UK PlayStation Magazine DEMO 17 Vol 2 Review - June 1998

The PlayStation was home to many iconic demo discs from popular games magazines that provided readers with the opportunity to try and test upcoming or rare games on the PS1, some of which would become extremely popular eventually selling millions of copies worldwide.

But to many of use the demo cd's that came with the magazines also provided some of the greatest memories that we as gamers have ever experienced on the console, so much with playing the demos more than the final versions of the games as they where so addictive and appealing for their time.

Here we are taking a look at a special demo disc that was released on the PlayStation back in June of 1998 and for me it's very iconic because i got access to this demo on the day of my 16th birthday and for me this is one of the best demo discs i ever owned because there was a plethora of games on it with a lot of opportunities to play some really epic games.

There was a few questionable games i will admit on the disc but it more than made up for us with the content that was available but not only that you had access to games likes of Bomberman which was quite cool, getting to play that and then you had the likes of colin mccrae rally one and it was my first ever experience getting to play the very first colin mcrae rally game. 

So there were so many fun games available on the disc and to be honest there was loads here that could keep you playing for hours just with this alone compared to anything else. 

It was so much fun getting to play this demo with Bomberman. I do remember playing a version of it on the super nintendo back in the day and i thought it was pretty cool but this was a different kind of look and feel to it. It's only a one round type of demo but it was more than enough you'd have a quick blast with it but it was tough, very very tough to win the game. 

I will admit but it was one of those games that you would quickly go back and play another round and another round another round so always a lot of fun but just there was so many really cool demos on this disc. 

It was quite incredible with the likes of say Bomberman, there was say colin mcrae rally, you had death trap dungeon, you had a demo of gran turismo, there was even circuit breakers or a rolling demo. 

You even had access to dead or alive, the very first dead or alive game as well, another very cool fighting game, so this demo really had so much to offer, It was quite crazy.

I'll never forget going back and playing the very first Colin McRae demo and the very first track that you played on was the third stage in monte carlo where you're up in the mountains but the one really cool thing about this demo, i didn't even realize it at the time is that there was a couple of hidden races or tracks available that you could only play, it was kind of random. 

You'd play the demo once and it would give you access to one track but then you could end up playing it again and it would give you one of two alternative tracks either in australia or new Zealand. 

Now at the time when i played it what happened was i went and i played and i ended up getting access to the monte carlo track and i played it a few times but it kept giving me the same track and i didn't realize until later that day my friend that lived across the road from me, i'd given a loan to him for an hour or two, he's like peter can i check this out and I was like yeah no problem and he went and he played it and because he was desperate to play colin mcrae as well and he came over about an hour or two later and he says, he's like man he says this demo actually is a lot more tracks on it and i'm like does this because i didn't get access to it he says it does you just have to play it through it and play it again and the tracks will just randomly appear. 

So i didn't think anything of it and i went and i played it again and he showed me and it was right, i ended up getting access to the australian track which i was completely blown away by and then we played it again some more and then ended up getting access to one of the tracks in new zealand and what was pretty cool about it was the fact that you're three different tracks all with different weather types from like snow to like sand and then even going through like muddy roads and fields and it's raining as well. 

It was one of the first games i'd ever really played on the PlayStation that had that type of weather effect where i had like rain but what was pretty cool about colin mcrae was the fact is that it was the first rally game that i really played that wasn't really arcade focused that it ended up being the case of that you only had one car on the track and your goal was just to compete and beat the time. 

It was almost like a time trial but it was an authentic rally experience because most games before that, you played the likes of v rally or there was like sega rally, you were playing the arcades where you had multiple cars on the track that you had to beat. 

There wasn't just the one car like there was with this so it was a brilliant experience and i remember playing this demo to death, i couldn't believe what else was on offer, just there was so many games on this disc that we were playing for weeks after i got it because there was just so much there and you were intrigued because colin mcrae had so many hidden secrets, you were intrigued to see what other demos had secrets or if there was anything else that was hidden that you didn't know about. 

So you'd spend your time playing through all of the games trying to find any hidden glitches or possible ways of breaking the game so that you could take advantage or find any hidden areas or secrets and that was a really cool thing about the demos back in the days that's what i loved about them is that you had that ability to do that. 

You got this experience a certain portion of the game but you also got to find any quick shortcuts or hidden elements that you may not have even really known about so then when you did get to the full game if you decided to buy it, you would already know where to look at or where to go and what to figure out so it was really really cool...

I'll never forget the first time i turned on the dead or alive demo and having played the likes of tekken and battle arena toshinden and a few other games on the console which i really enjoyed but then i got to play this and i couldn't get over how good the graphics looked and with the fast-paced elements. 

But the one thing that straight away caught my attention as we all know i'm not going to say too much all you do is look at the female characters and you'll understand why and that in itself was a first of its kind, you didn't expect to see that in full detail even to a point that looked so realistic as it did almost over the top way too much so but you were just as a young 16 year old kind of just in awhh looking at it. 

You're like just staring and you didn't really know what was going on, you were more interested in looking at that than you were looking at the fighting but aside from that when you played the game compared to other fighters on the system even though there's some really really good fighters the pace of this game was exceptional. 

It was very very fast paced it kinda reminded me of the likes of old 2d fighters with street fighter and mortal kombat where the gameplay was very very fast paced and frantic. 

You could pull off moves and combos pretty much with ease but it was super quick i mean like super quick that you could have a fight literally over within a matter of only a couple of seconds if you knew what you were doing and a little bit of luck involved, so this was a really really fun game. 

I remember playing this to death as well, it was just a really good experience overall, not just with what i've mentioned but the overall gameplay experience it ends up being one of the best fighters on the system and at the time you could see why. 

It had a lot of depth and it was just overall was very good, like graphically it was one of the best-looking fighting games on the system and coupling that with the gameplay and the fast and frantic nature of the game among the other elements it was worthwhile playing through for sure...

Deathtrap Dungeon was one of those unique games that i had played a demo of it before on another demo disc that i had but it was one of those games it was just it was difficult to master as the control system for the time if you weren't used to it, it could be quite fiddly.

Now i having played it years later, it's still difficult as much as i remember but you can kind of get a grasp of what to do whereas back then it was one of those games that took quite a while to really understand everything that was going on but it was fun to play even though graphically it wouldn't have looked as good compared to other games on the system but this game was very very graphic and very gory in what it presented. 

You could dismember enemies limbs and you could pretty much destroyed in whatever way you saw fit or what was thought possible. 

So this game is very very dark, very atmospheric, very eerie but also very very difficult because at any given time a certain trap or element could literally kill you within seconds or in some cases instantly if you weren't careful so it was one of those games that you definitely needed to play through each of the levels quite a number of times so that you could figure out what to avoid and what you should look into but i do remember playing this demo quite a bit and i loved exploring in games anything that allowed you to explore rooms or even this case dungeons. 

So this game had it in spades so i remember playing quite a number of times thinking you're getting really far and then you're caught out by falling off a ledge or a trap and then you die and you're like ah crap here we go again so you'd find yourself going and playing it again to try and figure out what else to do but the cool thing about this demo as i mentioned earlier this game itself the demo had loads of hidden areas and secrets to explore so you would play it multiple times trying to figure out every little nook and cranny trying to figure out if you got everything in the level so that's what was really cool about it. 

It had a lot of cool features even though it's flawed and it is difficult but it's still relatively a very good game and it's quite underrated in terms of PlayStation action games because it also does have horror elements because you are fighting like mythical and magical like monsters with loads of gore elements as well so it offers a really good mix of all action and power based themes while exploring and even solving puzzles along the way so there's so many elements in this game, it definitely is unique. 

So it's a lot of fun to play and the demo itself definitely gave your money's worth because you could be playing this demo alone trying to figure out what to do you could be playing it for over an hour if not more. Now when you got used to it you could have it done and say about 20 minutes or sometimes even less but at the time when you were getting used to everything and with the controls and that it definitely took a while to figure out what to do.

So you'd find yourself actually playing for a couple of hours in most cases and especially if you were taking your time trying to figure out all the hidden areas and trying to see if there was any shortcuts or glitches that you could take advantage of it definitely was worth a playthrough because the thing about it is even though some of the areas that you had to go through, the first time you went into a particular area it wasn't really obvious or apparent that you needed to climb up on things or ledges to get to another area. 

You didn't really notice that at all, it wasn't until you've gone through it about four or five times that you suddenly realize you're like oh this is where i'm supposed to go and then it's only then you dive into a new area then only to be destroyed then by another trap or something silly happening, you fall off a ledge and it gets destroyed by being impaled on spikes or something like that or rockets will shoot out of a wall and destroy you so there was just so many things that you had to be aware of just when you thought you got past one difficult part straight away you were presented with even more challenges that were even just as difficult as the last. 

But i suppose that was the really fun element about this game, it really tested your reselve and your patience and even your skills and this is one of those games that i will have to do another video on at some point so i will be covering that in the future review so make sure to keep an eye out for it as there's a lot to talk about with this game as there's so many elements and there's a lot of content involved in it that is what to play through for sure...

Having gotten to play Gran Turismo only a few weeks previous to when this demo was released as my mate had gotten it not long after the game had been released, we get this demo that was also on the disc so not only did you have the likes of colin mcrae rally, you had deathtrap dungeon and dead or alive. 

You had so many really cool games and then you got to have a timed demo of gran turismo, now you only had access to a limited number of cars so primarily my preference of choice was always to pick the likes of the subaru impreza as growing up being teenager, you were always influenced by the cars that you saw and straight away for me some of my favorite cars in gran turismo would be the likes of the impreza, the Mitsubishi lancer evo 4, the nissan skyline gtr and a few other cars to name but a few like even the toyota supra and the like. 

So even just to get to play the demo, now you only got to play on the one track and it was timed, you only got to do say a lap or a lap and a half so the quicker you could race the further you would get but still it was really really cool but it presented the look and feel of what you would expect from a driving game and you really got to see and even from experience when i did get to play the full game you could even see in the demo how good gran turismo is back then. 

Compared to other games like even when you look at the likes of colin mcrae which is a fantastic game but then you look at gran turismo and graphically it's just in every shape and form is far superior and that's why it's considered to be one of the best-looking games on the ps1. It's just truly incredible what they were able to achieve back then like for a 32-bit console when you look at the style of the graphics it's really just crazy what they managed to do with what was available and again like the other demos in this disc i played this quite a bit too. 

I just loved the graphics, the the style, the one thing about gran turismo the reason why i love it so much is because the feeling that it gives you. It just has unique aura and atmosphere about it because it really was the first of its kind in terms of racing games that it set as standards there's very few games have ever been able to match since like even when you go into like modern consoles like there is far better looking games out there like i'm not gonna deny that but very few have ever captured the look and feel the gran turismo offered and like i played a lot of racing games. 

I loved the likes of the destruction derby series there was say colin mcrae, v rally there was so many racing games that i played on the ps1 that i really loved but gran turismo was definitely up there was among my favorite games of all time. It just had great graphics, great selection of cars and a fantastic soundtrack that really just suited the whole aesthetic of the game and personally i just played this demo like the rest of the demos on this disc, i played it to death, it's got so much to offer. 

I remember like when i got it from a 16 birthday, i remember going into the shop to buy a magazine, i bought it for myself as a present pretty much because i got in a bit of pocket money like for my birthday and for me this was one of the best and one of my most personal favorite experiences i ever had with gaming on the system and even though i had been collecting demo discs for a while before that and there was some awesome games that i played on but this one just completely blew a lot of the previous ones out of the water because the amount of games on this disc was just ridiculous. 

It was incredible with what was offer, i couldn't believe it when i first booted it up and you seen like all these games was colin mcrae which i was looking for because that was originally why I bought the disc in the first place because you knew it was up and coming but you didn't really look into what else was available. 

But then you seen the likes of these games here and you're just like holy crap you just you were just completely in awe of the games that were there even though some of them were shorter than others you had some really long demos likes of deathtrap dungeon but the replay value on this demo disc alone was just absolutely immense and i played this demo disc probably as much as i played most of the full games that i had in the collection at the time and i had a lot of games. 

Myself and my brothers growing up had a ton of games for the PlayStation and even my friends and even my mates that lived across the road would call over and just this demo disc alone it was one of those demos that even going back to even in previous discs that we had, there was so much value in this disc alone that everybody got enjoyment out of it no matter who was playing it whether i was playing it with my brothers even my youngest brother or my mates, there was a game there for everybody that suited everybody and everybody loved most of the games on the disc so it was just so much there it was just quite incredible, it's so much fun...

And with the next game Klonoa, i didn't play this demo too much at the time as yes i loved platform games but at that period in time i had kind of moved away from the likes of the more cartoony or cutesy type of platform games that i would have remembered from the likes of sonic the hedgehog and super mario brothers on the likes of the sega mega drive and super Nintendo. 

Now i had played quite a few of them on the PlayStation and i really enjoyed them but i was starting to play more obscure games and more racing games and action-focused games so when i did get to this now i did play it and i finished and i actually thought it was really good even though at first i did find it quite difficult to master because i wasn't really used to play in these type of 2.5 d games where it looked like and played like a 2d platformer but it was primarily in 3d so it was quite fun. 

But little did I know that this game would go on to be a cult classic that if you can get access to a physical copy of the game now it will cost you a lot of money. If you go and check on the likes of ebay and even other marketplaces to get physical copies of this game will cost you a pretty penny, it really will as it is such a huge following. It's one of those games on the PlayStation that really reached a massive cult status that the prices of it literally just blew up which is ridiculous when you think about it. 

You'd never think it at the time when you played these type of games that anything like this would be possible but it is which is quite crazy but to say that this game was easy was anything but. 

This was a difficult game definitely took a while to master and it took a few attempts to really figure out what to do but like all the other demos on this disc it was a lot of fun because there was also a lot of exploration elements even though like you're only moving like from left to right but there was loads of like hidden rooms and hidden areas that didn't seem visible from the start so when you played through it a couple of times over you'd find new areas that you didn't get to the first time so there was definitely plenty here to keep you playing. Just like all the other games on the desk there was so much value here that you could just be playing for hours. 

The graphics there are really fun and quirky even though very cartoony but they're all really well put together and it just looked cool and even going back to play it years later i've forgotten how much fun it is and it still is just as challenging as i remember so you do have to have your wits about you when you're playing it and i can see why the game became such a classic over the years as it is a lot of fun, very very unique, very obscure and very very different...

Wargames was another one of these unique and very obscure type of games. I never really played as much of these type of military games on the system, i know a few of my friends were crazy about them, they were really into them, i didn't get into them as much and i do remember playing it. 

Now when going back to playing this demo i will miss i not so great at it anymore but i do remember playing this demo and getting a lot further into it and being able to figure out what to do. 

I managed to pick it up and play it a lot easier than i actually can do today which is quite crazy in most cases usually games when you've left them for a while and you come back they just click with you and you can get back into them and you're actually better when you've given yourself time to come back to it rather than playing it straight away but going back to play this i've forgotten how difficult it is to master and the gameplay i didn't get to last very long and i got destroyed almost straight away. 

It is definitely a very difficult game from what i do remember, it is a lot of fun to explore but it is very difficult as you have to take out all of the enemy opposing forces as they're invading your territory and you're fighting off like big mechanical kind of machines and it's just there's so much here you just you get destroyed very very quickly as you can see.

The tank literally gets just obliterated within seconds and the very little that you can do about it because you don't have enough firepower to be able to take out the enemies that you're fighting against and usually when you go into battle you're never going in really one-on-one there's always two or three against you at any one time so you don't have much of a chance. 

This demo definitely presented a very very difficult challenge and if you're not careful you'll be destroyed and taken out of the equation very very quickly. It doesn't take long for a lot of your vehicles to literally be wiped out even though you have access to different vehicles, it doesn't take long for them to literally destroy you and most of the demos on this disc i probably played this one the least as it was definitely the most difficult one to master... 

And when we got around to playing the WCW demo, at the time i was a big fan of the likes of the wrestling but i was more of a big fan of the wwf at the time but it was interesting to see that you had a lot of familiar ex wwf characters in wcw as you knew who they were instantly. 

You could recognize the faces likes of hulk hogan, ric flair, razor ramone and a few others although they're different names in the likes of that franchise so it was interesting to see how this game would play out because i had been playing the likes of wwf warzone previous to that and that also inspired me to really get back into the wrestling as i actually really liked wwf warzone. 

It was really cool getting to play like the stone cold steve austin and the rock and the like so when we got round to playing this i was hoping that it would be more of the same now graphically it actually looked cool, it had a really good aura and presence a bit and really captured the look and feel of the theme of wrestling but then when you got the play it, man this game was tough to play you'd be bashing the buttons like crazy and all you could literally do was kick and punch. 

It was very very difficult to pull off moves and i remember reading reviews then in the magazine and they did say that this game was difficult, it didn't get great ratings at all and it shows because the game was just very very clunky and just very very hard to play. 

You might get an odd move every now and then but you would literally take ages to get your opponent down but they would have you slaughtered within the space of with 60 seconds and they would pin you and you were gone. 

You really had no chance against them at all which was a pity because graphically it's actually quite a good looking game and for a wrestling game for the characters and the models it actually looked really cool. It looked very lifelike for the time but just the gameplay didn't reflect how it looked which was kind of disappointing. 

Now in saying that i still went back and played it quite a number of times because i just liked the feel of the game but it was no near as good as likes of wwf warzone. 

It wasn't as easy to pick up and play, it's not to say that wwf warzone was an easy game to play but it was still easier to pick up than this here because in that case you were just bashing the buttons and you were getting nowhere so it was very very frustrating...

So even with all the playable demos on the cd there was also a couple of video demos or rolling demos as they used to be called back then and you had one of circuit breakers which was kind of like a micro machines type clone where you played as more like toy cars going around like small kind of quirky style tracks and you could shoot your opponents and destroy them or knock them off the course with the intention of winning. 

So you were trying to win in any way possible and it actually looked quite cool and was quite fun to play, i actually have done a previous video on this game and it is a fun game to play although it's very difficult to master i make sure to leave a link down to that review down in the description that you can go and check it out and it definitely looked quite fun and it was one of those games that even though i didn't get to play it on this particular demo it had been teased that there would be a playable demo coming up with it at some point so i do remember actually sitting and watching this video quite a few times to try and get an idea of what it would look like because it did look fun i remember when i did get to play the demo when i did get access to it, it was tough but it was a lot of fun. 

And it just plays very very like micro machines although probably not as well refined as micro machines v3 it wouldn't be as easy to pick up and play but it definitely is a good alternative if you're a fan of micro machines, this is another really good game that is worth checking out in my opinion. 

Now its a lot of fun with some really fun multiplayer elements in the modes and there's just a lot there to keep you playing time and again and you have more fun with it playing with your mates, not just in single-player mode, there's just so much here to have a really good laugh with...

Over the months previous to the likes of the release of this demo as well, you were also gaining access to the likes of the net yaroze platform based demos that they would include on the disk as well and this was a platform that allowed gamers like myself or yourself develop your own games for the PlayStation.

 Although you'd never have the resources to make games look as authentic the likes of colin mcrae or anything like that but it was still a really good avenue to play some very very unique and quirky independent-style games or indie games as you call them nowadays to get your foot in the door pretty much just to create games on the system. 

And there was some quite unique and very quirky and fun games that were released on it and this one here was kind of a mixture of the old asteroids game and even games i played on the likes of the z8 spectrum and commodore 64 back in my friends house years previous to that when i was a kid growing up. 

We played a lot of these type of games it was fun to play but you find after a while it took a while to figure out what to do and getting used to the controls we need to go through like the checkpoints, they were numbered you need to make sure you go through the right ones to complete the laps so it definitely took quite a while to figure it out and i played it for quite a bit trying to see what was what but i will admit after a while i did get kind of bored and i went back to play something else but i found the other games were just a bit more fun but it was still a good attempt at something and the fact is that people could develop their games. 

So this was an early sign that you could see for yourself what was possible in the system back in the day that they were allowing people to develop games for the platform which was really cool. 

So it was awesome to revisit this demo disc and experience all of those games that i've played over again throughout the years this is one of those all-time greats in my opinion in terms of the demos on the PlayStation one as there were so many iconic games there was probably about 11 demos on it between videos, playable demos and even likes of independent like work in progress games as well whereas with the likes of the net yaroze game it was pretty much a fun game in its own right. 

So there was so much value on this demo disc it really was incredible there was so much here it was just action-packed pretty much two the gills. It's just crazy what was involved and yeah i consider this to be one of my favorite demo discs but for me personally one of my favorite experiences ever on the PlayStation as to think that all the games that were available on the system and you would get as much value and as much fun out of the demo cds was quite incredible. 

That's why i love the demo discs and even my friends and my brothers on that will you play the demo discs easily as much as we would play any of the games that we had and especially when you got something like this here that just completely just left you gobsmacked by the immense value that was available, like you had so many awesome demos of so many incredible games with colin mcrae, your first experience to get to play the game before it was released a few weeks later after this demo was released. 

Then you got to play a demo of gran turismo there was also the demo of dead or alive which my opinion was excellent and a real hidden gem, didn't expect that fighting game to be as good as it is and you had a deathtrap dungeon and you had all the other games on it. 

Right there was some games that were a lot more difficult than others and i probably didn't play them as much but that didn't take away from the fact that the amount of games that were available on this disc was truly incredible and of all the games that had been released or the demo discs that have been released with the uk playstation magazine, this is easily hands down one of the best ones that was ever released during the playstation's life cycle. 

There was just so much value, there was just so many awesome games there and i found myself playing that demo for months because we were excited to play the likes of colin mcrae rally and i know my friend derrick if he's watching this video he'll understand it, he knows rightly well because it was that experience alone with the demo that he played on this disc that solely made him decide to go out and buy colin mcrae on the week of its release and he wasn't disappointed. 

He still considers that to be one of his top games of all time that he's ever played and it's his favorite colin mcrae game and i totally agree because with all the rally games i have played and there's a lot of them and i do love rally games and i have covered loads of them on the channel so i'll make sure to leave a link to a playlist down in the description but colin mcrae one aside from a few orders was definitely one of those games that really inspired your love of gaming and just games or racing games in general. 

So it was quite a unique experience as with all of the other demos on this disc there was some memorable experiences and just truly great moments that you had and i'm sure i'm not the only one. I'm sure that you guys watching this have had similar experiences with this demo disc because this truly was a hidden gem. This demo disc alone had so much value, it was truly incredible what was on offer. 

It went from a point of having maybe demo discs that had maybe three or four maybe five or six games, ten plus games on it and it's just it was so much there you'd play it just for hours, hours and hours again even weeks at a time like and you would always keep coming back to it because it's just it was just awesome it was just it was an awesome time to be a gamer. 

It was an awesome time growing up and that period and even though like i was 16, it didn't make a difference to me i just loved the PlayStation, like i wasn't a kid but i just love gaming and to get to play these games and because of the fact is you were still relatively new to the whole concept of 3d gaming and this whole new era of gaming that was available at the time, it was just fantastic, it was such a fantastic opportunity to be involved with something that truly changed the way we look and see games today. 

So i'm sure anyone watching this would have similar experiences and i would highly recommend if you haven't played any of the demos now is a good time to revisit them if you haven't done so already. I will make sure to leave links to the previous videos i have done on other demo discs on the channel and make sure to leave the links down to them below in the description and i'd love to know your thoughts on this demo and what you thought of it?

What stories have you got to share i'm sure that you have a lot of great stories that you can share. 

I'd love to hear them so be sure to share them in the comments below and be sure to keep watching to see more content on other games similar to this demo disc, you can check out the blog where we will be diving into the iconic elements of these classic video games and as always keep those gaming memories alive...