8 Video Game Tech Demos Which LIED To You
7. Project Reality
In the early '90s, the world was in thrall of Silicon Graphics' CGI. Their melting, metallic T-1000 in Terminator 2 and utensil clattering raptors in Jurassic Park had utterly wowed cinema goers, so when rumours began circulating that they were working with Nintendo to bring their cutting edge 3D graphics to home consoles, video game fans could hardly contain their excitement.
To that point, the astonishing real time capabilities of Silicon Graphics' Reality Engine had only been seen on super high-end PCs. Minus the wizardry of Kamek, it seemed impossible that they could translate it to a piece of kit affordable for general consumption. That's because, quite plainly, it was.
Nevertheless, they tried to convince the public they could. The first glimpse of 'Project Reality' - what would later become the Ultra 64, and finally, the Nintendo 64 - exhibited, as is oddly typical of tech demos, an ocean bed, with a couple of, ahem, hyper-realistic sharks marauding the scene. Nothing quite like this had ever been seen on a video game console in 1994 - and in truth, it still hadn't.
Reporters peeping behind the curtain discovered that the 'Performer Atlantis' demo was actually being powered by $250,000 SGI Onyx workstations. As Nintendo's hardware didn't yet exist in any tangible form, it was nothing more than a pelagic Potemkin showreel.