A Demo may contain a whole Universe…
A Demo... may contain a whole Universe... with an event that may or may not appear in the main title, so please be careful... to not get spoilers!
For example, if we consider PC only, the following titles, of year ~2000 I do still recall getting back then whenever possible in the hope the machine will handle these! These are just few but they had quite self-descriptive marvelous first missions of the main title: Diablo II, URU, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Max Payne, Halo: Combat Evolved, and of course... Serious Sam...
And of course, the ineffably magnificent... the Serious Sam! ✨
Although, please, take into account that I adore the Serious Sam not only for the gameplay, but for the developers' (Croteam) history!
Croteam was founded on June 14, 1993 where they initially started as a “garage games" company.
Source: https://serioussam.fandom.com/wiki/Croteam
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The name comes from combining the words "Croatia" and "team"... founded in August 1992 by six enthusiasts of the local Croatian demoscene and initially was a small "garage" studio that developed games for Amiga personal computers.
Source: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croteam [translated]
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Croteam employed approximately 40 people in 2020 and was acquired by its long-time publishing partner Devolver Digital in October 2020...
For development of Serious Sam: The First Encounter, Croteam developed the Serious Engine (formerly named S-Cape3D), a proprietary game engine, which, while similar to other engines at the time, was designed to render large environments and support a large number of enemies visible at any time...
In celebration of Serious Sam: The First Encounter's 15th anniversary in March 2016, Croteam released the source code for the final version of the first iteration of Serious Engine...
For more than 5 years... to the year 2000 of the demo, they've been perfecting the so ingenious custom S-Cape3D/Serious Engine:
- https://www.croteam.com/15th-anniversary-serious-sam-second-encounter
GA-Source in association with developer Croteam is very pleased to announce the release of the Serious Sam playable demo.
I know them since their Serious Sam demo from an old review(2000) of website called Old Man Murray. This moment even mentioned in some video:
- https://youtu.be/kXh1JJ_Jtew (How Serious Sam's Demo Saved the Game From Extinction...)
These people who created magnificent projects, the company and community from "garage"-like relationships with friends... created masterpieces, own graphics engines, used multiple platforms... together... that's what really matters and should be an example for others! Indeed, it is, at least to me.
Meaning, for me and many others, the Serious Sam is more than just a game, but the history, nostalgia, Community, purpose... a perfection of what was once just an idea, now evolved into a miracle...
Multiple people around the world found the so unexpected CD in ~2000 in a yet another "PC Gamer" magazine, and the demo included a few but very complete first missions of the main title - Serious Sam: The First Encounter! No words...
There's a new old stock PC Gamer magazine with the Demo CD I still have, in relatively archival condition, and there's hope to keep it safe:
::: spoiler The magazine with the Demo CD :::
One of the reasons is that these people, behind the scenes, were so ingenious that developed a whole 3D video-game engine manually from their knowledge and passion, and not a single one but several (including one similar to Doom's) in the hope to make a sound in the world!
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2001(Serious Engine 1)
-2005(Serious Engine 2)
-2009(Serious Engine 3)
-2011(Serious Engine 3.5)
-2014(Serious Engine 4)
As for any such ingenious teams back then, including Quake, Doom, Duke... that was indeed incredible for that time, I do believe...
The ~50 MB demo allowed to both first discover and dive into the universe, and test on available hardware the so custom engine implemented specifically for that title by Croteam!
Numerous people will never forget how unexpected and freaking awesome the demo was... and how fluently it rendered the Universe with so many live entities on the screen on that dear Pentium III 933 some had at the moment...
Serious Sam is a first-person shooter done by Croteam in 2001. Unlike other similar games, it doesn't rely on naturalistic game worlds and high realism, but you're supposed to stop the intergalactic arch villain Mental and his henchmen from conquering the universe. A remake of this game called Serious Sam HD was released in 2009.
In development since 1996, Serious Sam was originally supposed to demonstrate Croteam's game engine, the "Serious Engine". However, it has been praised so much that the publisher Gathering of Developers sponsored a complete game based on it.
In this video, you can see an early beta version that has been published about a year before the final release. It was meant to test hardware compatibility and gameplay problems, not to show up.
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Why so serious... Sam? ~ Duke Nukem
Source ☢️
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Dude, you've been hanging here like... forever. ~ Serious Sam
Source 💣
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- Hey, Sam! Come get some!
- See you later, Duke!
Source
Thank you... dear Artists, Developers, People... for the ineffably... infinitely miraculously magnificent work... art... you do...
Image source: Serious Sam’s 15th anniversary today [2016-03-21]
The poster image:
- Author: Laura Ardat Lilitu Nardoni
- Source: https://artstation.com/artwork/12wbe
Related:
- Serious Engine (An open source version of a game engine developed by Croteam for the classic Serious Sam games...)
- Max Payne 1998 Beta Gameplay
- Max Payne (Shareware Demo Version) (Comments: I remember this demo and it kinda had a scary vibe but also was very neat...)
- Myst URU Demo (Transcript: Although, the music... music is great...)