In September last year we investigated on which type of CD-i player The Lost Ride on CD-i runs the best. We talked about the efforts that The Lost Boys went through, as 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. They developed a roller coaster with randomly generated mazes. Unfortunately, when Philips pulled the plug out of CD-i in 1996, this Scalectric tool was not completed yet. It was originally developed by Philips to use in Microcosm CD-i. 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. 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.
Thanks to the CD-i community we found out the following:
CD-i 210: runs flawless, no crashes
CD-i 220: runs flawless, no crashes
CD-i 450: Sometimes crashes and freezes
CD-i 470 & 490: Sometimes crashes and freezes
CD-i 660: Sometimes crashes and freezes
If you have more CD-i players to test, let's make this list even more complete. Thanks!
[Thanks, the whole CD-i community]