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With the UEFA Champions League 2020 final tonight in Portugal, it's nice to look back at some early UEFA Champions League titles that were published by Philips Media. Philips Media was one of the sponsors of the UEFA cup back in the Nineties. While CD-i never received any officially licensed football/soccer titles, it was actually pretty close. First, Philips Interactive Media released the CD-i title Striker Pro officially as World Cup 1994 Striker Pro, but after the first batch Philips lost the license and it was not allowed to use the logo on the CD-i cover. With the UEFA Champions League starting these years and with Philips as one of the official sponsors, Philips tried it again with official UEFA titles on CD-i and CD-ROM. One of them was the UEFA Champions League Preview CD-i disc of season 1995-1996. On CD-i however, due to technical limitations, the contents were limited to a reference and video disc: It included information about the teams, the top players, the schemes, the matches, the history and some trivia content, developed by HyperVision. No true soccer game.
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Philips had a good relation with software developer Krisalis and they created a Champions League soccer game, but only for PC CD-ROM the next season, in 1996-1997:
This game was developed by Krisalis and published by Philips Media. The intention was to release a conversion on CD-i as well, as Philips had the license and the software team, but due to technical limitation it was not possible to convert the same game.
However, krisalies went back to the drawing board and created an alternative exclusively on CD-i, with inspiration to the great Sensible Soccer titles of before. The game was technically less impressive but it was technically feasable on CD-i. They received permission to release it but as the game did not meet the newest quality standards of the UEFA Champions League, Philips was not allowed to use the UEFA license on this title. In conclusion, Krisalis came up with the less promising title "Ultra CD-i Soccer"
Keep in mind Ultra CD-i Soccer would not have been developed without the UEFA Champions League!
[Thanks to Tom Steenbergen, former publisher of Philips Media Benelux]
