Retro Tech Tuesday: Philips CD-i

I don't know why, but as a kid, the Philips CD-i always intrigued me. I don't know if it was the concept of a CD player that also had movies and games, the fact that it was duplicating a lot of what computers did at the time in a fraction of the space, or was it perhaps, the strange Phil Hartman ads for the console?

From Wikipedia:

Early software releases in the CD-i format focused heavily on educational, music, and self-improvement titles, with only a handful of video games, many of them adaptations of board games such as "Connect Four". Later attempts to develop a foothold in the games market were rendered irrelevant by the arrival of cheaper and more powerful consoles, such as the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. CD-i is noted for the release of several spinoffs of popular Nintendo video games featuring characters typically seen only on Nintendo consoles, although those games were not developed by Nintendo. Hotel Mario was a puzzle game that featured Super Mario Bros. characters.

Yeah, I think it may have been the bizarre ads...