Demo disks are a weird passion of mine. I just love them, and can’t explain why. So I’ve decided to collect them and document them on this blog. So welcome to the first of (hopefully) many Demo Disk Roundups.
Our first disk today is Australian Summer Special. It has six games and one video on it, which are selected through a truly seizure inducing menu. Watching this screen made me feel somewhat sick.
The games are:
- Medievil
- Tekken 3
- Psybadek
- Colony Wars Vengeance
- Crash Bandicoot 3
- Spyro the Dragon
The video included on the CD is “Making of Medievil”
Australian Summer Special comes in a very neat fold out case design. It’s pretty clear that Medievil was thought to be the main attraction here.
The text on the front and on the center says “Do not underestimate the power of Playstation”, leading this disk to be called “The Power of Playstation” sometimes.
The selection of games is very solid, though obviously these are demos. They all run very smoothly, and without any issues that I noticed on my 7500x PS2 slim, which is the most likely model to have issues with Playstation games. Medievil, Tekken 3, Crash Bandicoot 3, and Spyro all support analog sticks, but Colony Wars and Psybadek don’t and act as though you’ve disabled the controller if you enable it.
The video footage is very compressed, as one would expect for a compact disc circa the late 90s, but it’s certainly watchable. Once you start it, there’s no way to stop it except for restarting your console, so keep that in mind.
Next up is Official Playstation 2 Magazine Australia Demo 15. The disk is labeled as ops2m 33.
It comes in a very standard DVD case without much special to note.
This disk has ten demos total.
- Shinobi
- Moto GP3
- Pride FC
- Evolution Skateboarding
- Primal
- Dynasty Warriors 3
- Conflict Desert Storm
- Herdy Gerdy
- Project Eden
- WRC II Extreme
It also has four videos. These are all trailers.
- Resident Evil Online (Released as Resident Evil Outbreak, without online features in PAL regions)
- SOCOM: US Navy SEALs
- Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick
- True Crime: Streets of LA
Full reviews of all of these are out of the scope of this blog post, but there’s a lot of gameplay on offer here. Shinobi is top billing on the cover art, but the first demo you’re offered on starting it is actually Conflict: Desert Storm. Shinobi is probably the most attractive option on this disk, showing off the first level of the game.
For this roundup I did two disks, but for future ones I’ll likely only be doing one. If you enjoyed it, please do follow the blog so you can be notified about future posts. I have a lot of PSX demo disks to do next, so look forward to that.
If you like these reviews and want to support me, I have a Patreon and a Ko-Fi. One Playstation 2 game is pretty cheap, and I do take requests, so if you do donate feel free to suggest a game to review in the message. I also have a Discord if you’d just like to talk retro games.
Always take the shot 