RGB Classic Games Forum

Do any of the following games have a playable demo, or have any of them been declared freeware?

Albion
Alter Ego
Battle Chess
Budokan: The Martial Spirit
Carmageddon
Civilization
Colonization
Constructor
Crusader: No Remorse
Darklands
Day of the Tentacle
Doom II
Dune II
Eye of the Beholder II
Full Throttle
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers
Grand Prix 2
Hero's Quest/Quest for Glory: So YOu Want to Be a Hero
Heroes of Might and Magic
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Jagged Alliance
Jane's Combat Simulations: AH-64D Longbow
King's Quest (any)
Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos
Leisure Suit Larry (any)
Little Big Adventure
M.A.X.: Mechanized Assault & Exploration
Master of Orion II
Master of Magic
MechWarrior (any)
Panzer General
Populous
Realms of Arkania
Realms of the Haunting
Red Baron
Star Control II
Starflight
Stunts/4D Sports Driving
Sword of the Samurai
System Shock
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri
The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Settlers II
Theme Hospital
Theme Park
UFO: Enemy Unknown
Ultima (any)
Wasteland
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
Wing Commander (any)

I don't know about many of these games but I know Doom 2 did not have any sort of demo.

Albion definitely has a demo version out there and there are multiple versions of it. I think I had some more on cover CDs, I'll see if I can dig them up.
Version 1.37 English
Version 1.38 English
Version 1.37 German

Full Throttle had a demo version, but I think it was similar to many of the Dark Forces demos, i.e. you had to run it with the demo CD in your CD drive.

Heroes of Might and Magic also has a demo version available, though it was only available on CDs and also required the CD it was on to be in the CD drive in order to run. So it could be a bit difficult to distribute, unless you're interested in CD images?

The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall has multiple demos available and it is now also officially freeware, as it can be downloaded straight from Bethesda's website.
Registered 2.13 (Freeware)
Demo 0.1
Demo 1.0.179
Demo 1.0.181

The Settlers II also had numerous demos available in many languages as well. I think I had some German, Polish and French demo versions of the game on some cover CDs. There were also separate demo versions that were distributed on CD (included the start-up video) and through BBSes. And there were also separate demos for the Gold Edition and the Expansion Pack. Anyway, this is what I could quickly dig up.
Version 0.16 German
Version 1.01 CD English
Version 1.02 English
Mission CD Version 1.51 English
Gold Edition Version 1.51 English

Litude wrote:Heroes of Might and Magic also has a demo version available, though it was only available on CDs and also required the CD it was on to be in the CD drive in order to run. So it could be a bit difficult to distribute, unless you're interested in CD images?

Well, the HoMM demo works with its folder from the CD mounted as a CD-ROM drive in DOSBox, it's not picky about it not being a real CD/CD images provided the paths are correct.

DOSGuy wrote:Do any of the following games have a playable demo, or have any of them been declared freeware?

Battle Chess has at least two non-playable demo versions, one for EGA and another for EGA/VGA (otherwise they are identical). I don't think there was ever a playable demo of the game.
Civilization only has a non-playable demo that needs DOSBox to be set to EGA mode to run: civdem.zip
Same for Colonization: coldemo.zip
Crusader: No Remorse had a CD-exclusive playable demo, more info here.
Dune II has a non-playable (normally) demo available: dune2.exe
Jagged Alliance - I think there are playable demos both for JA1 and for its add-on, Deadly Games, but I'm not sure. Maybe it's just a demo of Deadly Games.
Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos - Westwood never published playable demos of LoL series. Non-playable stuff is found here.
Little Big Adventure - some time ago someone asked for the demo of this game and I posted a link when I occasionally found it, it's somewhere in the Game Wishlist thread.
M.A.X.: Mechanized Assault & Exploration - there definitely is a playable demo of this one and its sequel, just Google it. I think FilePlanet should have both demo versions.
Master of Magic playable demo: momdemo.zip [rename manually]
MechWarrior - I think playable demo versions are available starting from part 2, but maybe earlier demos also exist. Some may be CD exclusive though.
Realms of Arkania - I only know about a non-playable preview of the first game, and a CD-exclusive German demo of part 3.
Realms of the Haunting does have a playable demo, which is mentioned here.
Red Baron - no playable demo as far as I know, only a slideshow.
Star Control II - there's a demo somewhere (I think I posted a link in some thread here but not sure), but I couldn't run it in DOSBox.
System Shock - there definitely is a playable demo, and another one of the enhanced SVGA version with voice-overs is found at FilePlanet (just look it up here, it's somewhere in the Game Wishlist thread).
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri - two demo versions with a total of four unique missions.
UFO: Enemy Unknown - one demo under the title UFO and a different one with the X-COM title.
Wing Commander - only non playable demo versions for the first two parts, everything else has a playable demo, which I have posted about here.

Thanks for your help, everyone. I already had demos for a few of these games, but I included them anyway in case you guys found versions that I didn't have yet. The list comes from http://i2.wp.com/information2share.file ... -games.jpg.

I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge that MrFlibble had already posted about at least one of these games having a demo. You've problaby noticed that I don't add as many games as I used to, for the twofold reason that I've been very busy since buying a house, and because it takes longer to add each game because I include more information than I used to (system requirements, cheats, patches, purchasing links for Amazon/GOG, screenshots for every video mode, and other things that have slowly been added over the years), so I'm not realistically able to add every game that gets posted here in a timely manner. I decided to focus on these games because this list was big on Reddit, so these are probably games that a lot of people would like added to the site. Thank you to everyone who has already posted links for some of these games.

DOSGuy wrote:The list comes from http://i2.wp.com/information2share.file ... -games.jpg.

Nice list, didn't know about it

DOSGuy wrote:I decided to focus on these games because this list was big on Reddit, so these are probably games that a lot of people would like added to the site.

That's an excellent idea!

BTW, what do you think of the idea of including freeware/shareware "alternatives" for popular games that don't have playable demo version, like what I tried to catalogue (in an obviously incomplete and rather biased way) here?

DOSGuy wrote:I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge that MrFlibble had already posted about at least one of these games having a demo.

Well, yeah, I do have some favourites among those you have posted Litude and leilei also made excellent posts about many of the rarer demos, including the HoMM demo which is discussed above.

The tricky part is that there are some many games with playable demos, while others have quite obscure demo releases, which is especially true for the pre-Internet/early Internet era.

Here's a demo of Jagged Alliance: JADEMO.ZIP

Take note though that I haven't checked it yet, and the file name might not be original.

C|NET Downloads has a demo of Deadly Games, which is apparently a different one:
http://download.cnet.com/Deadly-Games-d ... 01373.html

There also appears to have been a CD-exclusive demo of it, with added content (maybe an intro cinematic).

I also forgot to mention that Darklands, much like many other MicroProse games, only has a non-interactive demo version: dark1.zip, dark2.zip

UFO: Enemy Unknown playable demo: UFO.ZIP
X-COM playable demo: XCOMDEMO.ZIP
(Note that these might contain extra archive comments or added file_id.diz.)

System Shock playable demo: SYSSHOCK.ZIP

DOSGuy wrote:I decided to focus on these games because this list was big on Reddit, so these are probably games that a lot of people would like added to the site.

I think that in this respect, it is also a good idea to take the entire popular series of games into consideration, as opposed to individual instalments.

For example, while there's only a more limited, CD-exclusive demo of Heroes of Might and Magic, a downloadable public Windows demo of Heroes of Might and Magic II is widely available: h2demo.exe

It might also be a good idea to add demo versions of other parts of game series that are already featured on the site, like a playable Windows demo of Command & Conquer: Red Alert: ra95demo.zip

(And while you're at it, you could also add the music & video add-on for the DOS Command & Conquer demo.)

Similarly, there's a public downloadable demo of Crusader: No Regret, which is a sequel to No Remorse: [FilePlanet link]

MrFlibble wrote:M.A.X.: Mechanized Assault & Exploration - there definitely is a playable demo of this one and its sequel, just Google it. I think FilePlanet should have both demo versions.

The file name of this demo's distributive is called maxdemo1.zip, but I haven't found a download of it so far.

MrFlibble wrote:I think that in this respect, it is also a good idea to take the entire popular series of games into consideration, as opposed to individual instalments.

I would certainly like to! I didn't know about any of those Windows demos. DOS stuff is easy to find on cd.textfiles.com. Searching the wider web for Windows demos tends to return several pages of cracks, hacks, and false positives before anything legal shows up.

well, there's still my CD catalog:
http://www42.zippyshare.com/v/4796199/file.html
If a CD is not on Archive.org (easier accessible and much better ordered and always correctly named on kultcds.com), you can ask me to look the things up. Writing a list would be useful in that case. Checking Abandonware-France.org is often useful, too.
And all the other similar websites that we all know

DOSGuy wrote:I would certainly like to! I didn't know about any of those Windows demos. DOS stuff is easy to find on cd.textfiles.com. Searching the wider web for Windows demos tends to return several pages of cracks, hacks, and false positives before anything legal shows up.

Hallfiry's right as usual, in most cases you'll have better chances finding a demo on one of the numerous magazine coverdisks - some like Computer Gaming World are almost 100% reliable, others may change the file name of the installer but the files for Windows stuff will be there, and in unmodified form in most cases.

(The downside here is that you may need to download several CD images to get the files, but with today's Internet connection speeds that should not be a serious problem.)

As for other sources, apart from FilePlanet and C|NET Download (which I stopped using because apparently forces one to use their installer software to download anything), you can also check these FTP sites for individual files:
ftp://ftp.farlep.net/pub/clubix/demo/
ftp://ftp.farlep.net/pub/clubix/demo2/
ftp://ftp.farlep.net/pub/clubix/demo3/
ftp://ftp.gamers.org/pub/mirrors/ftp.ga ... .uk/demos/
ftp://ftp.peliplaneetta.net/pelidemot/
http://elektron-bbs.dyndns.org/files/win95/spiele/
http://ftp.gameaholic.com/pub/demos/
http://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/coast/games/win95games/

Also there's the Italian tiscali.it website that also has a huge collection of stuff but the tricky thing is that due to poor maintenance it only works if you copy-paste each link manually into the browser's address bar, and you can't navigate folders. Here's some known folders with Windows games (there's no real system behind dividing the games into the Win95, Win98 and WinNT folders, but anyway):
http://volftp.tiscali.it/pub/pc/windows/win3xx/games/
http://volftp.tiscali.it/pub/pc/windows/win95/games/
http://volftp.tiscali.it/pub/pc/windows ... es/arcade/
http://volftp.tiscali.it/pub/pc/windows ... mes/demos/
http://volftp.tiscali.it/pub/pc/windows ... games/rpg/
http://volftp.tiscali.it/pub/pc/windows ... /strategy/
http://volftp.tiscali.it/pub/pc/windows/win98/games/
http://volftp.tiscali.it/pub/pc/windows ... es/arcade/
http://volftp.tiscali.it/pub/pc/windows ... mes/demos/
http://volftp.tiscali.it/pub/pc/windows ... games/rpg/
http://volftp.tiscali.it/pub/pc/windows ... /strategy/

To download anything from that site, copy the download link for the file you want and change "ftp://ftp.volftp.mondadori.com/" in it to "http://volftp.tiscali.it/"

[Edit] Of course, it also makes a lot of sense to look up developer or publisher FTPs if they are still around (sometimes someone makes a mirror of such an FTP site):
ftp://ftp.atari.com/demos/
ftp://ftp.bluebyte.com/demos/
ftp://ftp.gtinteractive.com/demos/
ftp://ftp.lucasarts.com/demos/pc/
ftp://ftp.ubisoft.com/Demos/
ftp://ftp.wizworks.com/demos/

Mirrors:
ftp://ftp.games.skynet.be/spool1/games/ ... com/demos/
ftp://ftp.games.skynet.be/spool1/games/ ... twood.com/
http://ftp.gameaholic.com/pub/mirrors/ftp.blizzard.com/

DOSGuy wrote:Realms of Arkania

Here's the playable German demo of Realms of Arkania III: Shadows Over Riva:
http://nlt-hilfe.crystals-dsa-foren.de/ ... hp?view.11

Here's a nice (archived) page that lists available demos from Interplay:
http://web.archive.org/web/199704150054 ... demos.html

The links don't work though (Interplay used an FTP site), but at least you may know the original file names that way

DOSGuy wrote:Do any of the following games have a playable demo, or have any of them been declared freeware?
<...>
Jane's Combat Simulations: AH-64D Longbow

The archived official Jane's page suggests that only a playable demo of Advanced Tactical Fighters was available.

DOSGuy wrote:Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri

Here's the original Terra Nova demo from the official website: tn_sfc.exe

DOSGuy wrote:M.A.X.: Mechanized Assault & Exploration

Here's a playable demo of the second instalment in the series: max2demo.exe (the file name and format are original).

DOSGuy wrote:System Shock

Playable demo (one level, original distributive): shokdemo.exe

DOSGuy wrote:Jagged Alliance

Jagged Alliance demo: jademo.zip, jaspeech.zip
Deadly Games demo: dgdemo.zip, dgspeech.zip, gtspeech.zip

DOSGuy wrote:Little Big Adventure

Original playable demo: relent.exe