What are the best demos

Alternate thread title: demo discs SUCK… or do they???

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The Daggerfall demo was in some ways better than the full game. It restricted you to a small island that was still fairly generous in size and so felt like a more focused experience. It had a time limit, but it gave opportunity to replay the demo over with a different approach.

I liked imagining my own little short stories as I played through, usually ending with me getting banished from all settlements for unclear reasons and heading to the coast to curse my damned fate before the inevitable crash (the coastal area guaranteed save corruption)

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yeah thps on a pizza hut demo disk is probably why I skateboarded for like a decade

also SKATE. SKATE SKATE SKATE

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The Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 demo also came with the level editor included but couldn’t save anything so my friend and I had notebook sketches of all the levels we built in it to either rebuild in the demo or save into the full game. The full game then just had all the skaters eventually end up with max stats after going through story mode and it basically broke all of them.

Also I played way too much of the Ore no Ryouri demo as a pass the controller high score competition.

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I got a lot of mileage from all the Twisted Metal demos. They usually included one or two stages, which you could play for an entire match.

i was definitely gonna come in here and flip a table if knee deep in the dead was not mentioned itt. that shit was an entire GAME. i played it many times before ever getting the full game. naturally, though, since i pretty much got into pc gaming via shareware published by apogee + that started w/ commander keen, bio menace, wolfenstein 3d, etc. shareware was enough to provide a kid with no money ENDLESS stuff to play. from there it was on to pc gamer’s demo disks (back when they mailed their magazines out w/ 3.5" floppies!) and then of course when i got a psx a few years later the playstation underground subscription was dope.

wow! i had completely forgotten about that one, but i remember it now. i was into x-com and i just wanted to try more microprose strategy games. good stuff.

evidently the uk got panzer dragoon saga’s entire first disc as a ‘demo’… so, uh

anyway, back to id: q3test. come on.

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I somehow managed to forget that Keen IV was a demo. I mean it’s longer than some indie games, and actually feels more substantial than it’s supposed sequel, Keen V.

I still play Keen IV at some point about once a year.

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I never enjoyed Vagrant Story, but I sure did buy almost every game on the demo disc that they included with it. The Front Mission 3 demo on that disc was ~4 hours long. Another memorable disc was whatever PSX demo disc had Soul Reaver on it, for that rally racing demo I played for hours just to marvel at the car damage simulation.

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Yeah the Soul Reaver Demo was def in my rotation. Very impressive game on PS1.

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vagrant story is SO GOOD. i cannot recommend enough that everyone return to it and approach it with patience and a more appreciative eye for fine pixel art in three-dee

(front mission 3 also rules!)

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You only had 5 minutes before it booted you to the menu, but I played the demo for Carmageddon a lot. The full game may have actually been Too Much, really.

This was so badass. More multidisc JRPGs should have had the balls to do this.

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i played the fuck out of the final fantasy xii demo that was included in dragon quest 8

rascal is the best demo though
Rascal_Coverart

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In early XBLA days everything had a demo and I played a lot of Galaxy Wars on that 3min timer and MvC2 where you could only do versus with Cable, Ruby Heart, Captain America and Hayato. So I got pretty good with those guys (and could play the cabinet when I wanted more).

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was/is :bbcool:

the xbox halo demo had the best level in the game but also it came out in fucking 2002 so if you didn’t have halo by then anyway you were a chump

I can’t think of shareware like Keen IV as demos. It was the first free episode and then you could pay for the rest of the series. Them’s was games.

I had a PC Gamer disc from 1997 that had Tomb Raider and Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail demos that I played when no one else was home when I was 14 because um yeah.

My sisters and I played the hell out of a Croc demo on PC. I didn’t love it, but we were bad enough at it, enjoyed it enough, that we put hours into it without ever really wanting to buy the full game.

None of these are best demos. These are just best demo memories.

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the PC euro shooter TYRIAN’s demo was the entire first chapter with a new game + feature where you’d just keep playing with all your upgrades but now you could afford more of the high end weapons from the early game shops. I prolly looped it 50 times as a kid. It had so many secrets that looping it was just never boring.

It also had a real time (yet single keyboard) cannon fodder like game in an easter-egg you could access by typing DESTRUCT at the title screen. My brother and I’d played it on road trips on this really old IBM think pad and had an absolute blast.

Playing the full game later I realize that either I was VERY BAD as a child or the demo’s difficulty curve was steeper to make that one chapter feel more interesting. Either way, what ever. It was great.

Edit: I guess that was technically shareware?

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i had a demo disc with steambot chronicles and shadow of the colossus on it. the steambot demo had a pool mode that you could play as long as you wanted… i played so much free anime pool

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The standalone FFVIII demo disc was a moment for me. The demo is the siege of Dollet, which has amazing presentation and pacing. It really felt like a huge leap over other RPGs and I was already so hype for the game.

  • It somewhat famously has some good songs which were cut from the game and not re-used. And also some script changes. And playable Rhinoa. She’s doesn’t join until later in the final game. Probably put her in the Demo for marketing.
    https://youtu.be/7Ds7tMU60uY
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