CD-i is a region-free standard which means in principle you can play USA CD-i titles on European CD-i players and vice versa. But that doesn't mean the contents of all discs is the same. In fact, in certain cases we've seen extra black borders when we play an early CD-i title on a PAL CD-i system. What happens here? CD-i member Aydan Watkins: "I have a question regarding PAL games. When I play Tetris it has black Borders Whicj is standard for PAL 50hz games. However my PAL copy of Micro Machined has No black borders. Is this normal? I assume micro machines was pal optimised or do all PAL games not have black borders normally?"
While we never checked all CD-i games, we noticed that European CD-i titles have small black borders when you play on a USA CD-i player. First things to check: Is your Tetris copy a European copy or a USA copy? Next, is your CD-i player European or is it a USA type? Micro Machines was only released in Europe, so there is only one copy. In principle CD-i is region-free, but it is normal that small black borders show up when trying to play a game of a different region. Usually it depends on how the game has been optimised, but NTSC games running on a PAL television will often have black borders around it as far as I can remember, CD-i member Richard Troupe adds.
So basically most PAL CD-i games have borders unless they’re specifically optimised. I think it’s safe to say some pal games are optimised for full screen and others maybe aren’t. Micro machines is full screen pal as it’s made in the UK. Also international tennis open is also full screen on pal as it was made by infogrames who are french. One is encoded in 60hz not in 50hz. The cd-i is a region free system but still has to adapt to the TV signal. Atari had the same issue with the early Jaguar games althought the system is region free the video signal so early released like Dino Dudes has one black strip on the buttom of the screen because on the cartridge there is only the NTSC version of the game. Later releases have both NTSC and PAL format on the cartridges so they will adapt the TV signal without issue.
Early CD-i releases (like Connect 4 or Tetris. For example: it seems some UK English releases were just the American versions rather than releasing a whole new batch they just reused the same stock. That’s a theory anyway as every single English copy of Tetris in PAL regions has he 690 code on them) in fact share the same catalogue number on their USA and European version. This indicates the contents of the disc is also the same. Only after certain years, separate European versions were created, probably also optimized for the PAL standard. Tetris is an early CDi game as that would explain why it was just the same data released worldwide. It seems some titles had Pal optimisation for full screen and others don’t then!
[Thanks, Aydan Watkins, Richard Troupe, Arethius RGC, Retrostuff]
