Worlds first Interactive CD
Back in 1995 an opportunity came up to do a world first… combine a popular computer game AND digital music onto one CD. The game was an unlockable Uniloc-enabled copy of shoot-em-up DOOM and the music of the popular pop group Kulcha.
The idea was that the CD was purchased for the music and every buyer would get the opportunity to install and try the game DOOM as an added bonus. The game would only work for the first few levels of the game but would have to be purchased by getting an unlock code over the phone to play the game fully. It really worked well because the same kids that got into Kulcha aslo were only starting to get into computer games.
The album was set to be released by Warner Music but there was one big problem. When a CD player started playing it would try to play the game data which sounded like million gnats flying out your speakers and did real speaker damage.
A simple invention that I unfortunately never patented was the idea of hiding the game data from the CD players index, thereby tricking the player to see the fist track as the fisrt music track rather than the data. It worked. And the Kulcha CD was a success.
The CD was used as a lead component in a presentation to visiting Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levin, and resulted in an invitation to Ric to come visit the fortune 100 company later that year.
Add comment May 17, 2007
