10 Things That Gamers Today Will Never Experience
5. Demo Discs
Video game magazines are something of a dying medium. They're still around but with the rapid growth of the internet, why pay for something that you can find with a quick Google search? The novelty of them has waned in recent years, especially with the exclusion of what made the magazines a must-buy, i.e. the demo discs.
With magazines for PlayStation, Xbox, Dreamcast, etc. there would come attached a disc with small snippets of game for you to test out before the official release. It's not unheard of today, but now it's called "early access" and you have to pay full price for it. These discs were free gifts with your magazine.
They were a mainstay of console gaming up until the PS3 where you'd just download the demos onto your console. But in the mid-90s to early 2000s, there would be custom collectable discs with unique menus giving the whole experience a lot more character and charm.
With the ease of downloading games though, the cost of producing these discs was no longer worth the time or money, with even demos themselves going the same way.