Of all the games I expected to see ported to the Dreamcast in 2026, Hotel Mario just wasn’t one of them! I’ve written a little article about developer MoneyShift64’s kinda unusual project, which brings the infamous 1994 Philips CD-i game to Sega’s final console, complete with the original campaign, two-player support, VMU saving and, of course, those weird, weird animated cutscenes.
Hotel Mario has a reputation, and not the best one, but I find it really interesting that people are still finding new ways to preserve and revisit these corners of gaming history. There’s something really funny to me about seeing Mario and Luigi running around on a Dreamcast, especially considering Nintendo and Sega’s old rivalry. I’ve included some screenshots and links to the developer’s project for anyone curious enough to give it a try!
Yeah, to clarify Hotel Mario and the CD-i Zeldas are technically born from Nintendo’s “fuck you” to Sony in the 90s.
They had plans with them for a CD version and/or extension of the SNES, but they ended their partnership with Sony when Sony announced the thing publicly before Nintendo agreed on the licencing points.
To officialise that Nintendo quickly got a contract with Philips instead, because that was the other company that developed the CD. Nintendo ended up not using optic discs anyway in their console nor the next one, but the contract gave Philips free rein to use Mario and Zelda licences for 4 games, so they contracted a studio to make those on their CD-i.
All documentations I watched and read report it the other way; Nintendo had plans with Sony to create a CD addon for the Super Nintendo, called Nintendo PlayStation. But there was a problem for Nintendo, as they realized the contract was not in favor for Nintendo. All or most money for all sold games on the CD addon would go to Sony. This also meant Nintendo was helping to create a market competitor and to prevent that they changed plans without notifying Sony.
Then on the public show Nintendo suddenly announced the partnership with Phillips. Sony couldn’t showcase their CD addon later in the show and was hit with a punch by Nintendo. That was a very bad position for Sony to be in. Sony created their standalone console Sony PlayStation out of this misery, started big campaigns and snatched even Final Fantasy as an exclusive. Meanwhile the Philips deal didn’t workout well and the licensed games were trash. And the rest is history.
This is the story about the Nintendo-Sony breakup I know of.
Nintendo had probably planned to ditch them for a while, since they could not have reacted that fast otherwise. Chances are they would have announced the Philips thing when they did anyway, or maybe slightly later…
But in every report I’ve seen, Sony did showcase publicly first, and presumably without Nintendo’s agreement, on CES 1991. Nintendo’s partnership with Philips was announced literally the day after.
Must have been quite confusing for people attending CES in any case.