I Miss Game Demos

We used to be a society.

The year is 2005, it’s cold, but not nearly as cold as it was going to be in the coming years, and Christmas was on the horizon. Like the good little snoop that I was, I found my presents, obviously. I was very excited when I found it, and even more excited when I finally got to play it. There was only one problem: I wasn’t gifted any games.

You might find this absurd, but you might be too young, or too old, to remember that back in the olden times, game consoles used to come with demo discs.

Okay I am completely making that up, not every console came with a batch of demos for you to try, nor did they come with pack in like the Wii and PS5 did.

I, however, was lucky enough to get a console that came with a demo disc. Now, I would love to tell you WHICH demo disc it was, but Google is basically unusable now, and I cannot for the life of me find which disc I had. I do remember which game I play the most, dozens and dozens of hours worth of playtime: Jak X: Combat Racing.

Twenty years on and I still remember having the time of my life playing the demo for Jak X. It wasn’t even that expansive a demo. There were two modes you can play, and two levels you can play on. A standard race, with all the bells and whistles that comes with a Mario Kart/Twisted Metal cross over; and a death match round, where you had to get the most kills driving around what at the time felt like a massive map. Even thinking about it now, and watching a YouTube video about the game, I am still impressed with how large those maps were.

Jak X was the only game I would play for three whole months, until I saved up enough money to buy my first game: Kingdom Hearts. In which case I completely forgot about Jak X or any other video game for that matter as I was sucked into the world of Kingdom Hearts.

I was obviously a kid who had to pick and choose which games to purchase as I was using my own money saved over months to get them. I basically went Kingdom Hearts 1, Kingdom Hearts 2, and Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories in that order for two years straight. I remember owning or being gifted other racing games, and the Dirge of Cerberus which I lent to a friend and never got to play because it didn’t work after he returned it. I don’t remember being too upset. Things happen, after all.

I of course played Jak and Daxter and the Sly Cooper games, but I never went back to Jak X for one reason or another, most it being that I completely forgot about it as other games took priority.

Still, to this day, I think about the Jax X demo and, as an adult having grown up thoughts: The conversion rate of playing a demo, to buying the full game.

Demos were more commonplace back then. Obviously as a child, I had no idea how hard making video games were, so I just assumed making a demo was as easy as slicing a piece of the game off and shoveling it off to me, the dumb kid and potential buyer.

The reality of game demos are much more complicated than that. Vertical slices are not so easy to produce as cutting off gameplay at a certain point. Each game demo are basically little games onto themselves, and tiny miracles in their own rights.

Game demos can be a developer and publishers first and only chance to sell you on their game, so not only does it have to work, and well at that, it as has too convince the aforementioned prospective to actually go out and buy the game. First impression are so so important when it comes to videogames. You can make an excellent hype trailer for otherwise okay to bad movie. Doing the same for a game demo is a little more tricky. Sure vertical slices can lie, or give you the best high point in otherwise dull game, but we have the extraordinary ability to sniff this out to the point where we can take on look at a gameplay demo and say: “Oh yeah, that’s definitely not a real game.”

I am looking directly at you, Perfect Dark. Rest in piece.

So I understand why we don’t get them very often. I love Steam Next Fest, and try out many games I otherwise wouldn’t had it not been for the demos, and I do end up buying a few or them eventually because of the good impression they had on me.

We don’t really have an event like that for consoles. And I wish we did.

Recently, I played the demos for Digimon Time Stranger, Stellar Blade, and Final Fantasy VII Remake on the Nintendo Switch 2.

I have always loved Digimon, but the last game I played was over fifteen years ago on the original Nintendo DS. When I got the chance to play the Time Stranger demo, I was immediately hooked. The game has the juice, and I am looking forward to playing it sooner rather than later.

Same with Stellar Blade. I wasn’t interested in this game when it came out, because the conversation around that game was…less than ideal. Just the worst parts of the internet hyping it up as “gaming’s savior” or whatever, because they could crank their little gamer hogs to Eve. Not because the game was GOOD, and the gameplay loop is so fantastic I kept playing after the demo ended. Eve = hot; therefore good game. It’s the kind of baby brained thinking you would expect from the worst people you know, and it kept me from playing the game for a long time. Now I am looking forward to playing it in the near future.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is an interesting case in which I am unlikely to buy that game again on Switch 2, as I already own it on PS4/5. Instead, the demo for Final Fantasy VII Remake has convinced me that not only is the Switch 2 powerful enough to handles top end PS4 games with ease, that Square Enix will put in the work to bring their bigger titles to Switch 2, with little compromises. I am more likely to buy Square Enix games on the Switch 2 because of this demo. It might has technically failed on getting me to purchase the game, but it HAS convinced me to get future Square Enix games. Task failed successfully?

Regardless: I miss game demos. I wish we got more of them. Instead of disc tucked away in gaming magazines, I want more Steam Next Fests. Once a year just a week to play upcoming titles on consoles too. Steam Next Fest succeeds in putting games on the radar that would potentially go unnoticed otherwise.

Release the demos! If you can afford to that is. Game development is a hell I would not wish on anyone.

Thanks for reading, take care.