Those Were the Days is a weekly article in which Gamervision employees share video game-related memories. If you’ve got a story of your own to share, please do so! We love hearing from the community.

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Gather 'round children and I shall tell you a tale. The year was 1991. I was a lad of 15 years, and it was the month of December. At this time in my life, the most important things to me were a) video games, b) going to the movies and c) watching bad television. If you asked me which of the three was most important to me, I would have told you it depends on the day. The fact of the matter is that I spent a great deal of time in those days parked in front my television set.

One of my guiltiest pleasure was American Gladiators. Mind you, this is the old-school gladiators, with names like Nitro, Zap and Gemini (not to be confused with their modern knock-offs Wolf, Jet and Phoenix). It ran on Channel 17 from midnight to 1AM every Friday and Saturday night, and it was, at the time, amazing. Following every airing of Gladiators, Channel 17 would spend the rest of their broadcast day (until around 6AM) showing infomercials. Most of these fell into the category of "kitchen things I didn't care about", but there was one specific commercial that caught my eye. It was the half-hour spot for the Phillips CD-i.

NOTE: YouTube has the infomercial in three parts. I am only including part one. Click here for two, and here for three.

For those who have never heard of this wonderful invention, the CD-i was one of the first CD based movie/gaming systems to make its way into American homes. With a wholly underwhelming list of games and movies that would be formatted to its proprietary firmware, it would never really carve out a niche for itself in the marketplace, and was discontinued in 1998.

However, after seeing the infomercial for three straight weekends, I became convinced that this machine was the wave of the future. I mean, how could it miss? It played "Hollywood movies"! It had a "huge library" of games, including Laser Lords and International Tennis Open! The controller for the games was wireless! Clearly every home in America would shortly own one of these fantastic devices. I cannot convey to you how much this commercial really did its job on me. I was obsessed with the CD-i. I wanted to be the first kid in my school to have it, but I knew that at $700, it was no more than a pipe dream.

At around this same time, my family really wanted a video camera. Dad wanted to start capturing video of our sports events or recitals, while I, for my own personal use, would've been making home movies - horrible Quentin Tarantino-esque rip-offs maybe - but movies nonetheless. And since I was the expert on movie making equipment (maybe something of a nerd when it came to those types of things), when my mother decided that she was ready to invest in a camcorder for Chirstmas, she brought me along to help decide which brand was the best.

Our destination was an electronics expo at the Fort Washington Convention Center. We made our way from table to table, seeing the various merchants hawking their various electronic wares. After our initial scan of the room, we were leaning towards a Sony VHS Handicam, so that we would be able to watch what we shoot without running any wires.

Then we turned a corner, and I saw it. The Phillips CD-i. In the same room as me. And what's that? Marked down for the show to $650. I knew that there was no way that we would be leaving this show with a VHS camcorder.

I proceeded to give my mother the full sales pitch for the CD-i.  I told her about the movie playback, the stereo sound, the massive library of games. I am fairly confident that I knew more about this machine than the guy who was selling it. Maybe she was just in a good mood that day, or maybe I am a great salesman, because the next thing I knew, I was carrying the box of wonderment out to the car.

When our family opened it on Christmas morning, I was more than a little disappointed that no one seemed to share in my enthusiasm for our family stepping into a new era. It would take several months for the reality of the crappiness of this purchase to sink in, but to this day, my brothers and sisters have not let me live down the year I ruined Christmas.

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