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[Krathoon]

I just found this obscure ass game.

 

[Krathoon]

PCs were more of this niche thing back then. That was why they put underground on everything.

 

[Raonak]

Demo discs were the coolest shit.
My parent's owned a shop, so when they'd throw away the expired magazines, we'd keep the demo discs from these PC magazines.
Used to have hundreds of them. Sadly they're lost to time now...

 

[Gamerguy84]

That was cool AF. Loved the AOL commercial at the end. My mom still uses an AOL email account.

 

[Krathoon]

Shogo, bitches.

 

[Krathoon]

Here is another game I forgot about. gog has it.

 

[Krathoon]

I am now on PC Gamer Demo Disc 3.10.

There was actually a Men in Black video game.

 

[Hudo]

Not my picture but I was playing on one of these. Before that I also had a TV with a dial. I sympathize.

It was stored in my garage in the early 00's and my girlfriend gave it to her friends kid. Needless to say we're no longer together.

There was a whole hierarchy of people at Samsung who went "yeah, let's do it exactly like that!".

 

[Krathoon]

That will blow yer dick off.

 

[ResilientBanana]

I played the shit out of the chasm demo and requiem : avenging angel

 

[DryvBy]

Is there a way to find an archive of all of them? I have like 40 discs still but I'm missing a specific one that had a good trailer on it.

 

[UnravelKatharsis]

There was a whole hierarchy of people at Samsung who went "yeah, let's do it exactly like that!".

I'd put my face 6 inches from the screen, angle the speakers at my ears and blast it. Now I have tinnitus but.....Ok no it wasn't worth it but it was awesome!

 

[SScorpio]

Is there a way to find an archive of all of them? I have like 40 discs still but I'm missing a specific one that had a good trailer on it.

The internet archive has a bunch of them, along with other magazines' disks.

 

[Krathoon]

Playing PC Gamer demos discs will let you find some gems you forgot about. A lot of them are abandonware now.

 

[Krathoon]

I discovered a game called Warhammer: Dark Omen. It is abandonware. There is a way to get it to run in modern Windows. You can get it at the My Abandonware site.

To install it, you first run the setup files from the site. Do not run the setup on the disc.
Then, copy over the movies folder from the disc directory to the install directory.
Then, copy over the mod files to the install directory.
Then, install dgvoodoo2 to the PRG_ENG directory in the install directory and set it to keep aspect ratio and run at your desktop resolution.
After that run EngRel.exe in the PRG_ENG directory to start the game.

It should be running with hardware accelerated graphics at a 4:3 ratio like intended. You can also make it wide screen, but it stretches the menus.

 

[Krathoon]

I am on the vol. 4 PC Gamer discs now.

Vol. 4 was when they got it right. The demo installers do not crash or mess up the interface.

Still, a lot of demos are crashing. Is there a better VM for Win98 than 86Box?

 

[Krathoon]

God. I hate it when an old video game doesn't make it obvious how to exit the damn game.

The X-Com Interceptor demo just pulled that. I had to do a hard reset to get out of it.

For some reason, that was a thing back in the day. Even Alt-X did not work.

If you are in DOSBox, you can just Alt-Enter and close it.

This one was a Windows game and it would not let met Alt-Tab or Ctrl-Alt-Delete. That is really obnoxious.

 

[Krathoon]

I have learned to use Alt-F4 on game demos that have no obvious way to exit.

Just kill the bastard.

 

[Krathoon]

Was Jurassic Park: Trespasser a bad game? I remember people making fun of it.

It is on the 4.7 demo disc.

I have a bad 4.8 disc image. I will have to download another one.

 

[Krathoon]

I am on disc 5.1. It has System Shock 2.

 

[Fools idol]

The Metal Gear demos were amazing. I played them to death because I couldn't afford to buy games back then.

 

[Drizzlehell]

This reminded me of one of the funniest shows on YouTube:


Too bad that the channel itself is just a shadow of its former self.

 

[T-Cake]

PC Pro was always the magazine I favoured and to this day I still have treasured memories of one of their cover discs. It wasn't a game demo but a multimedia showcase about US Route 66 at the time when CD-ROMs were still magical bits of plastic. I wish I could find an ISO image of it.

 

[Krathoon]

I am running into trouble finding all of the Vol. 6 PC Gamer Discs on archive.org.

 

[StueyDuck]

I remember the UT2K4 demo on a pc gamer type demo disc being more than enough fun than buying the actual game. Had full on LAN support on Onslaught Torlan

Was awesome we played that at LANs at friends houses for hours

 

[Laptop1991]

Loved those days and demo's, i remember playing the Tomb Raider demo with a pool in it IIRC, that was a wow demo back then. had to buy the game after that, bought all 4 in the 90's infact, started with the demo.

 

[Krathoon]

AH. I found the volume 6 discs. They are listed under year 2001. Someone uploaded the discs to Archive.org based on year.

I wish they did not do that and listed the volume and disc number on the file. It makes it harder to track.

 

[Krathoon]

I just got my discs from eBay in the mail. I officially own the very first PC Gamer disc. It has Wing Commander III on it.

 

[Krathoon]

86Box does not seem to be emulating the voodoo cards right. I am getting way too many rendering problems.

Edit: Yeah. They broke it. I just tried it out with PCem and it works fine with a Voodoo3.

I do see a recommendation to use the 32bit version of the emulator. I will try that.

Edit. Yep. The 32bit version works right. So, always use the 32bit version. The 64bit one is messed up.

 

[Scotty W]

Interesting thread. I remember getting a PC gamer in 99 that had 20 full games on it, including xcom and Descent.

There was another one that had a massive special feature on Quake mods that I have always wanted to go back to.

 

[shaddam]

Last summer I downloaded some cd around 2000 and modded my unreal tournament. I really like the old html based cd menus
BTW I love old magazines too. I usually read the review of old ass games after I finished them

 

[Sensates]

Stumbled upon some gems with these discs.

I remember Hyperblade where you play futuristic hockey, able to dismember opponents and score with their heads! Also Messiah where you play as a cherub with the ability to enter other character bodies and make it your own! The strategy is just to let everyone kill each other and then I take over the survivor lol

 

[GymWolf]

Demo disc were the shit.

In italy we had a pc magazine that gifted complete games every month. (Gifted in exchange for money)

 

[Keihart]

I think it's on topic, i loved this show, many laughs were had

 

[kether]

Speaking of demo discs, back in the day I had a demo disc for Rogue Galaxy. The disc looked like a legit copy of the game, except the disc said something like "Demo disc, not for resale". I put it in a clear cd case, with a strategically placed sticker that covered up the "Demo disc" print. Went to Gamestop with a buddy to trade in a bunch of games, and I included the demo disc in the pile to see if we could pull one over on the employee, and sure enough, the employee didn't even open the case to inspect the disc. He just saw it was a Rogue Galaxy disc through the cd case, typed it in the computer, and set it in the "Yes" pile. The friend and I glanced at each other like holy shit, he's actually going to take it! If memory serves, he gave me 40 dollars store credit for the demo disc, as it was a new release at the time.

 

[Krathoon]

I am still on the 2001 PC Gamer demo discs. I was reminded of No One Lives Forever and Mechcommander 2.


Remember Startopia?

 

[Krathoon]

I was playing around with the Vol. 1 demo discs again. The very early ones. Discs 1 through 3 don't quite work the best in DOSBox.

I was using D-Fend Reloaded this time because it is way more convenient.

I was trying to get Twinsen's Little Big Adventure demo to work, but the screen is corrupted. That seems to be a bust.