Codemasters seemed quite focused on providing innovations for multi-player based games. It might have even been Micro Machines that started the specific 4-Player Megadrive cartridge. I'm not sure if your familiar with the technology but basically the megadrive cartridge came with 2 additional gamepad ports for a total of 4 possible players including the standard MD jacks. The CD-i version had its own interpretation based around the hardwares limitations. Using a single gamepad for two-player action. Quite a unique approach! Did this come from Codemasters or was it your own answer to the troublesome two-player question faced by CD-i hardware?
Ashley Hogg: Micro Machines is obviously the type of game that's more fun against a friend (or several), so Codemasters really wanted to incorporate multiplayer in the CD-i version. In fact, I think at the time they had been very keen on adopting the rules of an internal design document which insisted all games have a simultaneous multiplayer aspect. Certainly with Micro Machines that made sense. We were primarily thinking of the then-new CDi-450 unit, which Philips were hoping would position them more in gaming territory along with Sega and so on. One console-esque controller was what the unit came with, so I think it was David Darling who suggested just letting the cars auto-accelerate and share the 2 sides of the gamepad to control just the steering.
The J-Cart was a superb idea in my opinion, and was only made possible by the fact that Codemasters had successfully won a court battle from Sega and continued manufacturing their own cartridges. Technologically I don't think it was very difficult to implement - but everyone else was buying their carts from Sega and you weren't going to get any such feature from them. I can't actually remember if it was designed to be used first for Pete Sampras Tennis or Micro Machines 2, but I think it really helped both. Micro Machines 2 did offer the pad-sharing idea, and it predates the CD-i Micro Machines by several months, so I guess that's where Dave Darling took the inspiration. They had already tried and tested it.
The J-Cart was a superb idea in my opinion, and was only made possible by the fact that Codemasters had successfully won a court battle from Sega and continued manufacturing their own cartridges. Technologically I don't think it was very difficult to implement - but everyone else was buying their carts from Sega and you weren't going to get any such feature from them. I can't actually remember if it was designed to be used first for Pete Sampras Tennis or Micro Machines 2, but I think it really helped both. Micro Machines 2 did offer the pad-sharing idea, and it predates the CD-i Micro Machines by several months, so I guess that's where Dave Darling took the inspiration. They had already tried and tested it.
[Thanks, Ash Hogg]