The preview CD-i discs are my favourite collectibles. There were a few bundled with the CD-i catalogue that Philips sent out as a mailorder (although that depends on which country you lived in). In 1995, Philips Media was about to focus more on games and this disc was emphazising on that. It's interesting that videoclips were shared with highlights in 1995, while Burn:Cycle was on it and Litil Divil, two games that were released in 1994. The most interesting preview clip is the Dead End clip. We all know Dead End as one of the lost CD-i prototypes, a digital video racing game, an on-rail shooter with promising graphics and gameplay. It's our only physical collectible about Dead End CD-i!
In the same layout and in the same time, Philips Media also released a 'movie' companion that was showing the latest and upcoming video cd releases. Both discs were encoded by Valkieser Group, which is a company that did a lot of CD-i work (like the Tim & Bear series on CD-i). In the past we tracked down some people who worked at Valkieser.
Valkieser also developed applications for gameshows on the dutch television (Like NOB). For example, Valkieser excecuted the computer desk and animations of Lingo (the television show a CD-i game was also based on: Lingo by SPC Vision (not te be confused!). Those were all rendered on a Silicon, and assembled on a Amiga 4000. Valkieser was also responsible for Mega Popclassics CD-i, which was a gift of the dutch "Platen-10-daagse"in 1995. It's a well-known CD-i title though because it shows two unreleased games on CD-i: Discworld and Voyeur 2 for the very first time.
Tim & Bear was the most profitable and most successfull series of Valkieser and very popular with children. Over four different themes (Hospital, Airport, Harbour, Movies...) were developed. Valkieser was also responsible for the Digital Video gift with new CD-i players: Director's Cut: Rosebud was a videoCD single featuring their clip and it was the very first digital video title available on CD-i for the consumer market. Finally, they were responsible for some reference titles on CD-i like "In the wake of Captain Cook" and "Journeys through 19th Century London"
[Thanks, Patrick Selten]