Demo Derby: PlayStation Underground: Volume 1 Issue 1

My 2nd favorite feature!

Awww yeaaaaaaaaah, demos!

wooooooooooooooo here we go

I always liked Spider.

It's been too long, old friend.

Weekend content?! Classic content?!

IT BEGINS ANEW.

As the title indicates, this is the premiere issue of PlayStation Underground from April 1997. People generally got this in the mail only if they registered their PlayStation with Sony, which back then meant filling out a post card that came in the box and mailing it back. Why I felt compelled to do that in 1995, I'll never know. But, if I hadn't, I would not have got this, made a fan site about it, randomly met the producer in an AOL chat room, and been invited to E3 1997. It's kinda crazy to think about how different things may have been for me if I hadn't sent in that post card.

Anyway, Underground means a lot to me, so I'm glad I could contribute to Demo Derby in some small way.

(I gave them two other issues as well.)

YEAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks guys! This is my favorite feature on the site :)

It's back! It's back! It's back!

Very good to see another demo derby.

@marino:

Holy shit

Kudos to you dude. Thanks for making this possible!

Woohoo!

I was kind of hoping to see 1996 era Maggle in this PS Underground disc, but the disc's intro, credits and cool boarders cutscene made up for more than that. So happy there's a new demo derby!

@marino: :)

best feature (not including metal gear scanlon)

She doesn't show up until the 10th issue (3.2).

Twisted Metal 2, the memories come rushing back.

I'm sad that no one talked about Rocket Jockey when they mentioned turning with grapples.

I can't imagine how much of a monster Dan would be if you were playing multiplayer Twisted Metal 2 with him back in 1997.

Demonstrate!

Love this segment, always great.

Me and my friends did spit screen by using a splitter off the VCR and output the console to two tvs and cover half of each tv with cardboard and we would be on teams of two.

"SATURN SUCKS AND BOOBS"

The "grapple" mechanic in Jet Moto was also put to good use in an obscure PC game I used to play the shit out of called Rocket Jockey, which also featured a fun-as-hell battle mode and a fun-as-hell soccer-type game and had a rippin surf rock soundtrack by Dick Dale, badass, xtreme, mountain dew, etc etc

You should really find this game and take a look at it (though it has kinda aged like milk)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZIWbfOkw34

Best content on the site (more of this please!)

truly the golden age of giant bomb dot com

Carnage Heart is...um...serious?

@marino: u were red e

When you hear them talk shit about Dynasty Warriors.... again

But, yeah. Cool demo disc look as always.

Thanks Boobs.

@danryckert When the man generally lines up directly over the center you would describe him as a "nose tackle" which is basically a subdivision of a "defensive tackle" which may lineup in the gaps between the center and guards or directly over the guards themselves (it depends upon the defensive formation).

Basically a nose tackle could always be described as a defensive tackle, but the converse is not true.

Also - "F*** you, Drew Bledsoe!"

Kaz, I'm already a code demon

@drewbert

@danryckert

You are not crazy. It does it change from JURRASIC TO Jurassic

I also spent a lot of time trying to do the trick at Lara's mansion to get her naked. Except I didn't hear it second hand from a friend. I tried to print off the instructions from the internet at school. My teacher saw it and was significantly not happy seeing instructions on how to get a lady naked in a video game.

Yeah, no one has ever gotten exited about the music changing in a video game based on what the player is doing in the game since the 90s, right? Hahaha...

Wow! Seeing that PS3 interface gave me a big nostalgia buzz. Was not expecting that! Has it really been so long?

David Jaffe sure says "I think" a whole lot.

Hey, other people here remember Rocket Jockey! Man, that game was great. Both SegaSoft and Rocket Science put out some crazy, cool stuff around that time.

Also, holy shit, that first music video. WOW. I'm torn, because the song was pretty ass, but I love the ridiculous 90s-tastic style of the video itself.

I'm just glad I missed out on that band back then, because kid-me would have been way into it, and then I would have probably become a ska guy, and that's a path I'm quite happy to not have taken. It's bad enough that I became a nu-metal guy for a few years there.

In fact, I think PlayStation had a hand in that as well. Twisted Metal 3 at a friend's house introduced me to Rob Zombie (hey, I still like him, it wasn't all bad), which lead to a steady diet of late-90s radio metal. I also recall EA Supercross 2001 introducing me to Kittie's Brackish video... yeah, that one didn't age as well. And yet that song still gets stuck in my head way too often.

... Sorry, thinking about CD-ROM music videos and the bizarre journey my musical tastes took got me nostalgic there. I could ramble all day about that topic.

Am I crazy or did seeing these games on CRT monitors make them look better? Whenever I see old 3D games on a HD LCD I feel like the crisp sharpness of my screen reveals stuttering, aliasing, and flicking seams that were hardly noticeable on a CRT.

It's no Old Games Show, but this is up there anyway.

My theory has always been that Twisted Metal was popular because it was impossible to do something as fast as Quake without a kb+m but if you use cars it kiiiiinda works

THE Ginuwine?!

@marino this was a great one, thnx for sending it in! (EDIT: or giving it to them in person:p)

This really is one of my favorite features on here. Great job to Dan, Jeff & Drew as well.

That Resident Evil 1.5 stuff was awesome. I've never seen it in motion, just screenshots. Looked pretty good for in-progress stuff, especially since the final product wouldn't come out for just over another year. And that Jaffe stuff. Yeah. Favorite Demo Derby? Definitely a runner.

Man, I really want Demo Derby to become something of a regular weekend series. It's a really great thing to wake up to on a gray sunday morning.

The dudes also cover some good archetypes - Dan being the 90's kid who most of us can probably relate to, just jumping with nostalgia. Drew being the 90's Nintendo kid who's experiencing some of this for the first time (I'm guessing?). And Jeff being the walking encyclopedia and who was already in the business at the time, sharing old anecdotes.

Saturn sucks.

This is the best current series on the site, well since Jeff was added it is. It is a great dynamic of Dan and Drew both having been kids during this time period with nostalgia and Jeff dropping knowledge from being in the industry way back then.... great viewing.