I Miss The Demo Disc

Maybe it's a case of thick nostalgia goggles but I fucking miss the shit out of demo discs.

Just in case younger people stumble on this page and have no idea what the fuck that thing is in the picture, let me explain.  Demo discs were these things that would come for free on the front of a magazine.  In the case of a lot of people I knew, they would buy the magazine FOR the demo disc.  We didn't really give two fucks what some prick in "Official Playstation Magazine" had to say about Metal Gear Solid or whatever, we just wanted to try the damn game.

I remember every month I'd get a copy of some kind of gaming magazine from Tesco or whatever, run home, throw the magazine aside and pop in that disc.  On these discs there would usually be a few playable demos for big games on the horizon and video trailers for other ones.

But the best demo disks were for PS1 and the Sega Saturn.  The PS1 discs were fairly standard demo-wise, but they came with this thing called Net Yaroze, which is something I have talked about previously on this blog.  There's even a playlist of a few Net Yaroze games that I've showcased.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6Wc5_JYKZyN2TxkKlGKlyrOSHtQqPSTz
I have been meaning to do more, just no time and stuff

Net Yaroze games were FULL FUCKING GAMES that came on these disks and I would spend hours and hours playing these things.  Some of them were pretty good and most of them were kind of shitty but at the time getting free games was a big deal and I'd play it anyway.

Saturn Demo Discs were also really good because I seem to remember them having an absolutely crazy amount of content on them for a demo.  I remember playing Saturn demos for hours just because they seemed to go on for so damn long.  The best demo disc I ever encountered was for the Saturn and it had only one game on it.

For those that don't know, Panzer Dragoon Saga was a 4 disc long RPG.  The Saturn Magazines idea of a demo disc for this game was providing the ENTIRE first disc (and probably the longest one) for absolutely nothing.  What made this even better is that when you did get the full game, you could just use your save from the demo and carry on, it was fucking amazing.

Now demos are all digital and I can't be fucked with them and most of the demos that I have been arsed enough to try out just suck ass.  Bring back the demo disc and maybe some half decent gaming journalism with it.