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Codemasters might be more famous today as part of EA and a maker of racing games, but once upon a time, the company was something of a trailblazer in terms of software and hardware.
The most memorable piece of kit connected with the firm is the Game Genie, one of the first 'cheat cartridges' produced for home consoles. Nintendo took issue with the device and even went to court (unsuccessfully) to prevent its sale, but it apparently wasn't the only device Codemasters had in mind for Nintendo's 8-bit NES.
As unearthed by Kara Jane Adams over on Threads, GamePro issue 8 reported that Codemasters was working on a CD-ROM drive for the console:
CD's for Nintendo? That's right! A company from the United Kingdom, Codemaster [sic], has developed an audio CD player for use with the Nintendo system. Samsung is manufacturing the hardware for this unusual unit and Camerica plans to distribute the product in the United States beginning this summer.
If you buy the CD player and the interface together, the cost will be $159.95. One CD containing two games is included with the unit. Gamers will also be able to purchase the Nintendo Interface separately for $44.95. This should enable anyone with an audio CD player to hook it up to their Nintendo.
Advantages to this system include game cost-one CD containing two or three games will be the same price as one traditional cartridge game, and one three-five meg game will cost less than a comparable cartridge game.
Camerica currently plans to have six CD's available in July when the unit is released-three CD's with two games each on them, and three CD's, each with a three-five meg game on them. No word yet on what the games will be and remember, they're not likely to be compatible with other CD ROM game players.
Since Nintendo has yet to announce any plans for an audio CD player or a CD ROM for their system we'll all be watching the development of this product with great interest.
It goes without saying that Codemasters never released a CD drive for the NES, but it did release a similar project for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, which included a special connection cable to link an Audio CD Player to the host platform's joystick port.
We spoke to Codemasters co-founder David Darling about the NES drive, and he says it's likely that Camerica – which worked with the company on the Game Genie – jumped the gun by making the announcement:
I don’t really remember it apart from a vague memory that maybe Camera announced it, but we hadn’t developed anything. I spoke to a couple of knowledgable Codies guys and none of us this Codies developed this, but perhaps it was discussed as an idea at the time. We don't think a prototype or product was ever developed but that Camerica announced it way too early.
It's clear where the inspiration for such a project came about; NEC released a CD-ROM drive for its PC Engine console in 1988, and Sega would follow suit a couple of years later with the Mega Drive / Genesis Mega CD add-on. Nintendo itself inked a deal with Sony to produce a CD drive for its SNES, but this project – dubbed 'Play Station' (note the space) – was scrapped when Nintendo abandoned the deal and joined forced with Philips, leaving Sony to lick its wounds and re-tool the project as the 32-bit PlayStation console.
Founded by Richard and David Darling in 1986, Codemasters is one of the oldest British game studios and has been responsible for developing and publishing many successful titles over the decades, including Brian Lara Cricket, Colin McRae Rally, Dizzy, Micro Machines and Project CARS.
The Darling siblings sold off their interest in Codemasters in 2007, and the company was acquired by EA in 2021 for $1.2 billion. David now runs 'hypercasual' developer Kwalee, which has published TENS!, Eternal Hope and Die by the Blade on consoles.
[source threads.net]
Comments 10
Pretty interesting honestly.
$160 for a CD drive in 1991? Are you sure this was CodeMasters and not Active Enterprises?
Remember that Active thought they could make a portable that played NES, Genesis and SNES games in 1993. If they could even have physically produced such a device, it would surely have been really expensive, really glitchy and operate for about five minutes before running out of batteries.
Very interesting, it sounds like this would work like a C64 cassette drive and be audio based rather than loading data digitally. I wonder how slow the loading times would be compared to cassettes and also "proper" CD-ROM drives?
I guess it would come with a RAM cartridge like the FDS and would need a cable coming out of the cartridge port so that the audio could be piped from the disc to the RAM cart.
To be fare Codemasters announced alot of stuff and it never seen the light of day. Just think though, if Codemasters did bring this out for the NES, maybe the Playstation would have never existed. 🤔
I love the way people's imagination worked back then.
"With the power of CDs, you can get TWO 5MB (or was that 5Mb?) games on one (700MB) CD!"
@N64-ROX Probably 5Mb, since bits were what almost everyone used in that context!
5 megabytes would be insanely huge (almost unheard-of, even on SNES). 5 megabits, on the other hand, would be in the same league as TMNT2 (512KB or 4Mb) and Kirby's Adventure (768KB or 6Mb).
The thought of having huge amounts of space on the NES is an interesting one, though. It should be possible to store a ton of audio data, and then flip through the banks 16KB at a time to stream music. Come to think of it, there was a demo ROM that did something like this on a small scale. It looped a segment of everyone's favourite Rick Astley song in impressively clear quality.
Though streaming proper PCM ties up the CPU for too long, and the NES's usual DPCM is always a bit muffled, so neither is ideal.
And running actual Redbook CD audio (like the Turbografx or Sega CD did) might only be possible on the Japanese Famicom, as the other regions' NES models had no way to pass audio through the cartridge port.
The Dizzy games were such an important part of my pre-adult life. For that, I'll be eternally grateful to The Codemasters.
Sounds like someone heard an idea in passing, and decided to run with it as a legit production announcement. ngl, I'd most likely do the same had it been me. 😅
imagine having to spent $45 extra for Nintendo Interface just to play audio disks.
@dimi That's not bad, if it also unlocks a wide library of CD-based games as well. Other systems would have you spend 2-3 times as much for a CD-ROM drive, instead of just tapping into your existing CD player.
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