I had played some Mario Hotel on my newly acquired Philips CD-i yesterday and was having fun on it, despite the lousy supplied controller. Then, the up on the d-pad seemed to stop working for no reason, so, thinking it might be a bit of grit or whatever, decided to open up the only CD-i controller I have; gingerly. The controller only has 4 screws however they are small hex type ones with a very small surface area, these are truly the screws from Hell! Used my Dremel to cut grooves into the two screws close to the surface to remove them with a normal flat screwdriver, but the other two were deep inside, so cut through thin and small pieces so could see what was inside, until managed to not only clear the screw area but the long plastic struts supporting them, to finally get to the controller board.
It isn't surprising it's too easy to press the wrong direction on the d-pad, the distance on the d-pad contacts are too large, so it's very easy for a different direction to be pressed. One other thing I noticed, was that the d-pad on the front of the controller indicates 8 way, in fact, it's only 4 way.
Ok, this confirms it, the CD-i will be my next console system i'll be modding! Judging by the size of the board potentially, it'll have to sit on top of a different CD system (like did with the GameCube and Amiga CD32); probably a DreamCast, not sure yet.
So, pics of the CD-i controller I was referring to:
Any idea, apart from dirt, why the controller would suddenly stop working on the "up" on the d-pad?