The best unplayable demo on a YS/Crash/SU covertape: vote

[PeteProdge]

'Look, but don't touch' is the mantra behind the most appalling type of covertape item - the 'rolling demo', or as I call it, an unplayable demo. Ugh.

Still, we have to pick the least worst of these teasers.

Barbarian II: The Dungeon Of Drax (rolling demo) by Palace


Circus Circus (rolling demo) by Martech


Driller (rolling demo) by Incentive


G-LOC (rolling demo) by US Gold


Mean Streak (rolling demo) by Mirrorsoft


North & South (rolling demo) by Infogrames


Popeye 3: Wrestle Crazy (rolling demo) by Alternative Software


Robocop 3 (rolling demo) by Ocean


Shadow Of The Beast (playable demo) by Gremlin


Slaine (rolling demo) by Martech


Street Cred' Football (rolling demo) by Players Premier


Trantor: The Last Stormtrooper (rolling demo) by Go!


Virus (unplayable demo) by Firebird


WWF Wrestlemania (rolling demo) by Ocean

[AndyC]

Difficult to rate when every single one is something you regretted bothering to load the one time you did.

I'll go with Shadow of the Beast though, since the actual game wasn't any better than a demo and you do at least get to see all the cool over world effects (albeit rendered in SpeccyVision) that are the only thing memorable about the whole game.

And at least it wasn't just a slideshow of some screens unlike some others...

[PeteProdge]

Difficult to rate when every single one is something you regretted bothering to load the one time you did.

Yeah, I'd love to do a thread on Things You Only Ever Loaded In Once and covertapes do rate highly. Especially EVERYTHING in this list. And this is the poll I didn't want to do, but here it is for completion's sake. (My vote goes to Driller.)

And I have paid proper money for some cassettes I only ever loaded in once. Can't recall right now, I'm currently having a holiday in the Netherlands and typing this on a smartphone in a pavement cafe (hence the lack of any compiled results today, wait until Tuesday when I get in front of a proper computer).

I'll go with Shadow of the Beast though, since the actual game wasn't any better than a demo and you do at least get to see all the cool over world effects (albeit rendered in SpeccyVision) that are the only thing memorable about the whole game.

From a hazy memory, I recall not being impressed even when I hit the 16-bit era. Sure, it LOOKED impressive, granted, but where is the game?

It evokes the fury over Rise Of The Robots. Stunning to watch someone play it but awful when you play it.

Sonic The Hedgehog is the literal game changer in the 1990s Sega vs Nintendo war, and while it shifted hardware units in the millions I still saw that as a tech demo, albeit one that does have a bit of a game to it.

And at least it wasn't just a slideshow of some screens unlike some others...

Oh yeah, why even bother with X x 6912 bytes of boredom? I may as well have deleted them. It is a democracy and yes, people are free to vote for the slideshows here but please don't!

Even with my rabid love of Chaos, if there was a playable demo and an unplayable demo of them in these polls, yes, damned right I would vote for them immediately, but even I draw the line at slideshows.

[Nick]

Voted for Trantor as I remember buying the game, for better or worse, after watching the demo.

The only other ones I can remember loading up are Driller, Mean Streak, Virus and WWF Wrestlemania and of those I would have bought WWF anyway as I'm a wrestling fan, while I didn't end up buying the full versions of the other three demos. This is one of those rare occasions where I'm not going to bother with a top three as well.

[Mpk]

I thought Sláine looked super cool. Like, a whole new unique mechanic! What could go wrong?

[Timmy]

It wasn't very bad to find a top 3, but it's still stretching...

1) Barbarian 2... Because despite it being a rolling demo, I remember back in the day I found it was easy to hack the demo and made it playable. Unfortunately I was still not good at the game after I could play it. So therefore I'd vote for this one.
2) G-Loc... Because the demo was better than the game itself. This one feels like a scene demo than a game demo. I don't like this kind of flying games so the demo really was interesting. Still only worth watching it once, though.
3) Driller... At this point it gets really hard to choose, but Driller was probably the only one that's still worth demo-ing because I'd otherwise not have believed that kind of 3d graphics was possible.

[Matt_B]

I'd reckon that it's between Virus and Driller. They're both games that would have seemed impossible on a Spectrum, so even an unplayable demo had the power to raise eyebrows at the time. Of the two, I'd think that Virus gives a better impression of the game in action, so that wins.

1. Virus
2. Driller
3. Trantor

So far as Shadow of the Beast goes, surely only die hard Amiga fans ever liked that game?

[stupidget]

1 - Trantor - I was blown away by that intro sequence. Pretty average game unfortunately though.
2 - Barbarian - They sucked me with this rolling demo, so much so that I bought the game. Another pretty average game.
3 - Driller - Very impressive but it was far too expensive for me BITD.

[Pobulous]

I went with Trantor as it was at least a cinematic experience.

I do wonder if some of these were rolling demos because they already realised that the gameplay sucked.

[Nitrowing]

Driller was one of the few demos I actually bothered ever loading - I was stunned that my Speccy could do that!

[Hank Scorpio]

1 Virus
2 Driller
3 Trantor

[PeteProdge]

Trantor won this with seven votes!

In joint second place, Driller and Virus - four votes each.

North & South is next, with two votes.

In the one-vote-each territory: Barbarian II; Shadow Of The Beast; Slaine and WWF Wrestlemania.

Now, here are the proportional results, which are a bit different:

Driller (rolling demo) by Incentive 6
Virus (unplayable demo) by Firebird 6
Barbarian II: The Dungeon Of Drax (rolling demo) by Palace 5
Trantor: The Last Stormtrooper (rolling demo) by Go! 5
G-LOC (rolling demo) by US Gold 2