific movie.
The most interesting part was the interactive town that was presented:
In this part of the game you were able to ride a car through the world of Tom & Tim, in which you could actually do things like interacting with people and clicking on objects along the way. It was inspired by the Richard Scarry titles on CD-i in a way, now being able to use digital video to allow for smooth full motion graphics. According to our source, the scenes would have been tied up together closely, in order to save space on the disc. As a disc only allowed for about 60 minutes of movie material, this was limiting the amount of content they were able to provide.
lWhen we asked by Tom & Tim never reached the market, he answered: "The title was virtually ready, but Philips just didn't do anything with it. We delivered the project following our contract" - Which looks like Tom & Tim was another victim of CD-i being terminated by Philips around the time it was being developed. 1997 CD-i projects were time-wise not very lucky.
[Thanks to CD-i member Seventy7 for helping with preserving the footage]
- Writer/Editor: Tom
- Credits: Seventy7 (pictures), één.be
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