June 10, 2025 • 10 mins
Please enjoy this sample of a FunFactor ULTRA Review Crew bonus episode bursting with international flavor! With EposVox and Sean Seanson joining Aidan and Ty, we bridged three countries and seven time zones to go deep on our love of demo discs--the best (and sometimes only) way to taste the breadth of some old consoles' libraries and indie scenes.
It's our first two-guest episode, and an absolute banger. Sean's most recent deep-dive video is all about the set of 7 PlayStation EU/PAL-region demo discs, while EposVox has been creating genius-tier content on retro tech and gaming hardware for years and years.
As always, we thank all of you so much for supporting the show. If you dig it, please join FunFactor ULTRA at the Review Crew tier to unlock these episodes--and then tell people about us! We'd love nothing more than to get more cool people in the ULTRA Lounge of our Discord server, and have the support we need to keep doing this show we love.
-----
Sources include the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections.
The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!
It's our first two-guest episode, and an absolute banger. Sean's most recent deep-dive video is all about the set of 7 PlayStation EU/PAL-region demo discs, while EposVox has been creating genius-tier content on retro tech and gaming hardware for years and years.
As always, we thank all of you so much for supporting the show. If you dig it, please join FunFactor ULTRA at the Review Crew tier to unlock these episodes--and then tell people about us! We'd love nothing more than to get more cool people in the ULTRA Lounge of our Discord server, and have the support we need to keep doing this show we love.
-----
Sources include the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections.
The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, the latest bonus episode for fun Factor Ultra
Review Crew members has just gone live in their feed.
Please enjoy this small sample. It is an awesome conversation
about demo discs, classic old school demo discs for consoles
and PCs associated with magazines or not. For the first time,
we have two special guests, Sean Seanson and Apisvox, two
(00:21):
awesome YouTubers. Sean did a big deep dive on these
exact demo discs for the European region of PlayStation one.
Episbox has been creating a just an enormous amount of
great retro gaming and hardware you know, deep dives and
reviews and documentaries, plus a bunch of great streaming, education
(00:42):
topics and stuff forever. Please check out all of their
stuff in the show notes and online google them, search them.
They are around two people we love to get on
the show and friends and admirees of Aiden and myself
for a long time. Please enjoy this small sample and
go to Funfactor pod dot com subscribe through Review Crew
(01:04):
tier to get the whole episode, plus all of our
previous bonus episodes and access to the swanky members only
area of our discord.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
All right, Sean and Natty. On these bonus episodes, we
do expect our guests to work for their pay. So
today we're going to read some lettermail from PC Gamer
number fifteen. It's the August nineteen ninety five issue. I'd
actually honestly love to cover this issue on a main
episode of the show. The cover story is about to
launch of Windows ninety five, the future PC gaming as
(01:40):
it migrated away from DOS, because I mean, who doesn't
want to run Doom in a window? Right in the
top right corner, though, we also see a little box
out advertising the contents of this issues demo disc, and honestly,
there's some you know, forgettable games on there, but it's
also a bit of a banger with a demo of Discworld,
which was a pretty great point and click adventure game
(02:02):
from you know, back in nineteen ninety five, And that
kind of goes to show that, like demo discs weren't
just like you know, shovel wear kind of thrown at people.
It was like, you know, they were legit exciting games
on these these discs. And then flipping through the magazine,
there's several pages dedicated to the demo disc has little
previews of the games. It might give you controls or
(02:23):
hints or tips on how to play. Amusingly, there's instructions
on how to use a CD with your computer, and
it even concludes with a single page at the end
detailing how to get a floppy disc version of the
demo disc if you don't have a CD player. So,
like that's the era where we were in. Like that hardware,
CDs and optical media allowed these demo discs to be
(02:44):
given out because they were so cheap, but at the
same time, not everyone had access to them. The floppy
disc version, unfortunately, only comes with two demos of course,
instead of about a dozen on the CD.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Okay, anyway, we're gonna ship out like a twenty floppy
demo collect to you for free.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, obviously.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Can you would honestly love like a floppy version of
a PC demo disc? Yeah, that would be just just
just for even display perp.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Absolutely. Can you imagine like, yeah, having some of those
like you know, classic game demos on floppy disk. That
would be pretty sweet.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
That I'd paste them all on my wall and like
see that right there, that's five minutes of disc world.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
No audio though, right like they cut the audio.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
It's MIDI okay.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Anyway, let's go to the letters. Can you guys open
up the issue to page one and thirty eight and Addie,
I want you to read the letter titled new Blood wanted.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Dear PC gamer, I'd like to say that your CD
Raum edition is fairly priced, very fairly priced, even up
here in ever so far away Canada. And if you're wondering, no,
it's not that cold way up here. And I do
not say a at the end of every sentence, only
every second, two or third. The real reason I am
(04:04):
writing is I'm getting a little tired of seeing the
same old computer game manufacturers. I think there's a real
need for some new blood in the industry. Sure, there
are some really interesting titles out there, but where are
the companies that are willing to take a risk and
try a totally new game, not a copy of Doom.
I'd really like to see some neat, new, innovative games.
(04:26):
The reason we don't is probably that the computer game
market is unfortunately getting harder and harder to break into. Sincerely,
Jonathan Keene from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the Atlantic Coast.
If you have a map. Canada ranked number one by
the UN if you didn't know, ps who says that
Canadians don't have any patriotism? Eh?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Okay, I'm sorry, ranked number one in what just overall
just category.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, it's a clean sweep. And now you guys know
why I picked this letter number one. Night nations all
unanimously agree Canada is.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
The first United Nation.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Before we move on to the next letter, though, I
just wanted to say I thought this was interesting, not
just because they were talking about, you know, the novelty
of CDs being included in the magazine, but also the
fact that they're having the exact same conversation we're still having,
which is like, you know, where are the new innovative games?
Why is every game the same? Why do we just
get Doom clones? And you know, these days, like I
(05:27):
continually talk about how every triple A game is the
same game. And it's just funny how that those conversations
just never change. You know, it could be twenty years whoa,
this is thirty years ago, right, nineteen ninety five, thirty
years ago.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
This is classic doom though doom, Like everything is doom.
All topics start with doom and.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Sincere do games that aren't just Fortnite crossed with Belden ring.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Sean give us a bully for Bullfrog.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Please let's go, dear PC gamer. I think the gaming
gods have smalled down upon us. Peter Mulinu and Bullfrog
are going to do a superhero game. It amazes me
that's such an obviously great subject for gaming has been
neglected for so long. After the King of vapor ware
Champions bit the dust a few years ago, it seems
(06:19):
like everybody just forgot about the idea. But I have
faith in Bullfrog to make us feel that the weight
was worth it. Best regards, Bob Smoke Smoker, Staten Island,
New York, ah Man, such hope with Bullfrog and Peter
Molineux and superhero games at that, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
And we definitely got more of those, more of them now.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yeah, Oh, we got a lot. And I even think
I had a little look into what Champions was out
of curiosity. It was a pen and paper role playing
game about superheroes, which sounds pretty interesting, but it turns
out it did get a game, Champions Online, yes, which
was one of the many superhero MMOs that appeared one day.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I think It's funny that he refers to the King
of Vaporware as champions and not Peter mal and You, because.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
You know, I was gonna say faith in both who.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Exemplifies vaporware more than Peter maul and you. And the
fact that the guy's nickname is Smoke, which is what
every single Peter Malin youu idea goes up in events.
But let's carry on before Peter mal and You cancels
fun factor. We're gonna talk about video game mix tapes,
which is what I like to think about demo discs.
(07:31):
As you know, as I said earlier, I spent a
lot of time playing demos back in the day, stuff
like the File nine eight demo, where I was desperate
for any taste of a game I was excited for.
And then sometimes it was just exploring those PC gamer
discs to see what Coconut Monkey had for me that
that month. But when I think of where I really
started with demos, it goes back past CDs to the
(07:57):
era of PC sharewear in the early nine So my
dad was really like he was a you know, techie,
and he adopted tech really early. We had a modem,
like really early. My dad has a Commodore sixty four modem.
I was playing Doom on like, you know, a black
and white LCD laptop because I couldn't get on the
main computer, and so I had access to a lot
(08:18):
of these games and access to the Internet, and so
I was getting these shareware games way before the era
of cheap optical media made demo discs possible, stuff like Wolfenstein, Doom,
Jill at the Jungle, Commander Keen. I spent so much
time downloading these, sharing them, playing them. How do you
think Apage's approached to share where in the early nineties
(08:39):
shaped the concept of demo discs and the way that
demos sort of evolved outward from there.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
I think at the very least they prove almost immediately
with the success of Doom, not this you know, giving
people a tribe something or giving them a taste of
something for free, and in the case of Doom, like
a pretty substantial portion of the I'd say, like the
first act right like that's you know, that's a good
chunk of game. But it didn't exactly stop people from
(09:06):
spending lots and lots of money on going out to
get more Doom, which was pretty pretty crazy. I mean
the traditional demo disc is effectively just you know, the
ones that we more or less know of today, is
just like a short sampling of a whole bunch of
different games. But in the case of like you know,
the shareware model, that Apage really really pushed and really
(09:26):
I think made their own like they were giving you
like a good chunk. They were confident that, you know,
they were going to give you enough for people to
buy what they were selling, and to be prefair, I
don't think a lot of people, like I would say
the majority of people who got the shareware versions of
these games didn't go out and buy the full version.
But even then, you know, the whole Apage brand, the game,
(09:48):
it's been talked about, it's in people's heads, like people
talk about all the different games that came out their Doom, Wolfenstein,
jillij Jungle. These are all things that people at the
time were fully aware of, and whether they bought them
or not, you know, I think it's a testament to
just getting your brand out there, getting the quality of
your games out there. I mean, wasn't it true that
at one point Doom was installed on more computers than
(10:09):
Windows at a certain period, you know, leading up to
that point. I think at that point you just have
to say to yourself, well, this is like, this is crazy,
this is a massive hit. And sometimes it's more important
just to have people be aware of your game and
talking about it than even selling them, because a lot
of the time, especially back then, that did the work
(10:30):
for you, just getting other people to do your marketing
for you. If you're confident in your product, give people
a taste of it, let them say, wow, this is
really cool. You should check it out, you should try it,
and you could either buy it, or you could just
you know, get a blocky disc, get a key downloading
Hey, everyone, the latest bonus episode for fun Factor Ultra
Review Crew members has just gone live in their feed.
Please enjoy this small sample. It is an awesome conversation
about demo discs, classic old school demo discs for consoles
and PCs associated with magazines or not. For the first time,
we have two special guests, Sean Seanson and Apisvox, two
(00:21):
awesome YouTubers. Sean did a big deep dive on these
exact demo discs for the European region of PlayStation one.
Episbox has been creating a just an enormous amount of
great retro gaming and hardware you know, deep dives and
reviews and documentaries, plus a bunch of great streaming, education
(00:42):
topics and stuff forever. Please check out all of their
stuff in the show notes and online google them, search them.
They are around two people we love to get on
the show and friends and admirees of Aiden and myself
for a long time. Please enjoy this small sample and
go to Funfactor pod dot com subscribe through Review Crew
(01:04):
tier to get the whole episode, plus all of our
previous bonus episodes and access to the swanky members only
area of our discord.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
All right, Sean and Natty. On these bonus episodes, we
do expect our guests to work for their pay. So
today we're going to read some lettermail from PC Gamer
number fifteen. It's the August nineteen ninety five issue. I'd
actually honestly love to cover this issue on a main
episode of the show. The cover story is about to
launch of Windows ninety five, the future PC gaming as
(01:40):
it migrated away from DOS, because I mean, who doesn't
want to run Doom in a window? Right in the
top right corner, though, we also see a little box
out advertising the contents of this issues demo disc, and honestly,
there's some you know, forgettable games on there, but it's
also a bit of a banger with a demo of Discworld,
which was a pretty great point and click adventure game
(02:02):
from you know, back in nineteen ninety five, And that
kind of goes to show that, like demo discs weren't
just like you know, shovel wear kind of thrown at people.
It was like, you know, they were legit exciting games
on these these discs. And then flipping through the magazine,
there's several pages dedicated to the demo disc has little
previews of the games. It might give you controls or
(02:23):
hints or tips on how to play. Amusingly, there's instructions
on how to use a CD with your computer, and
it even concludes with a single page at the end
detailing how to get a floppy disc version of the
demo disc if you don't have a CD player. So,
like that's the era where we were in. Like that hardware,
CDs and optical media allowed these demo discs to be
(02:44):
given out because they were so cheap, but at the
same time, not everyone had access to them. The floppy
disc version, unfortunately, only comes with two demos of course,
instead of about a dozen on the CD.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Okay, anyway, we're gonna ship out like a twenty floppy
demo collect to you for free.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, obviously.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Can you would honestly love like a floppy version of
a PC demo disc? Yeah, that would be just just
just for even display perp.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Absolutely. Can you imagine like, yeah, having some of those
like you know, classic game demos on floppy disk. That
would be pretty sweet.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
That I'd paste them all on my wall and like
see that right there, that's five minutes of disc world.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
No audio though, right like they cut the audio.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
It's MIDI okay.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Anyway, let's go to the letters. Can you guys open
up the issue to page one and thirty eight and Addie,
I want you to read the letter titled new Blood wanted.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Dear PC gamer, I'd like to say that your CD
Raum edition is fairly priced, very fairly priced, even up
here in ever so far away Canada. And if you're wondering, no,
it's not that cold way up here. And I do
not say a at the end of every sentence, only
every second, two or third. The real reason I am
(04:04):
writing is I'm getting a little tired of seeing the
same old computer game manufacturers. I think there's a real
need for some new blood in the industry. Sure, there
are some really interesting titles out there, but where are
the companies that are willing to take a risk and
try a totally new game, not a copy of Doom.
I'd really like to see some neat, new, innovative games.
(04:26):
The reason we don't is probably that the computer game
market is unfortunately getting harder and harder to break into. Sincerely,
Jonathan Keene from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the Atlantic Coast.
If you have a map. Canada ranked number one by
the UN if you didn't know, ps who says that
Canadians don't have any patriotism? Eh?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Okay, I'm sorry, ranked number one in what just overall
just category.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, it's a clean sweep. And now you guys know
why I picked this letter number one. Night nations all
unanimously agree Canada is.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
The first United Nation.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Before we move on to the next letter, though, I
just wanted to say I thought this was interesting, not
just because they were talking about, you know, the novelty
of CDs being included in the magazine, but also the
fact that they're having the exact same conversation we're still having,
which is like, you know, where are the new innovative games?
Why is every game the same? Why do we just
get Doom clones? And you know, these days, like I
(05:27):
continually talk about how every triple A game is the
same game. And it's just funny how that those conversations
just never change. You know, it could be twenty years whoa,
this is thirty years ago, right, nineteen ninety five, thirty
years ago.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
This is classic doom though doom, Like everything is doom.
All topics start with doom and.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Sincere do games that aren't just Fortnite crossed with Belden ring.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Sean give us a bully for Bullfrog.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Please let's go, dear PC gamer. I think the gaming
gods have smalled down upon us. Peter Mulinu and Bullfrog
are going to do a superhero game. It amazes me
that's such an obviously great subject for gaming has been
neglected for so long. After the King of vapor ware
Champions bit the dust a few years ago, it seems
(06:19):
like everybody just forgot about the idea. But I have
faith in Bullfrog to make us feel that the weight
was worth it. Best regards, Bob Smoke Smoker, Staten Island,
New York, ah Man, such hope with Bullfrog and Peter
Molineux and superhero games at that, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
And we definitely got more of those, more of them now.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yeah, Oh, we got a lot. And I even think
I had a little look into what Champions was out
of curiosity. It was a pen and paper role playing
game about superheroes, which sounds pretty interesting, but it turns
out it did get a game, Champions Online, yes, which
was one of the many superhero MMOs that appeared one day.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I think It's funny that he refers to the King
of Vaporware as champions and not Peter mal and You, because.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
You know, I was gonna say faith in both who.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Exemplifies vaporware more than Peter maul and you. And the
fact that the guy's nickname is Smoke, which is what
every single Peter Malin youu idea goes up in events.
But let's carry on before Peter mal and You cancels
fun factor. We're gonna talk about video game mix tapes,
which is what I like to think about demo discs.
(07:31):
As you know, as I said earlier, I spent a
lot of time playing demos back in the day, stuff
like the File nine eight demo, where I was desperate
for any taste of a game I was excited for.
And then sometimes it was just exploring those PC gamer
discs to see what Coconut Monkey had for me that
that month. But when I think of where I really
started with demos, it goes back past CDs to the
(07:57):
era of PC sharewear in the early nine So my
dad was really like he was a you know, techie,
and he adopted tech really early. We had a modem,
like really early. My dad has a Commodore sixty four modem.
I was playing Doom on like, you know, a black
and white LCD laptop because I couldn't get on the
main computer, and so I had access to a lot
(08:18):
of these games and access to the Internet, and so
I was getting these shareware games way before the era
of cheap optical media made demo discs possible, stuff like Wolfenstein, Doom,
Jill at the Jungle, Commander Keen. I spent so much
time downloading these, sharing them, playing them. How do you
think Apage's approached to share where in the early nineties
(08:39):
shaped the concept of demo discs and the way that
demos sort of evolved outward from there.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
I think at the very least they prove almost immediately
with the success of Doom, not this you know, giving
people a tribe something or giving them a taste of
something for free, and in the case of Doom, like
a pretty substantial portion of the I'd say, like the
first act right like that's you know, that's a good
chunk of game. But it didn't exactly stop people from
(09:06):
spending lots and lots of money on going out to
get more Doom, which was pretty pretty crazy. I mean
the traditional demo disc is effectively just you know, the
ones that we more or less know of today, is
just like a short sampling of a whole bunch of
different games. But in the case of like you know,
the shareware model, that Apage really really pushed and really
(09:26):
I think made their own like they were giving you
like a good chunk. They were confident that, you know,
they were going to give you enough for people to
buy what they were selling, and to be prefair, I
don't think a lot of people, like I would say
the majority of people who got the shareware versions of
these games didn't go out and buy the full version.
But even then, you know, the whole Apage brand, the game,
(09:48):
it's been talked about, it's in people's heads, like people
talk about all the different games that came out their Doom, Wolfenstein,
jillij Jungle. These are all things that people at the
time were fully aware of, and whether they bought them
or not, you know, I think it's a testament to
just getting your brand out there, getting the quality of
your games out there. I mean, wasn't it true that
at one point Doom was installed on more computers than
(10:09):
Windows at a certain period, you know, leading up to
that point. I think at that point you just have
to say to yourself, well, this is like, this is crazy,
this is a massive hit. And sometimes it's more important
just to have people be aware of your game and
talking about it than even selling them, because a lot
of the time, especially back then, that did the work
(10:30):
for you, just getting other people to do your marketing
for you. If you're confident in your product, give people
a taste of it, let them say, wow, this is
really cool. You should check it out, you should try it,
and you could either buy it, or you could just
you know, get a blocky disc, get a key downloading
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