The hype machine has been proven to work time and time again even when the game proves to be an unfinished mess upon release.įor Cyberpunk 2077, the reception was so poor that the development team ended up shelling out $1.85 million in a class-action lawsuit. Demos are still out there if you go looking, and it’s extremely convenient to download them instead of relying on physical media.īut the vast majority of game companies would rather wow us with flashy trailers and perfectly tailored gameplay footage than let us have a genuine hands-on with their product. Instead, we ended up playing games we never would’ve given a chance based on cover art alone – Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Fur Fighters, Rayman 2 and Skies of Arcadia were just a few of the gems we ended up buying outright.ĭespite the ever-increasing ubiquity of the internet, making informed video game purchases has ironically become harder in some ways. Without those demos, I doubt we would have ventured very far outside our Sonic the Hedgehog-shaped bubble. As a Sega diehard, my older brother managed to acquire every single Official Sega Dreamcast Magazine demo disc offered in 19. You could find them in computer stores and magazines, among other places.ĭemo discs and shareware were huge in the 1980s and 1990s, eventually losing steam halfway through the 2000s before nearly vanishing entirely. That experience unlocked memories in me I had tucked away for years – memories of perusing and playing demos via CD-ROMs or even floppy disks packed full of snippets of video games both big and small. It checked all my boxes, but the controls turned out to be clunky and unintuitive, prioritizing smooth animations over precise movements. The most recent example for me would be Narita Boy, a 2D action-platformer published by Team17 featuring gorgeous pixel art in a Tron-like world. That’s usually good enough, but once in a while a game that looks fun on the surface ends up feeling wrong once you’ve actually got the controller in your hands. With the internet, it’s easy to look into reviews and even watch gameplay videos online to make an informed purchase. I have more patience to wait for price drops and steep sales, but I also have a difficult time justifying spending $50-$70 on brand new releases that I’m not sure I’ll love. The older I get, the less money I seem to spend on video games.
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