The Philips CD-i (1991) was sold as a home machine for everything: films, encyclopedias, children's books, and games. It cost a lot, its controller was made for pointing rather than playing, and it is remembered today for a handful of famous failures and a few good games.
We have about 200 CD-i games on My Abandonware. They are disc images, from 30 to 650 MB.
CD-i emulators
The CD-i is hard to emulate, and every good emulator comes from MAME. SAME CDi, a RetroArch core made only for the CD-i, is the easiest way in.
- SAME CDi: a core for RetroArch, on Windows, Mac and Linux. It holds only MAME's CD-i part, so it starts a game without the rest of MAME's machinery. Recommended.
- MAME itself runs the CD-i under the machine name
cdimono1. It works, but you have to learn MAME's way of starting a machine with a disc. - CeDImu (Windows, Linux): a separate emulator, written from scratch and still experimental. Worth a try when a game fails elsewhere.
The CD-i BIOS
Every CD-i emulator needs the machine's system files, kept in one zip named cdimono1.zip. Leave it zipped: MAME and SAME CDi read it as it is.
Put it in the system folder of RetroArch, in same_cdi/bios, or next to your game files. See our page about BIOS files to get it. Philips sold several CD-i models with different system files, but the one above runs the games of the home machines.
Running a game
Unzip the game and open its .cue file in the emulator. SAME CDi reads .cue with .bin, and .chd files.
If a game refuses to load from its .cue file, open that file in a text editor: CD-i discs are often written as CDI/2352, which MAME does not know. Change that word to MODE1/2352, save, and try again.
You can also turn a disc into one .chd file with chdman, the tool that comes with MAME. A .chd is smaller, holds the whole disc, and every CD-i emulator reads it.
The controller
The CD-i was made for a pointer, not a joystick: its controllers moved a cursor on the screen. In an emulator, your mouse is that pointer.
Many games ask you to click on things, so keep the mouse at hand even for action games. A gamepad works for the games that need a direction pad, but the two buttons of the CD-i are all you get.
I need help!
We do not provide support for running abandonware games. The CD-i has a small, patient community.
The Emulation General Wiki compares the emulators and their files. The New International CD-i Association holds a large archive about the machine, its models and its software.
Checked in October 2026 against each emulator's own documentation and, where it exists, its source code. Game counts and file sizes come from our own catalogue. These guides were drafted with the help of an AI assistant and checked by hand before publishing. If something here is out of date, tell us.