Philips invested a lot in software techniques to get the most about the CD-i hardware. In general it was known from the beginning that CD-i was not very powerful when talking about sprites. Also scrolling was an issue. It's for a reason why
The Apprentice was a vertical platformer: Horizontal scrolling was much harder to do rather than vertical scrolling. In the end, Philips got around most of their promised techniques: They managed (somehow) to
branch MPEG movies together to get a smooth loop of videos, as used in
The Lost Ride (and was demonstrated in Microcosm and Dead End (both remained in prototype status). They even got around the scrolling issues. In fact, even diagonal scrolling appeared to be possible. The only title that makes use of this is
Treasures of Oz, the final title by Philips in Santa Monica (Home of the
Funhouse and
Kaleidoscope studios)
"Treasures of Oz does not require a DV cartridge, and a diagonal pan is a scene where the camera seems to move in a diagonal direction. Easy to do in live action or traditional animation, but a difficult feat in CDi. Treasure of Oz is the only CD-i title that features diagonal scrolling, something that seemed impossible in the first years of CD-i."
