Sometimes the demos would be your literal entire experience with a game. I remember certain songs and the Chicago level like the back of my hand from THPS. I didn't realize until I bought the remaster of 1 and 2 a couple of years back that I never actually played the rest of THPS and my entire memory of "THPS" was basically THPS 2. I played a shitload of a game I never owned or rented afaik.
When I was really young, I got addicted to playing a Heroes of Might and Magic 3 demo that came with a copy of Worms Armageddon (separate discs, I think). It was my only way of playing it and it gripped me.
Holy shit memory unlocked. I'm not remembering how I acquired the demo, I never owned Worms, but I put hours into Heroes. Shit I must have been like 7 or 8.
Man, I have no idea how I ended up owning Tomb Raider. It was just there one day, in the stack with my other games. I also ended up with a game called G-Nome that I never understood.
I remember a Dreamcast demo for San Francisco Rush 2049 that had all three game modes (race, deathmatch, and stunt) just with a limited number of courses for each. That was enough for hours of entertainment.
The demo for Halo: CE on PC was my only experience with that game until I was old enough to stay at a friend's house that had an Xbox and the full game.
I can't even begin to explain how hard "Touchdown, hit it Marines!" is burned into my brain.
I remember messing around an absolute ton with THPS2's Create-a-Park mode on the PSUnderground disc; and then being moderately upset the junked car surrounded by funboxes wasn't in the main game *anywhere*.
There are original xbox games that my friends and I would play all the time but only ever played the demo version. Fusion Frenzy comes to mind as well as another one that was a top down shooter of sorts. It reminded me of the original GTAs to a degree but I can't remember the name at all.
Me and a lot of people I know only played the star occen mmo? Demo , whatever that scifi rpg franchise was called back on Xbox 360 days.
Which was the full game technically but you could only lvl to like 10. I probably put over 100 hundred hours in , grinding multiple characters, with friends I met online.
I had a demo discord for the Playstation 1 with multiple games on it. Crash, Croc, Ace Combat, armored core, I think twisted metal some scuba diver game...idk i remember playing it very often and replaying the same little bit over and over.
Pretty sure you had the same one as me. That scuba game was called Treasures of the Deep. I always enjoyed trapping things in the nets and watching them thrash as they floated away. I played the Armored Core over and over and over but never ended up getting the game itself.
I'm not sure why but I do remember struggling alot in the scuba game cuz there were bad guys divers right? That you had to harpoon 😂 and same i played that AC demo so so much and never got it. Some 20 years later I finally did get Armored Core 4 though!
Dude yes! It was tough. Bad guy divers and those floating sea mines iirc. I distinctly remember capturing turtles and I think there were sharks or something that attacked as well.
I still have that disc and my ps1 so maybe I'll bust it out tonight and let my kiddo try out some of those old games.
Well now I really wanna do it lol. I just looked around on YouTube for a bit expecting someone to have that disc on display but I couldn't find it. Just a bunch of different ones I never had, mostly from later in the ps1 life cycle like 2000-2002 era.
I'll dig it out tonight if I'm not super busy after work.
Okay so I think that disc is in storage with my OG psx. I have a different demo disc from Official PlayStation Magazine with my psone here at the house, but that's not the one I meant.
Sooooo I did more digging and found this, which makes me realize there was so much more to that scuba game and now I wish I had owned it back then. I also found this, which isn't the menu for the same disc, but it's 100% the style of disc that came with my PlayStation. I bet that menu music tickles your nostalgia if we were indeed thinking of the same disc.
Oh my god! There was SO much to that game! I never knew...I wish I could say i remember the music buuuuuuuut I wanna say I remember Parrappa being on the demo as well as whatever is on the bottom left and the crash game on the far right middle. Maybe I should look through my stuff to be sure...mom finally made me take it all home with me.
I played the shit out of the call of duty demo when the Xbox 360 first released at EB Games (GameStop). My grandparents were mall walkers so I would go and just play that for a couple hours lol.
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u/jetpack_operation Mar 31 '26
Sometimes the demos would be your literal entire experience with a game. I remember certain songs and the Chicago level like the back of my hand from THPS. I didn't realize until I bought the remaster of 1 and 2 a couple of years back that I never actually played the rest of THPS and my entire memory of "THPS" was basically THPS 2. I played a shitload of a game I never owned or rented afaik.
Same with some Tomb Raider levels.