I’m not super-nostalgic for demo discs, but back in the day they offered up dozens of hours of fun for the low cost of nothing. I know Squaresoft did this, such as getting a few levels of Parasite Eve if, say, you bought Final Fantasy VIII. Once in a while, a studio might include demos as bonuses if you purchased a main product. Some I got from various magazines, or game stores, or even Pizza Hut.
#THE MERCHANT WILDERMYTH PC#
Unlike PC Gamer’s demo discs, I never had a regular source of discs for consoles. I wouldn’t buy a Tony Hawk game, but I would certainly boot up a free demo to kill an hour or two. And I appreciate that it expanded my gaming adventures past titles I would actually pay for. I played several of these demo discs to death, especially in the period of my life where disposable income was a laughable concept.
#THE MERCHANT WILDERMYTH FULL#
In fact, I’m willing to bet that a majority of players who used these discs weren’t doing so to try-before-you-buy - they were engaging with these mini-games as if they were the full product. Studios saw it as shrewd marketing, but us players saw it as a whole lot of free gaming. By stripping a title down to a single level or so, companies could squeeze several titles onto a single disc and distribute them all over the place. This pre-internet period for consoles was a boom era for the demo disc. So players had limited options when it came to accessing new titles: Pony up a full price based on reviews and/or word-of-mouth, try it over at a friend’s house, rent it, or snag a demo disc from somewhere. I mean, technically the PS2 could be kitted out with a modem for like two games, but for all intents and purposes, it wasn’t online.
The earlier disc-based consoles, especially the PlayStation 1 and 2, weren’t internet machines capable of downloading demos and games. But those weren’t the only demo discs on the scene, and today I wanted to cast my memory back to the console equivalent. Back in 2020, I mused about how much I loved the PC Gamer demo discs, including their thematic CGI menus.
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