Editing Philips CD-i emulators

{{Infobox console
|title = Philips CD-i
|logo = CD-i-910-Console-Set.png
|developer = Philips, Sony, Magnavox
|type = [[:Category:Home consoles|Home video game console]]
|generation = [[:Category:Fourth-generation video game consoles|Fourth generation]]
|release = December 3, 1991
|discontinued = 1998 
|introductory price = {{Inflation|USD|799|1991}}.
|predecessor = [[Magnavox Odyssey² emulators|Philips Videopac + G7400]]
|emulated = {{~}}<abbr title="Many full-motion CD-i games still can't be emulated; see the &quot;Accessories&quot; section.">[[#Accessories|*]]</abbr>
}}

'''CD-I''' ('''Compact Disc Interactive'''), is a disk format and media player developed and released by [[wikipedia:Philips|Philips]]. The Main system ran on Microware [[wikipedia:OS-9|OS-9]] and had a Philips SCC68070 CPU at 15.5 MHz with 1MB of RAM. Some Third-Party manufacturers made their own media players based on the CD-I format & technology.

The CD-I was never meant to be a video game console, it was designed to be a "Interactive Multimedia" CD player, an expensive toy that people with money don't mind buying, using it a few times and forgetting they even bought it when something new catches their attention. When the system started to show signs of being a major flop for Philips, they pivoted the direction of the CD-I into the uncharted territories of video games.

CD-I is mainly known nowadays for having games based on Nintendo [[wikipedia:Intellectual property|IP]], such as Mario and Zelda, due to previously having tried to develop a CD add-on for the [[Super Nintendo emulators|SNES]]. Their takes on Nintendo intellectual property were so infamously terrible that you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't think of them when you mention the CD-i. However, there were a few cult classic games for the system.  
__TOC__

==Emulators==
<div style="max-width:100%; overflow:auto;">
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"
! scope="col"|Name
! scope="col"|Platform(s)
! scope="col"|Latest Version
! scope="col"|<abbr title="Digital Video Cartridge">[[#Digital Video Cartridge|DVC]]</abbr>
! scope="col"|[[libretro]]
! scope="col"|<small>[https://retroachievements.org/gameList.php?c=42 Retro<br/>Achievements]</small>
! scope="col"|<abbr title="Free/Libre and Open-Source Software">FLOSS</abbr>
! scope="col"|Active
! scope="col"|[[Recommended emulators|Recommended]]
|-
! colspan="10"|PC / x86
|-
| [https://docs.libretro.com/library/same_cdi/ Same CDi<br/><small>same_cdi_libretro</small>]
| align=left|{{Icon|Windows|Linux|macOS|FreeBSD}}
| [https://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/ libretro core]
| {{✗}}[https://github.com/libretro/same_cdi/issues/7 *] ||{{✓}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✓}} ||{{✓}} ||{{✓}}
|-
| [[MAME]]
| align=left|{{Icon|Windows|Linux|macOS|FreeBSD}}
| [http://www.mamedev.org/release.html {{MAMEVer}}]
| {{✗}} ||{{✓}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✓}} ||{{✓}} ||{{✓}}[https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/philips/cdi.cpp *]
|-
| [http://www.cdiemu.org/ CD-i Emulator]
| align=left|{{Icon|Windows}}
| [https://www.cdiemu.org/download/cdiemu-0.5.3-beta7.zip {{CD-i EmulatorVer}}]<br/>[http://tgames.fr/tgames/cdiemu-0.5.3-beta4-PatchedV1.2.zip 0.5.3 beta 4 (Patched)]
| {{~}}[https://www.cdiemu.org/site/dvcarts.htm *] ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✓}} ||{{~}}
|-
| [https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/ TinyCDi]
| align=left|{{Icon|Windows}}
| [https://emulationrealm.net/downloads/file/1670-tinycdi 2009-10-28]
| {{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}}
|-
| [https://github.com/Stovent/CeDImu CeDImu]
| align=left|{{Icon|Windows|Linux}}
| None (pre-alpha)
| {{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✓}} ||{{✓}} ||{{✗}}<small> (WIP)</small>
|-
| [https://web.archive.org/web/20010926085947/http://cdice.emuhq.com:80/ CD-iCE]
| align=left|{{Icon|Windows|Linux}}
| [https://www.zophar.net/cd-i/cd-ice.html 2001-08-20]
| {{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}}
|-
! colspan="10"|Mobile / ARM
|-
| [https://docs.libretro.com/library/same_cdi/ Same CDi<br/><small>same_cdi_libretro</small>]
| align=left|{{Icon|Android|iOS}}
| [https://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/ libretro core]
| {{✗}} ||{{✓}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✓}} ||{{✓}} ||{{✓}}
|}
</div>

===Comparisons===
;[[MAME]]
:This [[multi-system emulators|multi-system emulator]] includes a driver for the CD-i, although support is incomplete as it still has no [[#Digital Video Cartridge|DVC emulation]].<ref>https://github.com/mamedev/mame/issues/1170</ref> Starting the game from disc is recommended; this can be done with the built-in frontend by picking the specific game or through a soft reset after mounting the disc. MAME is also currently the only program to provide CD-i emulation through a [[libretro]] core, which makes it the easiest and the most stable method of emulating the CD-i for now. Compared to CD-i Emulator 0.5.3 beta 4, MAME is generally easier to control and can better emulate the audio for some games.
:;[https://docs.libretro.com/library/same_cdi/ Same CDi]
::SAME CDi is a S(ingle) A(rcade) M(achine) E(mulator) for libretro, just like [https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Neo_Geo_and_variants#Emulators NeoCD <small>(neocd_libretro)</small>] forked from MAME libretro, which is in turn a fork of MAME. It includes only the Philips CD-i driver, and simplifies the loading of CD content to provide a 'plug and play' experience.
:;[https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/ TinyCDi]
::An unofficial build of [[MESS]] from 2009 made by one of MAME's active developers, Haze. This build is named such that it only focuses on the CD-i. It uses a fixed game list. Some games have more issues than they have on the official MAME build.
;CD-i Emulator
:This emulator by CD-i Fan is currently closed-source donationware, with vague plans to move to [[Licensing#Open-core software|open-core]] at a future date.<ref>https://github.com/cdifan/cdiemu</ref> The public beta releases unfortunately handle free trial timing in a way that makes them unusable (without cracking, anyway) after set calendar dates; for the latest beta, 0.5.3 beta 7, this will be at 2025/01/01. The current betas do have proof-of-concept [[#Digital Video Cartridge|DVC emulation]], although compatibility may still be an issue.<ref>http://www.cdiemu.org/site/relnotes.htm</ref> Despite the long time between releases, this emulator is still in active development as of April 2023, with work being done on the next version (likely called 0.6) that reportedly supports most of the DVC games and also has several other improvements.<ref>https://www.theworldofcdi.com/cd-i-emulation/cd-i-emulator-053beta5-titles-compatibilities/</ref>
;CeDImu
:A much newer independent project being actively developed by Stovent, largely based on an unofficial documentation set written by CD-i Fan (the creator of CD-i Emulator).<ref>https://github.com/cdifan/cdichips</ref> As of July 2021, it's progressing quickly but still in pre-alpha, so don't expect it to boot any games just yet.
;CD-iCE
:One of the earliest CD-i emulators. It doesn't need a BIOS, but it was only developed to be able to play Rise of the Robots and does not support anything else.

==Accessories==
===Digital Video Cartridge===
The one and only expansion card officially sold for the CD-i was the '''MPEG Digital Video Cartridge''' (DVC), a hardware MPEG-1 video decoder which enabled CD-i Digital Video and [[wikipedia:Video CD|Video CD]] playback as well as enhanced FMV capabilities for games that support it (similar to the [[Sega_Saturn_emulators#Hardware_features_and_accessories|Sega Saturn's Video CD Card]]). As of April 2023 there is no emulator that fully supports the DVC, and several games that rely on MPEG-1 video decoding will be pretty much unplayable without that support. To know whether your chosen games require the DVC, either check the "DVC status" column of [[wikipedia:List of CD-i games#Games|Wikipedia's CD-i game list]], or check [https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/hash/cdi.xml MAME's CD-i hash list] for games where the list includes <code>&lt;sharedfeat name="compatibility" value="DVC" /&gt;</code>.

:See [[Home_Media_Player#Emulators|this dedicated page]] for more information about home media playback support for emulation softwares.

==References==
<references />

[[Category:Consoles|!CD-i]]
[[Category:Home consoles|!CD-i]]
[[Category:Fourth-generation video game consoles|!CD-i]]
[[Category:Philips CD-i emulators]]