We would like to investigate which CD-i players cause bugs/crashes in The Lost Ride on CD-i. Have you played it and you want to share your experience? Please comment below!
The Lost Ride on CD-i was developed between 1995 and 1998 by Formula (the gaming department of The Lost Boys. At a later point, this would become the studio that is the basis of Guerilla Games, the creators of Killzone and Horizon Zero Dawn). The Lost Ride was actually the first effort by The Lost Boys intro gaming; we've seen them before on several other CD-i projects like the CD-Online discs and quite some support on software level. One of the tools that was the basis of The Lost Ride was Project Scalectric. In this project they created the software that made 'seamless branching' possible. In this case, MPEG video's could be connected after each other without a pause. A roller coaster would be ideal to do this, but in fact this was a software tool that was also planned in the cancelled CD-i game 'Dead End' developed by Cryo.
The Lost Boys set up a specific gaming department to do this: Formula Game Development. They asked Enji Games to develop the framework and animation. The Lost Boys parents encoded the digital video sequences. Unfortunately, when Philips pulled the plug out of CD-i, this Scalectric tool was not completed yet. It was originally developed by Philips to use in Microcosm CD-i.
The thing is: The Scalectric tool was in a way implemented as-is. Philips was not available anymore for support (although they did continue to use the seamless branching technique for use with DVD as well) but it has shown potential in titles like Kathy Smith Personal Trainer on CD-i. In The Lost Ride the tool would be stretched even more as the mazes are generated randomly and the CD-i has to choose and play the next MPEG sequence in mere seconds. The end product is an amazing ambitious idea, but unfortunately not without its problems.
The Lost Ride eventually was released in 1998 on CD-i. While playable, there were many crash reports and bugs that made the game freeze. Personally at that time I tested the game on a CD-i 490 and CD-i 450 and I can confirm that both players behaved somewhat the same: The game shows some hickups at random railroad changes and at certain crosses it may crash completely. It seems like it has to do something with at which point you still can make changes to the direction you want to go. (Or if you don't choose anything and let the system decide).
We'd like to ask you if you can comment below if you have played The Lost Ride on CD-i, on what CD-i player and if you can describe the level of bugs/crashes. I can imagine there is a difference in the type of player and we have never found out in the past years!