I was lucky in that for my birthday in November of 1995 I got a PlayStation! Since that day I have been a huge PlayStation fan and just recently I talked about how we need a PlayStation 2 Classic!
With my PlayStation, my parents got me Tekken and with my birthday money I was able to pick up WrestleMania the Arcade Game and Loaded. Loaded is what brings me to the point of my article today and that is Demo 1. Demo discs were huge during the days of the PlayStation (and to be fair, the PS2 era also had demo discs) and Demo 1 was the demo disc that was included with every first generation PlayStation console here in the UK and that demo disc was an eye opener for just how much power my brand new PlayStation had.
To start with, Demo 1 has this epic, blood pumping intro that shows off the power of the PlayStation as well as many of the big titles that were available in that first year. It also had four playable demos on it. Loaded for me was the big one, I had seen this in a couple of video game magazines, but paid no attention to it, but it was Demo 1 that sold me on this game and I knew it had to be a game I picked up which I did and I loved it! As well as Loaded, Demo 1 also featured Wipeout, Battle Arena Toshinden, and Destruction Derby. My dad who was not a gamer loved Destruction Derby, although no matter how many times I told him that is what it was called, he would always call it Demolition Derby. It worked out well though, he loved the game that he purchased it shortly after so I had another game to play on my PlayStation!
Demo 1 also had videos for a bunch of PlayStation games. Tekken, Ridge Racer, Warhawk, Jumping Flash, Twisted Metal, Rapid Reload Starblade Alpha, and then there was one more and this is the game that made me convinced that the PlayStation was the future of gaming and that game was…. Total NBA! Total NBA is known as NBA Fastbreak in the USA, but the video of this game was the most realistic looking thing I had ever seen! It is kind of funny to think that back in 1995 these were the most lifelike graphics I had ever seen. I was actually a big basketball fan so it was not completely random that I loved this. The funny thing is, I never picked up this game! I would eventually get Total NBA 97 which is a top ten PlayStation game of mine of all time!
There were also some videos that we could play around with on Demo 1. The most famous one is the T-Rex, this was mind blowing back in the day and my friends and I would take turns making the T-Rex talk and saying the most offensive messed up thing a group of teenage boys could come up with. One thing that many people forget about Demo 1 is that as well as the T-Rex, there was also a manta ray video that you could play around with, granted this one was not as impressive as the T-Rex, but it was still cool. That T-Rex is pretty iconic, so much so that when the PS5 was released, it was a boss in Astro’s Playroom!
For those who got a PlayStation and only had this to play until they got a game, I feel like there is a lot of good stuff here. Be sure to write in the comments if you had Demo 1 and what your memories of it are.