Playstation

Dead Unity [PC / PSX – Cancelled]

Dead Unity is a cancelled futuristic Sci-Fi Action/Survival Horror game that was in development from 1996 to 1998 by Aramat Productions and would have been published by THQ for the PC and the Playstation. According to former developers, the gameplay was somewhat of a “sci-fi Resident Evil clone“.

The game placed the player as an enhanced human, named Works, in the city of Unity who has to survive from deadly cyborgs and robots from a computer generated Artificial Intelligence called Global Mediation Machine who went berserk.

Dead Unity was officially announced in February 1997 by THQ, following a deal with Aramat Productions, as we can read on IGN:

T*HQ announced Friday that it has signed an agreement with entertainment software developer, Aramat Productions Inc., to develop and publish Dead Unity, a 3-D science-fiction adventure game.

The game is promised to be an immersive, real-time 3D adventure game, set in alternate universe.

Dead Unity should be released in first quarter, 1998.

Further details were shared, again by THQ, at E3 of the same year during the publisher’s line-up announcement:

Dead Unity – For the Sony PlayStation, PC CD-ROM, scheduled to be launched 1998 – A 3-D rendered graphic adventure that submerges players in an alternate reality where they assume the identity of the artificially enhanced human, Works, as he attempts to power down the massive computer core of the global mediation machine.

In October 1997, an issue from Computer Games Strategy Plus detailed features and background about the project:

(…) You play Works, an “artificially enhanced human” who must power down the immense computer core of an unfathomable global mediation machine. In an alternate reality, you will face 9-foot tall metal giants called Fleshies, as well as the masterful and diabolical core of the computer itself, in a blowout showdown shoot-em up. Works may choose from over 100 weapons and enhancements that he may interchange at the touch of an ARM (Automatic Reconfigurable Munitions). That’s over 100 ways to slice, dice, maim, mutilate, impale, mangle and cripple over 30 original enemy characters. Based upon the player’s choices, there are multiple story outcomes. The game utilizes a “unity-engine” for 3-D movement through over 400 rendered scenes including environments such as an underground dam, a robot assembly plant carved out of a mountain and a 250 story skyscraper. It also features dynamically changing environments, such as breaking windows, bullet holes in walls and day to night lighting shifts.

After that, Dead Unity didn’t reappear until May 1998 for another THQ’s line-up announcement:

“Dead UnityÔ “ The new standard in real-time, 3D rendered graphic adventures, “Dead Unity” immerses players in a futuristic world of fast-paced action and hair-raising suspense with its extremely detailed story, enthralling characters, riveting game play and unsurpassed graphic quality. (Scheduled for launch in October 1998.)

The issue from August 1998 of Playstation Magazine was the last one in which the game was mentioned before totally disappearing from the surface for years.

In August 2010, the blog of CanOfTheRelics, shared two videos of the game alongside development stories from an Aramat’s anonymous ex-developer: 

There are no Playable demos floating around. All the screenshots you seen in magazine ads, THQ promos…they were all mock ups. I designed the story for the project which was very complex, I was also Art Director and eventually producer on it before THQ pulled the plug with it. Long story short, Aramat was a new company and we had some really green programmers. It took over a year just to get a simple animation exporter out of them let alone AI, physics, game logic, etc…

The first E3 we put together that Video Demo that ran on monitors. The second year we “almost” had something remotely playable…but the owner of the company derailed my efforts to get actual game play in place in favor of having animated texture overlays to make spinning fans on screen and pretty much single handedly destroyed our chances with salvaging our relationship with THQ. The demo was full of bugs and you couldn’t even play it.

After I got back from E3 that year, I washed my hands of the project and started working on Arch Gothic. I put together a technology demo for it to show the rest of the company how it was done. With that technology they did manage to finish a working build for Dead Unity with a character traversing through a few rooms with weapons and some rudimentary AI…but it was too little too late. THQ pulled funding for the project and the company went under. Myself and 2 others primary to the company at that time have what was that playable build, but there is nothing floating around. You need special hardware just to play these builds and there isn’t much there. A hall and a couple connecting rooms with some robots in them.

There was a ton of art made…that’s really all that was done on it the whole time it was in development. The engineering staff just spun their wheels through most of production.

So that’s basically the story…

Very few information seems to be available about Dead Unity’s development company. Aramat Productions was established in Wilsonville, Oregon, in June 1996 by Dane Emerson, who previously worked at Nintendo of America and Lobotomy Software. According to his LinkedIn profile, the company counted 29 people in total and worked on PC, PlayStation and Sega Saturn projects for THQ, but also Playmates Interactive. By searching for other LinkedIn profiles, we can learn that Aramat had numerous cancelled projects, most of them still totally unknown to this day. Alongside the mysterious Arch Gothic mentionned above, we could add, for instance, that Jon Ediger, who was Software Engineer for 7 months within the company, indicates having worked on a “Sony PlayStation RPG video game” until February 1999, while 3D Artist Mark Thurow and Level Artist Brian Pape indicates having worked on Decopolis, a project “essentially similar to ‘Dead Unity’” according to Thurow. Jesse Perrin who was Game & Tools Programmer during his time at Aramat worked on “Femme Fatale: a Tekken clone“. Finally, John Stenersen, who was Technical Director from 1996 to 1998 for Aramat, depicted this period as a less than complimentary memory:

Unwittingly, I was hired to manage a group of under-educated, non-professional, inexperienced programmers and high school dropouts in an attempt to create an all-female character fighting game for the Playstation (Femme Fatale). The publisher collapsed and the game was cancelled. We then focused on a DirectX 5 horror game similar to Alone in the Dark (Dead Unity) but only managed the first design milestone when it became clear the company would shutter soon.

Still according to Dane Emerson’s LinkedIn profile, it seems Aramat Productions ceased operations in December 1999. In the end, the company never produced any games.

Dead Unity images:

Decopolis images:

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Fortris [PC/Playstation/Dreamcast – Cancelled]

Fortris is a cancelled 2D puzzle/tower-defense hybrid game developed by Promethean Designs around 2000, for the PC, Playstation and Dreamcast systems.

The game was first revealed in June 2000 by IGN:

Promethean Designs wants to deliver on the carnal need of medieval warfare, but mixed generously with the frantic puzzle play. This new project called Fortris is an arcade-like battle game combining the action of games like Artillery or Worms, strategy and fabled setting of a Warcraft or Myth, and puzzle challenges of Tetris or Atari‘s Rampart.

The gameplay in Fortris seems straight-forward and potentially addictive beyond control. Each round of the game begins with a Building sequence where Towers, Parapets, Armaments, and other castle pieces drop from the sky. Magic Blocks will also appear, so make the best use of them to fit your strategy. A well-crafted design will not only help in play, but also reward the creator with bonuses if the blocks used create combo — you can earn yourself extra cannons and wizards if the castle is brilliantly fashioned. Players will have to work frantically to erect a proper fortress with a solid foundation and plenty of defense positions.

Only a limited amount of time is offered to build the fortifications, and suddenly the war explodes. Assailants will have access to magic spells as well as traditional attack units, and will also be able to send out soldiers (called Twerps) to storm the castle. Twerps come in several varieties — Grunts, Soldiers, Medics, Archers, ect. — and players will have to wisely deploy their forces for maximum attack power without losing their own base. As in any good combat situation, rebuilding and refortification is a big part of the strategy, as each side only has a limited crew to parse out. All the while, the gates are being bombarded, the outer walls are cascading down, the Twerps are dying off, and the foundation is caving.

Essentially an arcade strategy game, Fortris will thicken the strategy by shifting levels as players go along. Gameplay begins in the beginning of time, but as the game moves on and the Twerps evolve, the battles become more advanced, more challenging, and more harrowing. Beginning in the Ice Age World, the game eventually runs through to the Stone Age, Medieval Times, and Space Age. Each game level has new weapons, spells, and Twerps to control. Also, the fortresses you build in Fortris become increasingly complex, and with it comes new challenges in both the Building and Attack stages.

Promethean Designs is currently in negotiations with publishers regarding Fortris, and the game is only in demo stages right now (these shots are from PC versions of the game). The PlayStation version will feature the split-screen action seen in some of these shots, as well as comical sequences where the Twerps are being taught the finer points of the Art of War. (…) Either way, this game will be and addictive and seemingly deep puzzle experience, with plenty of warfare action, magical pizzaz, and tactical excitement to spice the brew.

However, in January 2001, it was announced that the development of Fortris was given to Majesco Entertainment, which quickly decided to make the game exclusively for the Game Boy Advance and rebranded it as Fortress. It was developed by internal’s Majesco development studio Pipedream Interactive and released in August 2001.

It is, to this day, unknown why Promethean Designs gave the development to Majesco. We can speculate that the company faced financial troubles during this period as their last game was Aqua GT, released a year prior, and that they decided to salvage this title, before shutting down.

Strangely enough, in May 2022, PC Wizard shared on Twitter/X a 3D map screenshot of what was claimed to be the second version of the game during its development. According to him, the 2D version that was eventually released on GBA was the first version developed by another unnamed game development company. It was then given to Promethean Designs, which decided to turn it into a full 3D game. It is still unclear how far this version went into development, nor who’s right between video game magazines of the time claimed that the 2D version was developed by Promethean, or PC Wizard’s claimings.

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Youngblood: Search and Destroy [PC / PSX – Cancelled]

youngbloodbetalogo.jpg

Youngblood: Search and Destroy is a cancelled action/Role-Playing game published by GT Interactive Software and developed by Realtime Associates around 1997-1998, for the PC and the Playstation. It was based on the comic-book of the same name.

The game featured in various magazines from the Summer of 1997. Electronic Gaming Monthly #97 wrote:

Based on the popular comic book, Youngblood uses the power of the Playstation to give gamers a title that looks similar to Crusader: No Remorse. (…) Control one of the main characters from Youngblood in an isometric view. (…) Pick one character to control or form a group of two to four.

Game Informer #52 told us:

While most would think this title should be strictly action, GT is filling the game with less action and more RPG elements. (…) At times, the game does resemble Project Overkill, but otherwise, you’ll be controlling a party of characters, and the battles will be turn-based.

GT Interactive’s former producer Kurt Busch explained in the issue 31 of Next Generation that they initially planned to make the title a First-Person RPG, before trying a 3rd person action game, somewhat similar to Tomb Raider, and finally taking an approach much more similar to Diablo:

Initially, I felt very strongly we should do this as a first-person RPG (…). But the more we thought about it, the more we realized it would be very difficult to do it because you want to show off the characters, and in first-person we couldn’t work out the right set of views so players could see who was beside them. In the end, it just wasn’t very satisfying. (…) The problem with doing a Tomb Raider-style, third-person game, was that the main attraction of the license was not in any single character, but in the interaction of the team, and at the time trying to do it with six people on the screen all running around just wasn’t appetizing – the interface was just very, very difficult to design. I think the best way I can describe this is as a Playstation version of Diablo, except you control more than one character. You have a team, and you build your team up.

On Playstation Museum, we can read more details:

Get Ready To Rage!

Enter a radical gaming evolution blending a full-on assault of real-time combat action with elements of strategic role-playing. Badrock, Diehard, Riptide, Battlestone, Chapel… Youngblood takes on the most grotesque gauntlet of abominations a DNA experiment ever spewed out. Guide 11 heroes on a series of complex, real-time missions from secret labs to the depths of hell itself! Counter Giger. Find the Drachma codex. Oh yeah… and save the world!
Features:
  • Guide the Youngblood team through 11 real-time missions that combine pulse-pounding action with strategic role-playing elements.
  • Battle through dense jungles, parched deserts, and smoldering volcanoes to the very pits of hell as mutant enemies grow more bizarre and violent.
  • You must destroy them before the evil Giger and the traitor, Dr. Leviticus, finds the Drachma Codex, the secret to global domination.
  • Players can build, train, and hone the skills of the team members.
  • Take direct control of any hero or command an entire squadron.
  • Employ R&D to create powerful, new super weapons.
  • 2-player cooperative option, real-time combat action, and more.

Still according to Playstation Museum, it seems the game was cancelled due to major technical issues, as late former programmer Eric Peterson wrote:

There were three things that really killed it. One was the AI, and one was memory. They had a fairly cute system for pathfinding, but they ran out of memory and made the pathfinding map one-fourth the resolution of the displayed landscape, botching it. Basically no AI movement worked, after that. It would have been a huge task to carve it out and put in something that worked, and I was steeling myself up for it when, mercifully, the end came. Fixing the AI would have meant fixing the memory management, which was huge and hideous. For example, the audio system used 1/8 of the PlayStation’s memory just for its data structure — that’s with no audio samples loaded.
Another, more technical problem, was the cavalier attitude that was taken with handling global variables in the code. All the character code modules were just copies of each other with minor changes, so global variables were declared many times. The worst side effect of this was when global pointers came into play — the very first example I looked at had a global pointer declared six times with four different data types, which was then referenced (extern-ed) in twelve more modules in six different types. The poor compiler didn’t know which one you were talking about, so it just used (I believe) the last one processed as it worked its way through a build. This means that any of the declared variables could be the one used in any particular build of that code module, with no way to tell which it was. General instability and hard-to-find bugs were the result. Trying to chase down the thousands of global variable collisions were what took all the time.
Remember, this monstrosity was nine times the size of the biggest thing I’d ever worked on, Mechwarrior 2. The sheer amount of code made any major surgery a monumentous undertaking. The way it was written made practically everything major surgery.
He added on Lost Levels forums:

Youngblood was something like 2 years in development when the lead programmer quit. I was brought in to salvage the project.

I designed and wrote most of MechWarrior 2. Youngblood, a 2D tiler, was nine times the size and had six times as many modules. There was one spot where there was an “#ifdef Playstation”, followed by a bunch of code, and then an “#ifdef Macintosh” (ditto), and an “#ifdef Saturn” thrown in there somewhere, and SIX THOUSAND LINES DOWNSTREAM was the “#endif” with no comment.

It probably took months to do, and none of it was even getting compiled.

I did a quick couple of tests. At least ninety percent of the comments were wrong, because all the modules were just copied from one another. He’d write some horrible buggy thing, and then (this is not an exaggeration) make 27 copies of it, one for each character.

When I first tried to compile it, MSDev gave 3500 warnings.

Youngblood originally took a minute and a half to load to the title screen, and would leak several tens of megabytes. Pro Tip: don’t null a pointer before you free it. Especially in 27 different modules.

A former animator corroborated:
I think Eric already addressed this issue in his assessment. Like he said it ran out of memory in the pathfinding for A.I. and the resolution of the environment maps suffered for it.
A demo for the PC was made available in some video games magazines, and is still playable today. You can download it here.

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Gen13 [PC / PSX / Saturn – Cancelled]

Gen13 is a cancelled action game developed around 1997 for the PC, Playstation and Sega Saturn systems, that was going to be published by Electronic Arts and developed by Gray Matter Inc. It was based on the eponymous comic-book franchise.

As we can read on Playstation Museum, a deal between EA and WildStorm Productions was struck in February 1996 in order to make a series of video game based on this licence. High Score Entertainment was tasked to make design documents for EA:

The license granted EA exclusive rights to develop a series of 2-D and 3-D action-adventure interactive entertainment software products based on the Gen13 comic book series for personal computers, Sony PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and other advanced entertainment platforms.

EA’s games will feature the comic book’s seemingly average teenagers – the Gen13 – who are actually missing subjects from a top-secret government experiment to create super-humans. Escaping from their keepers, the youths are labeled as fugitives who pose a national security threat to the United States. Their only hope for survival is to use their newly-found powers to battle their enemies and to learn the secrets of their past. The Gen13 are kids on their own just trying to have fun – when they’re not running from spies or saving the world.

High Score Entertainment, the studio responsible for Madden NFL 95 and NHL 95, were in charge of producing and designing the Gen13 game. The high level concept was that the Gen13 video game will deliver the detail, depth and play-control of Mario, the great platform/shooter dynamic of Earthworm Jim, the hard-core action of Street Fighter and an adrenalizing soundtrack of heart-thumping techno and contemporary modern rock- with all the mind-blowing artwork and spectacular characters that only the Gen 13 universe can offer!

Regarding its gameplay, Gen13 was going to be a mix of vertical shooter, beat ’em up and one-on-one fighting game, with a cooperative mode:

THE GAMEPLAY:
The normal gameplay engine will be similar to that of Earthworm Jim where the player controls at least one of the five different Gen13 characters. There are also “team-up” levels where the AI controls additional players on the screen. In the case of a two-player game, both characters will be actively controlled.

In addition to side scrolling fighting/shooting, the engine will be designed to be flexible, allowing for a variety of scenarios such as: vertical shooter, static screen action, zoomed in cinematic sequences, zoomed out view of gameplay, and forced scrolling action.

The boss combat engine will be a dynamic 3-D environment where the characters can cruise around in an arena. The closer the character is to the “boss,” the closer the camera will be. The camera will zoom out respectively when the characters are apart.

CHARACTER DESIGN:
All your favorite Gen13 characters are in the game, each with their own special moves and animation. WildStorm Productions sent EA visual character specifications in order to ensure that the characters are intricately and properly portrayed.

The Gen13 characters can’t get by on their good looks and sparkling personalities alone. Throughout the game will be various ways to help the player survive, in the form of traditional gameplay “power-ups.” Of course, Gen13 offers that extra twist: The Ultra Move. The most potent powerup in the game is the “Ultra Move.” Each character has only one “Ultra Move” hidden somewhere in the levels of the game. The “Ultra Move” is the ultimate manifestation of a character’s Gen Active power.

BOSS DESIGN:
The design team asked Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell to create the bosses for each of the levels. They have also been commissioned to create the mother of all end bosses to climax the Gen13 game. The mother of all bosses will require true teamwork from all of the Gen13 characters in order to defeat. The game ending boss would be introduced in comic form in an upcoming Gen13 series. A possible marketing ploy would be to offer a secret code that is unlocked upon completion of the game that will allow the player to send away for a poster of the mighty end boss.

LEVEL DESIGN:
Levels will provide diverse physics and game mechanics to give a variety of challenging gameplay experiences. Levels on skates, on ice, driving vehicles, flying, swimming, or climbing will give the user several types of gameplay to master. The different areas of Gen13 will be truly living and breathing environments. Locations will be chosen not only for good gameplay and storyline, but for exciting and realistic visuals. 25 levels were designed conceptually, many of which were drawn out for the developer. Some of the levels include the Grunge and Freefall traveling to Las Vegas in “Viva Las Vegas”, Fairchild discovering an underground complex under the city in “Down In It”, Grunge saving Freefall from One-Eyed Jack in “No Tut In Common,” and Freefall loose in a shopping mall after hours in “Mall Maul.”

BONUS:
Arcade classic bonus games will be hidden throughout the Gen13 game. The games will be spoofs of famous arcade games that are recognized by all. The goal of the bonus games is to score points to earn extra lives.

Once the design documents finished, EA was looking for developers that could have achieved the vision they had for their Gen13 game. Three different game companies made tech demos to show to EA. Those studios were Evolutionary Publishing, Realtime Associates and Gray Matter Inc. Ultimately, Gray Matter was the developer retained by EA.

DEVELOPMENT HISTORY:
With the design documents completed, EA proceeded to entertain bids from possible developers. Potential developers included Evolutionary Publishing (Fox Hunt), Realtime Associates (Crusader: No Remorse, Iron Man & X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal), and Gray Matter Inc. (Perfect Weapon). Each developer submitted technical demos for review. It is important to understand that developers have concurrent projects in progress while technical demos are being created and some have more time and resources to dedicate on this than others. The technical demos are not to be taken as indication of how the resulting gameplay would be.

Evolutionary Publishing submitted two progressive interactive technical demos of Rainmaker and Qeelocke. Both demos allowed the user to move the character in a platform environment. The backdrop was from the “Viva Las Vegas” level. The more recent demo allowed Rainmaker to scale the wall of the pyramid in Las Vegas. Evolutionary Publishing decided to utilize 2D sprites for the characters whereas the following two competing developers used 3D models.

Realtime Associates submitted a playable demonstration of their progress in representing Freefall as a real-time rendered 3D model. This demo was put together in less than a week.

Gray Matter Inc. submitted a non-interactive art demo to illustrate the graphics style of the various Gen13 characters including an end boss as well as a fly through to the “Down In It” level. The graphics captured the essence of the design documents and ultimately Gray Matter was chosen as the developer.

But after some months of work, the game was cancelled for economical reasons. Gray Matter shutted down and EA decided to drop the licence.

CANCELLATION:
After just a few months of programming, Gray Matter developed two polished interactive levels, an arena mode, and FMV for both the PlayStation and PC. Three different characters were created for the two side-scrolling levels as well as enemies. Four characters and an enemy Boss were programmed for the Arena mode. Unfortunately the agreement between Gray Matter and Electronic Arts reached an impasse due to business politics. As a result Gray Matter closed down therefore ceasing all projects and all employees losing their jobs. Due to the amount of money spent and the popularity of Gen13 wavering, EA decided it was not financially feasible to engage another developer and instead decided to cut their losses.

Like many other games, over the years, the tech demo made by Realtime Associates and the prototype by Gray Matter leaked onto the internet.

Images:

Evolutionary Publishing’s version:

Realtime Associates’ version:

Gray Matter Inc.’s version:

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Gen13’s Realtime Associates prototype:

Gen13’s Gray Matter Inc. version:

 

Titan A.E. [PSX / PC – Cancelled]

Titan A.E. is a cancelled action/shoot ’em up game developed by Blitz Games Studios and published by Fox Interactive, from 1999 to 2000, for the PC and the Playstation. It was based off the animated Sci-Fi adventure film of the same name.

In August 2000, Eurogamer got in touch with Philip Oliver, co-founder of Blitz Games Studios, who explained what happened during the development of the game:

“When Fox purchased the Don Bluth studios they started developing Anastasia, and we were asked to put a concept together for a PlayStation game. They were very impressed, but it was decided that Anastasia was not the right game for the PlayStation, and they produced an activity centre for PCs with somebody else instead. However, they promised that next time they had an opportunity, they would consider us first.”

“Then in January 1999 I got a call asking if we would be available to produce an arcade action game for the new film from Don Bluth – Planet Ice. We started work in March 1999, and a few months later the film was renamed Titan A.E.”

The game was based very closely on the movie, in which a young man by the name of Cale finds himself racing across the galaxy to save what is left of the human race, after the planet Earth was destroyed by a powerful but xenophobic alien species called the Drej. “The storyline of the film reads very much like the plot for a video game, and therefore it made perfect sense to follow the same story and let the player control Cale and Akima [the movie’s love interest], and escape from the Drej to find the Titan.”

The game’s settings and visuals were also closely based on the movie, and “Fox Animation (the Don Bluth group) sent us monthly updates of the film, as well as concept artwork and 3D models of things likes space ships. It’s only been in the last few months that we’ve needed audio, and they have been very supportive.”

It was showed at E3 2000, and IGN wrote some more details on the title:

(…) Titan A.E. pits players as either Cale or Akima as they fight Drej aliens and search for the lost ship known as Titan, which holds the secret to salvaging the last of the human race.

Players can take the game on in two ways, through a third-person action/adventure game, or through the cockpit of a ship. Environments and detailed characters will appear from the movie itself, and the story will parallel the movie, but it’s likely that the development team will take some creative license to create an engaging game on its own.

But only a month later, the project was cancelled after the movie bombed in the box-office:

IGN learned today that Fox Interactive has decided to halt the development of Titan A.E. for PlayStation. Previously set for a fall release in North America, the title was based on the animated film by Don Bluth that completely tanked at the U.S. box offices with a total gross of just over $22 million.

While the poor showing of the movie at the box office seems like a good enough reason to cancel the PlayStation game, according to a PR representative from Fox Interactive it was only one of many different factors that resulted in the decision to discontinue the development of the game.

At Eurogamer, Philip Oliver added:

“Producing video games is a risky business. Development costs are high and time scales long. The public naturally buy things that they have heard of, therefore it removes a great deal of risk to produce games based on popular licenses. Unfortunately it means less creative freedom for us producing the game, and ultimately the game’s success is based more on the license than the game itself. Titan A.E. did not do well at the US box office, and that effected everyone involved in spin-off’s from the movie. It’s a great shame that the American public didn’t buy into Titan A.E. ; I believe lack of marketing had a great deal to do with it. It was a good film, and this sets back the whole movie industry in attempting to create SGI animated sci-fi movies, which ultimately could have been great, as well as a good source of material for the games business.”

Some years later, the playable demo of the game leaked on the internet, and a PSX demo CD is also available for purchase on Ebay.

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