the digital video version of 'Rise of the Robots'

One of the few games which you can play with two people simultaneously on CD-i is Rise of the Robots. A fighting game, converted to almost every console from that time. Pete told me i was wrong noticing that this game doesn't use a DVC at all, although it is displayed on the back. I'm still not convinced, as i have played the game both with and without the DVC and absolutely did not notice any difference. Yet Erronous connected a serial terminal to the CD-i player and looked at the memory used while running "Rise of the robots". It appears Rise of the Robots uses 1341.06k which is more than the base-case memory. Unfortunately he can't repeat this with the DVC removed, because it is not possible to start a command shell without the cartridge.

On the other hand, this is Pete’s story: “I'll have to dig it out and check, I know it DID use the DV ram for quite a lot of stuff but there were 2 versions done, one utilising the DV and one not. As far as I remember at the last minute Philips decided to change the way everything worked and I had to do a new version (and there were several different ones) and all the "DV extras" got dropped than at REALLY the last second they wanted something back so I had to hack something in. It's so long ago though I can't remember what it was and maybe the version they took as final didn't utilise DV cart but the packaging was already done. Like I said above I'm just not sure what the extra ram was used for in the end, might've been something to do with sound effects but that's just a guess. I do remember the FULL DV version had scrolling animating backgrounds but there were some other extras as well and memory fails me once again when it comes to those. It's quite possible that it doesn't even use all that memory, if there is indeed no difference with the game with or without the DV cart (still need to check myself) then there's probably just a malloc in there for DV ram, might not get used for anything. I doubt if the full DV version will ever surface as afaik it never went out of the office. Theres always the possibility that I've got an old cd somewhere with it on but I used to be really bad at labeling my cd's and have got a huge pile of them somewhere and have no idea whats on them Wink just depends on if I ever took a version home with me or not, if I still have the cd and can I find it Smile I just wish I had something better to work with on ROTR, it was converted from the amiga/pc versions which were written by guys who knew nothing about game coding and therefore did everything the wrong way, wasted loads of ram, didn't have the robots jump over each other and turn around (how badly did that suck) etc. I wanted to write it from scratch but wasn't allowed to Sad Still, maybe one day I could do a new version of it or something hehe RISE 2003”

“A full DV version sounds very interesting, maybe Philips felt that the base case version would reach a wider audience, seeing as that the DV catridge wasnt installed in nearly all players.. larger audience=more sales..”

Overall the game is slow-paced, but still interesting. The graphics are great, and character movement is quite good in high res. It’s rather short, and you can’t save a game, which makes it a little frustrating at times. It’s definately not the best version of all the conversions, but an interesting game nonetheless. Brian’s soundtrack fits the game very well. A review will follow soon!

Ofcourse we remember Pete Dabbs as the writer of the CD-ICE Emulator, and he once was a regular on the CD-i Forum. However, his work overloaded him but I still hope to welcome him back anytime soon ;)