PlayStation at 30 - Demo 1

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the Japanese launch of the Sony PlayStation. To celebrate, I decided to dust off the PlayStation Demo 1 disc that came with my PS1 in the summer of '98, and relive some memories.

Physical demos were once of great importance. Or at least they were to me. Packed-in with consoles, given away as freebies at the point of sale, or bagged with magazines, they were to be held on to and enjoyed over and over. I played Mission Impossible on my Official PS Magazine demo disc so many times that I could swear I actually owned the full game. Ditto with Steep Slope Sliders and Panzer Dragoon Zwei on Sega Saturn.

Two paragraphs into a celebratory PlayStation post, and I'm already talking about the Sega Saturn! I'm nothing if not reliable.

Porsche Challenge, which was featured on PlayStation Demo 1, is another example of a demo I played to death. I can remember racing through the streets of an unnamed US city, screeching around corners and trying, and failing, to one-up some other prick in a convertible. However, my recollection of this demo, and what it is in reality, are two very different things, as I discovered when I booted up Demo 1 yesterday. It's perhaps a minute long, but I could've sworn it was so much more substantial. 

Demos were more impactful back then and left a greater impression. I relied on trial discs to keep me entertained between new games, which usually came with birthdays and Christmases, and I'd play them dozens of times. I became as attached to them as I did full games.

Anyway, here's the lineup for Demo 1:

The disc is very mid-90s, or more specifically, very mid-90s-PlayStation. Mad techno plays as you load up the disc, accompanied by images of jagged avatars kicking each other and rectangles with wheels going fast. This is how I remember early PlayStation. It was mature, cool, edgy, maybe dangerous; generally an experience for older boys. Frankly, I wasn't ready for it, as I was still wringing every last drop of enjoyment out of my Master System and preparing to ask for a Mega Drive that Christmas.

Sorry, I'm doing it again. PlayStation, this is supposed to be about PlayStation.

When the demo intro movie ends, the screen collapses into a collection of shattered squares, and the techno continues. Games - V-CD - Movies - Tech: make your choice.

As mentioned, Porsche Challenge is far more brisk than I recall, and the city is far emptier and more plagued by pop-in than I cared to notice back in the day. Rage Racer is a single lap, and in its brevity it is very much in keeping with every other game on this disc. Abe's Oddysee is full of sounds that were once so familiar, and I had to give up on Lifeforce Tenka after about thirty seconds, as I couldn't stop reaching for the non-functional analogue sticks on my PS3 controller. I have no idea how we managed to play 3D action games with a d-pad. 

The "Movies" are just SoulBlade and Roscoe McQueen, the latter being about a firefighter who turns up to emergencies in a convertible. Of far more interest is the "Tech" section, which of course features the iconic T-Rex demo. It seems a little quaint now. The dino runs on the spot in complete silence, and is interactive in the loosest sense of the word - you can manipulate the camera and T's mouth. Less well remembered is the far more peaceful Manta, gliding through an empty blue ocean, accompanied by a shoal of fish. The post-club chill-out to T-Rex's pre-game dirty pints.

My daughter was quietly playing Switch on the sofa as I revisited Demo 1 yesterday evening. She occasionally looked up, surprised by harsh sound effects and confused by techno beats. She even feigned a little interest when I attempted to explain the importance of the T-Rex demo. Bless her. After a couple of minutes of the T-Rex performing toothy grins, she had finally had enough: "Daddy, can you skip this weird dinosaur?"

I did as she asked.

Demo 1 is a relic of a bygone era, and one of great personal and wider importance. It's a snapshot of early PlayStation and is a foundational piece of a brand that has come to define this hobby of ours.

It also has a weird dinosaur in it. Happy 30th, PlayStation.