The CD-i (Compact Disc Interactive) was launched by Philips in October 1991. It is not exactly a game console: Philips presented it as an interactive multimedia player for the living room, able to play audio CDs, Photo CDs, encyclopaedias, language courses, Video CDs with an expansion cartridge — and, incidentally, games. The CD-i standard was co-defined by Philips and Sony as an extension of the Compact Disc specifications.
Sold at a very high price at launch and shipped with a remote control poorly suited to action games, the machine never found a gaming audience. Its library is very uneven, dominated by full-motion video games, educational titles and board game adaptations. It nevertheless remains famous for three curiosities born of an agreement between Philips and Nintendo: Hotel Mario and the two Zelda games, Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda's Adventure, whose animated cutscenes became a cultural phenomenon long after their release.
Philips released the CD-i in many models, from the 210 living room unit to portable and professional versions, and also sold it as a training and demonstration terminal for businesses. It was discontinued in 1998 after a resounding commercial failure, but the platform remains a fascinating witness of the "multimedia everywhere" era.
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro cdi2015 | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro same_cdi | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
The CD-i is not available on RPi3, RPi Zero 2 nor on the OGA/OGS/RG351 handhelds. same_cdi is PC-only.
The default emulator is cdi2015, available on RPi4, RPi5, RG353 and PC. same_cdi, derived from MAME, only runs on PC and acts as a fallback. Both cores support CRT output. Neither netplay nor softpatching is available on this system.
RetroAchievements are not supported on this system. A controller is mandatory; mouse and light gun are optional — several CD-i games, shooters in particular, play much better with a pointer.
CD-i emulation remains delicate: depending on the title, the image format and the BIOS used, a game may refuse to start or show display and sound glitches. If a game does not work with cdi2015, try same_cdi on PC, and vice versa.
| File name | Description | MD5 | Emulators |
|---|---|---|---|
cdimono1.zip |
CD-i Mono-I BIOS — mandatory; three revisions accepted | ce590c4787460161359f2b680136cb60 / bbe6636ac11d3744f0710e8e820187e7 / 1a7c3c98c46555ff5fc93ee3feae4b47 | cdi2015, same_cdi |
cdibios.zip |
Generic CD-i BIOS (optional) | 9fd6b277cd877d51426427a33d1d19bb | same_cdi |
cdimono2.zip |
CD-i Mono-II BIOS (optional) | 2ac8cd5bb23287e022ca17d616949255 | same_cdi |
Place your BIOS files like this:
/recalbox/share/bios/cdi/
├── cdimono1.zip
├── cdibios.zip
└── cdimono2.zip
cdimono1.zipis mandatory for both emulators: without it, no game will start. It is a MAME-style romset: keep it zipped, do not rename it and do not unzip it. Three BIOS revisions are accepted.
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/cdi/
Supported extensions per emulator:
| Emulator | Extensions |
|---|---|
| cdi2015 | .chd .cmd .zip |
| same_cdi | .chd .iso .cue |
The .chd format is the only one recognised by both cores: it is the one to favour, all the more so as it compresses CD images losslessly and preserves audio tracks. Since CD-i games mix data and audio, a .cue image with its tracks is preferable to a plain .iso when using same_cdi.
Isos in Redump format are strongly recommended: they are the reference dumps for the CD-i, and the ones giving the best results once converted to
.chd.