As we have told you several times on these pages, the demos of PS1 games were sometimes so famous that they became cult, a memory unlocked in the childhood of many. Who can forget the Demo One CD with the purple cover? None, guaranteed.
There are also some in the history of the first PlayStation secret demos which could be unlocked or obtained in decidedly unusual ways: we propose five of them.
WipEout Rolling Tech Demo
In 1995, the first issue of Official PlayStation Magazine was released in the United States with a CD containing a technical demo of the game Psygnosis, entitled WipEout Rolling Tech Demo. This demo version wasn’t actually playable and so we could only watch a CPU-controlled shuttle race. This in theory, because by swapping between the demo disc of the magazine and the Demo One CD (at the time included in all PS1 consoles) the tech demo became playable as if by magic…
Fighting Force
The Fighting Force demo was hidden on the series CDs PlayStation UndergroundSony’s interactive magazine reserved for PlayStation Fan Club members in the United States and Great Britain. The third CD of the series hid a playable demo of Core Design’s fighting game that can be unlocked simply by clicking on all the icons that appear after inserting the disc into the console.
Spyro The Dragon
Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped hid a playable demo of Spyro The Dragon while a demo of Spyro 2 Ripto’s Rage was hidden in Crash Team Racing. How were these trial versions unlocked? Simply pressing up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right and square in the main menu of the two games. And it’s not over, keep reading…
Crash Bash
It will be in 2000 Spyro 3 Year of the Dragon to return the favor with a hidden demo of Crash Bash.This demo version can be unlocked by simply pressing and holding L1, R2 and Square at the title screen after breaking the egg. More than a demo, in this case we are faced with a Beta with a multitude of levels and lots of content, some of which was cut from the final game. What a surprise!
Point Blank
Poink Blank was a very popular arcade shooter from Namco released in 1994 in arcades and which would only arrive on PS1 between 1997 and 1998. To promote the game, Namco decided to attach a demo CD to the Platinum version of Tekken 2 (by the way… what a turning point the Platinum versions of the PS1 games were) except that the presence of a bonus disc was absolutely not indicated on the cover.And many of you, we are sure, will have been amazed to discover a second hidden CD… but hidden well, because to discover it you had to lift the black plastic support in which the main disc was housed.