I remember playing the Metal Gear Solid demo (with the Japanese voice actors!) over and over again, wringing every last drop of gameplay from it. I probably clocked as much time on demo discs as I did on actual games on the PS1. In fact, you could get your hands on all kinds of games in a single disc! Instead of just reading a review in a magazine, or watching a 10-second clip of repeating video at the mall kiosk like a hobo, you could actually get your hands on a small chunk of a game and play it for yourself. But, for gamers raised on consoles to that point (like myself) the entire concept was revolutionary.
In all honesty, they weren’t some grand new invention, just a logical step forward from the shareware floppies of the PC world. You’d find them packaged in with gaming magazines, or on a rack next to the checkout at an EB Games for the same price as a single weekend rental, or through weird cross-promotional deals with Pizza-Hut (the guiltiest pleasure). But with that said, I really miss demo discs.įor the younger gamers among us, or those who missed the heady days of PS1 and pre-broadband internet PC gaming, demo discs were a phenomenon in the mid-’90s to early 2000s. Intellectually, I know that the past is usually not as good as you remember it was, and you never appreciate what you have in the present as much as you should. Decrying modern advancement in favor of some kind of nostalgic never-was is always a terrific way to seem out of touch. It’s hard not to sound like an old man when you go off on something like this.
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