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The 7th Guest on CD-i might have been a result of the Nintendo SNES CD-ROM deal with Philips

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The 7th Guest was a PC CD-ROM game and one of the very few early popular FMV titles that was not ported to many other platforms, like 3DO, Sega and other new CD based consoles. The only exception is an exclusive CD-i port. There might be a reason for this, as we discovered Nintendo bought the rights for an exclusive release for its upcoming SNES CD addon, but never used it. 

Now we discovered this statement is also spreaded by Kotaku: Kotaku published an interesting quote by former Virgin Interactive employee Steven Kent, around the same time that Nintendo was developing a CD-ROM add-on for their SNES console together with Sony and Philips. Nintendo was looking for games that could showcase the unique features of a SNES CD add-on. Virgin showed them The 7th Guest, "another breakout CD-ROM game that would release the next year. A puzzle game taking place in a haunted mansion created from pre-rendered 3D video sequences, 7th Guest was a whole bundle of clever technical tricks that added up to a very impressive-looking, but ultimately shallow game. But it was so good-looking that Nintendo wanted to secure it as an exclusive for its system." - according to Kotaku.


“We got a call one day from… Nintendo,” said a former Virgin Interactive employee in Steven Kent’s 2001 book The Ultimate History of Video Games. “They were trying to find games that would be appropriate for their CD-ROM drive that was eventually gaming to happen.” Virgin showed Nintendo The 7th Guest, and “within days” Nintendo was negotiating a deal to lock down the exclusive console rights to it. Nintendo ended up paying $US1 ($1) million for rights it never used, and The 7th Guest never came out on any consoles—except for Philips’ CD-i."

In the end, we still believe the Nintendo SNES CD-ROM story is the reason why Sony eventually stepped out the CD-i adventure, and it is why Philips ended up being the sole developer of the CD-i format.


The essence why Philips was granted the use of Nintendo's software licenses (including The 7th Guest and in general Nintendo's IP) is merely a result of a war of patents and patent violation, rather than negotiations of the SNES CD-ROM deal and Sony was in a weaker position. These pressure issues contributed to a break-up. 

[Thanks, Kotaku]

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