The Memory Works

Welcome to the micropage for the The Memory Works series! This should be your one-stop shop for info relating to this duology of obscure CD-i titles!

Sections:

Info Table -- What The Hell Is This? -- The Memory Works: For Names and Faces -- The Memory Works: For Facts and Figures

Info Table

What The Hell Is This?

Good question!

During its existence, Animation Magic partnered with several noteworthy developers and publishers to help produce, design, and/or program titles for them. These included Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra On-Line, Simon & Schuster Interactive, and Compact Disc Incorporated. Compact Disc Incorporated was a publisher that seemingly focused on health-related titles for the CD-i. While Animation Magic had worked with Compact Disc Inc. on a previous title - Pyramid Adventures Episode 1 - it was believed that was their only collaboration.

It wasn't. At some point, Compact Disc Incorporated collaborated with (or were bought out by, or were renamed to) the Practical Memory Institute, which focused on helping improve memory and cognitive abilities through products and services. Animation Magic would team up again with Compact Disc Inc. and the PMI by producing titles that revolved around improving one's memory. Enter The Memory Works!

(It should be noted that there are two more titles in the series - Best Intentions and Nature of Memory - but it's unlikely that Animation Magic was involved with them.)

The Memory Works: For Names and Faces

The first title was The Memory Works: For Names and Faces, and was released for the Philips CD-i around 1997. As the name implies, the purpose of the title was to help its user/player improve their recognition of faces and names. It achieved this by sharing multiple mnemonic, strategies, and tricks to help memorize faces and names, as well as certain activities and animations that could be played and watched.

Animation Magic's trademark art style is present throughout the game. The menu sprites (left) bear a striking resemblance to the sprites that Animation Magic would cook up for their Zelda games and Pyramid Adventures. More notably, the "Name & Face Mnemonics" animations (center and right) use a very familiar-looking art style, as well as Animation Magic's stock sound effects too. This is especially apparent when in motion:

While there technically isn't any hard proof that Animation Magic developed this title, its art styles and the studio's previous Pyramid Adventures work heavily imply their involvement.

The Memory Works: For Facts and Figures

It's time for a bit of a mystery.

There's a website listed on the packaging for the first The Memory Works title, memoryzine.com. This is the site for the Practical Memory Institute and (possibly) Compact Disc Incorporated. Despite being present on a 1997-dated disc, the earliest known archive of the site is from January 1998. It luckily has the page dedicated to The Memory Works archived, and listed alongside For Names and Faces is a second, seemingly contemporary title: For Facts and Figures.

This second entry is NOT a CD-i title, as there is no Compact Disc Interactive logo on the only known photograph of its cover and its catalog number is MWCDR-FF-01 instead of MWCDi-02. It's most likely a Windows-compatible program, given the computing scene around its release. For Facts and Figures would've helped its users better memorize items in a list (think a shopping list or the key points in a speech) as well as numbers. It would've provided strategies and tricks like the first entry, and featured a "Acronym Maker" for the lists (left) and "Number Cruncher" for the numbers (right).

It's unknown if Animation Magic worked on this title or not, as we only have two screenshots of what the game's menus looked like (pictured above) and the only way to confirm their involvement would be to check its animations and spritework out...

Needless to say, this is one of my most wanted pieces of CD-i Nintendo-adjacent media. It's such an interesting anomaly that's worthy of preservation just like its earlier entry. For Facts and Figures wasn't a rare or limited pressing - it was constantly being offered for sale from the store on the Practical Memory Institute's website, which lasted from 1998 to early 2009.
Maybe one day, we'll find it!