First, we had the tanks and the helicopters and the nukes and the aliens. Now, thanks once again to modders experimenting with the outer limits of the bundled Sandbox2 editor, we get the Crysis demo in a whole new, sparkly setting. Is this the best demo ever? Apart from the goof many years ago in which a UK magazine accidentally stuck, rather than the demo, the entirety of the game in question (wish I could remember what it was – I’ll try and find out) on its coverdisk, I reckon so. Details of the map and how to get it after the jump.
‘Renji’ has managed to relocate the demo’s island map from tropical paradise to ice-bound winter wonderland, giving the demo a totally different feel (aided by some layout changes). Plants spew frozen crystals when you brush past them, and the snow texture on the ground looks pretty incredible, if you can force your PC up to the fabled Very High video quality. Renji’s also been kind enough to liberally sprinkle guns and vehicles into the map, together with a few static but big boats -including a helicarrier- we’ve not seen before. And many, many bright red explosive barrels left next conveniently next to anything you could possibly want to detonate into a few dozen smouldering pieces. All told, the map feels a bit like a Michael Bay movie. [Insert scathing comment about Michael Bay movies here].
Grab the map from here . To play it, just follow the same instructions as scrawled in our earlier post. Nice work, Mister Renji.
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A now defunct UK magazine, I wonder?
Was it the initial Hellboy demo?
Would anyone even want the full version of Hellboy? I mean even for free?
Don’t think so. I believe it was back in floppy disk times. But I could be wrong.
You probably mean Robocod. PC Format. It locked out the later levels, but left in the ‘access all areas’ cheat-codes.
PC Gamer did it once with a shareware game, but I seem to remember that was their fault and not the magazines (there was a bug in the code that let you unlock the full version for free, or something). I remember being in the old pcgfans chatroom at the time when someone mentioned it to (then Editor) Matt Pierce, he nearly had a heart attack before he realised he wasn’t to blame.
Amiga One. I have an issue that gives out a “free game”, although I don’t know if it was on purpose.
It was Abuse wasn’t it?
Does anyone remember the half-hour demo of Resident Evil on the PC (I seem to remember it being available on either PC Gamer or PC Format) – I wasn’t aware of a nefarious underworld of crackers and so forth back then (so no the idea never crossed my mind until now) but was it possible to unlock the whole game, or was it only a clever partial release?
James Pond 2: Robocod was indeed famous for its demo also containing the full game, yes.
Down south here, we got master of orion 3 free on a coverdisc, due to an error. yay for us, twasnt the mags fault. On the other hand, I also got a penguin doco one one disc, too. God bless Australia.
I got the full game of Earth 2140 on a cover disc once… but I believe it was intentional.
I just received a full boxed copy of City of Villains with PC Zone! However, I’m not sure if PC Zone came with City of Villains (as I recently bought it for online download – maybe they also send a free boxed copy), the game came with the magazine :) Confusing!
Oh! Hello everyone by the way :)
Hi Paul. Thanks for making games’n’stuff.
The dire Piers Anthony game ‘Companions of Xanth’ was included in its entirety on a coverdisk about ten years ago. I think it may have been PC Format, but whoever it was they had a new coverdisk editor the next month.
Paul Wedgwood: PCZone have sent out copies of City Of Villians to subscribers.
Nah, it was the dearly departed PC Review. I loved that dearly, and actually really enjoyed Companions Of Xanth. So there.
PC Format once included a remarkably complete demo of Steel Panthers that in actual fact seemed to be a late beta.
And, I think, that PC Gamer once managed to include some hard-core pornography in a Duke Nukem 3D map.