The Old School Otaku Lounge

As mentioned in the thread Anime and the Video8 format, I enjoy collecting anime releases on various media. Recently, I picked up a copy of Cyber City Oedo 808 on the Sirius MovieCD format.



MovieCDs, despite being on Compact Discs, are a completely different format from VideoCDs (VCDs), and cannot be played on a standard DVD/VCD player. Instead, MovieCDs were designed to be played on PCs using a special codec called the “MotionPixels” codec. This wasn’t the only attempt to put anime on CD-Rom; I’ve got releases of Dominion Tank Police and Roujin Z on CD-Rom as well. However, they just used a standard Jewel Case for the packaging.



MovieCDs, on the other hand, were distributed in very distinct packaging. The case looks very similar to the white clamshell packaging that Disney used in their VHS releases, but is thinner and just a bit taller. MovieCDs are easy to spot due to the consistent packaging and insert/label style. Size comparison below.



There weren’t too many titles released on MovieCD, but of those titles, there is a decent amount of anime. The (supposedly) complete list of MovieCD releases can be found here. While MovieCDs are pretty difficult to actually watch unless you have a vintage PC (and can cause problems if you attempt to install the MotionPixels codec on more recent operating systems), they are still a pretty interesting collectible and a nice artifact from the nineties.

I remember seeing MovieCDs years ago, and very specifically wanting a copy of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie that I could play on the PC, but never owned one until now.

Did anyone have experience with these during the nineties?

Oh wow. I barely remember seeing these at Computer City back in the day. So they won't run on modern computers, huh? That's a bummer. I do remember VCDs better. My friend from Hong Kong in college had a bunch of those.

greg wrote:Oh wow. I barely remember seeing these at Computer City back in the day. So they won't run on modern computers, huh? That's a bummer. I do remember VCDs better. My friend from Hong Kong in college had a bunch of those.

VCDs were definitely more common. It seems that they were much more popular in Asia, but we did have them in the U.S. as well. I still have quite a few anime VCDs (mostly the Speedy Dub of Dragon Ball), and even have the VCD adapter for my 3DO!

How was the quality of MovieCDs though? Better than VCD or worse? I remember when I used to try renting VCDs from Chinatown and I couldn't make it through more than 15 minutes before I gave up because of the terrible quality.

llj wrote:How was the quality of MovieCDs though? Better than VCD or worse? I remember when I used to try renting VCDs from Chinatown and I couldn't make it through more than 15 minutes before I gave up because of the terrible quality.

I'm really not sure which format had better quality...I really need an old PC to test this out!

I will say this in defense of VCDs: While many do seem to have low visual quality, I've also seen some that look pretty good. However, I'm not sure why that is (unless some of the source material is of lower quality).

Kame-Sen'nin wrote:I still have quite a few anime VCDs (mostly the Speedy Dub of Dragon Ball), and even have the VCD adapter for my 3DO!

Oh wow! I wasn't aware there was one, but then again, I never really knew much about the 3DO. I know that there's an MPEG add-on for the Sega Saturn that allows you to play VCDs, and there's a handful of games that are compatible with it. There's a special version of Lunar: The Silver Star Story Complete for the Saturn that uses this MPEG card to improve the game's FMV. Only about 8-10 Saturn games supported this MPEG hardware upgrade, IIRC.

Ah, wasn't Bubblegum Crisis released on something like this, too? I vaguely recall seeing ads in Animerica for "anime on CD" or something like that...I assume that it's either this format or something similar?

greg wrote:Oh wow! I wasn't aware there was one, but then again, I never really knew much about the 3DO. I know that there's an MPEG add-on for the Sega Saturn that allows you to play VCDs, and there's a handful of games that are compatible with it. There's a special version of Lunar: The Silver Star Story Complete for the Saturn that uses this MPEG card to improve the game's FMV. Only about 8-10 Saturn games supported this MPEG hardware upgrade, IIRC.

I've seen the Saturn card as well (it actually had a few variations), but haven't picked it up yet. I'd also like to get the MPEG add-on for my Amiga CD32.

usamimi wrote:Ah, wasn't Bubblegum Crisis released on something like this, too? I vaguely recall seeing ads in Animerica for "anime on CD" or something like that...I assume that it's either this format or something similar?

Hmm...I haven't seen Bubblegum Crisis on MovieCD or any similar format that I can remember, but that doesn't mean it's not out there. I guess I'll have to be on the lookout for this!

Kame-Sen'nin wrote:

llj wrote:How was the quality of MovieCDs though? Better than VCD or worse? I remember when I used to try renting VCDs from Chinatown and I couldn't make it through more than 15 minutes before I gave up because of the terrible quality.

I'm really not sure which format had better quality...I really need an old PC to test this out!

I will say this in defense of VCDs: While many do seem to have low visual quality, I've also seen some that look pretty good. However, I'm not sure why that is (unless some of the source material is of lower quality).

This weekend I was able to actually watch my Cyber City Oedo 808 Movie CD using a Virtual Machine running Windows 2000. After watching it in motion, I came to a simple conclusion: The Movie CD format does seem to look better than a standard VCD, but with a caveat: while it did not seem to suffer from as much macroblocking as a VCD, it does appear to have horizontal lines (they look like scanlines) running through the image:



I'd like to try this out on a CRT monitor instead of the LCD monitor I was viewing this on...I have a feeling the lines would not be as noticeable.

usamimi wrote:Ah, wasn't Bubblegum Crisis released on something like this, too? I vaguely recall seeing ads in Animerica for "anime on CD" or something like that...I assume that it's either this format or something similar?

After playing around with the Bubblegum Crisis screensaver CD-ROM I picked up, I wonder if it may be what you're thinking of. In addition to the screensaver, it has a video jukebox!

Oh that's possible!! I'll have to keep my eye out for ads in my old Animericas next time I'm flipping through em & see if that's what it was lol.