#gamecube demo

[demoban]

Release: Dairantou Smash Brothers DX Jitsuen-you Demo (DL-DOL-DALJ-DIS)

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This disc has also been sitting on the old backlog for a while. As the name indicates, this is a Japanese retail kiosk demo disc for Super Smash Bros. Melee. Content-wise, you get two different demos: a 10-minute one for the Adventure Mode (although it ends after the Zebes escape sequence if you’re fast enough) and a two-minute standard multiplayer demo with the default set of characters and (I believe) stages, albeit without the ability to tweak fight settings. This basically looks and plays like the final game, so I wouldn’t expect anything drastically different at all, but given the relative rarity of Japanese GameCube demo discs online, hey, more is better than less, right?

Beyond those two demos, there’s also a demo for Pikmin, which is a little different from the retail game and has previously appeared on a separate demo disc that I’ve dumped here. There are also some videos for both games to watch, as well as a montage video hyping the GameCube launch window. All told, not the fullest demo disc, even by GameCube standards, but not without its merits, either.

Enjoy!

-Pepsi

[demoban]

Release: Gekkan Nintendo Tentou Demo 2002 May (DL-DOL-D29J-DIS)

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We’re taking a quick break from DemoDemo PlayStation discs to bring you the first of hopefully many Gekkan Nintendo Tentou Demo discs, which, like DemoDemo, were a series of monthly GameCube demo discs that Nintendo sent out to retailers. American readers might be familiar with the Interactive Multi-Game Demo Discs, which essentially served the same function but for North America. These discs are fairly hard to come by, at least at a sane price, so they won’t get dumped with anywhere near as much regularity as the PS1 and PS2 stuff, but given how unknown they generally remain, they’re certainly high on the priority list every time I go shopping for new stuff to dump.

Anyway, this disc has an interesting mishmash of playable demos and videos to watch, with the standout here likely being the demo for Capcom vs. SNK 2 EO. While there’s a ten minute time limit imposed and most of the modes aren’t accessible, so far as I can tell, you can otherwise play with the entire roster on this disc and might even be able to do multiplayer, though I haven’t been able to test this. There’s also a very brief demo for Lost Kingdoms that’s basically a series of tutorial fights and then a quick boss battle; if nothing else, this relatively forgotten demo of a From Software game better teaches you the core mechanics than a lot of other RPG demos, so good on them, I suppose.

For the full breakdown of what you can find on this disc, read on below.

Gekkan Nintendo Tentou Demo 2002 May DL-DOL-D29J-DIS

Playable Demos (Yellow icons; 10 minute time limits each): -Capcom vs. SNK 2 EO -Bomberman Generation -Lost Kingdoms

Trailers (Blue icons): -Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse -Resident Evil -Capcom vs. SNK 2 EO -Bomberman Generation -FIFA Soccer 2002 -Crazy Taxi

News Bulletins (Grey icon):

-Super Smash Bros. Melee orchestra details -Animal Crossing e-Reader card series 3 announcement -Nintendo Book 2002 Spring bulletin

Back to PS1 demo discs now~

-Pepsi

[demoban]

Release: Baten Kaitos Special Taiken Disc (DL-DOL-D66J-DIS)

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Demoban slowly wakes up from its slumber finally with the first Japanese GameCube dump in a while by way of this demo for the first Baten Kaitos game. This demo was originally distributed to select people who responded to Namco’s player surveys back in the day and, to my knowledge, never saw any form of wider distribution. Details beyond that as to how this demo came by are surprisingly sparse, even when checking reputable Japanese news sources. Regardless, as for the actual playable content, you have your choice of three different areas to run around in. Having never previously played the game and given the fact the demo tutorializes nothing whatsoever, I couldn’t possibly begin to tell you if there’s much in the way of content differences with the final game, although it did seemingly get distributed just a few weeks before its Japanese release, so I wouldn’t necessarily hold my breath. But who knows!

Also included in this archive are scans of the little booklet the demo originally came in, as well as a letter that came with it thanking players for answering the player surveys. This is mostly done for posterity, seeing as I don’t believe any decently sized scans exist elsewhere, but if you have a use for them, feel free to do whatever as long as you credit Demoban.net as your original source!

Enjoy!

-Pepsi

[taptroupe]

Nintendo Gamecube Soft e-Catalog 2003 Spring

not much to say, just click the link and read all about it! 

this is a promotional disk that was bundled with RUNE 2 (known as Lost Kingdoms 2 overseas), Family Stadium 2003, and Pokemon Box. it’s got a real html browser inside, with lots of games to read and view images about! even got a viewtiful joe demo! check it out!

[demoban]

Release: Pikmin Jitsuen-you Demo (DL-DOL-DPIJ-DIS)

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The Nintendo-related demo dumps keep on rolling with this store demo for Pikmin. Letting you screw around in The Forest of Hope map, this disc’s contents are interesting for a few reasons. First, as a level designed to casually introduce the core RTS mechanics to Japanese players, there are no rocket ship parts to pick up nor even a rocket to visit outright, which leads to strange questions about Olimar even got here to begin with. All of the level geometry and whatnot is there, but once you bust down the barrier that keeps you confined to the initial compound with your Pikmin, you can just wander around and do whatever. If you do go exploring into areas where rocket parts normally are, though, you’ll tend to find unusual enemies that are distinctly not part of the final level, most notably the Beady Long Legs seen above in place of the Armored Cannon Beetle that’s typically there, which I’d argue is hilariously merciless to throw at a completely new player within the confines of a demo. 

That being in said, keep in mind that you only have 15 minutes to wander around before being booted out to the main menu. The timer still runs even if you pause the game, so I suggest using savestates if you want to explore the level and see what it has to offer so you’re not constantly having to rebuild your Pikmin army and whatnot from scratch every time you restart.

Beyond that, there are a handful of Pikmin videos you can also choose to watch from the demo’s main menu, as well as some for Super Smash Bros. Melee. All told, I was personally expecting more unique content on the disc given what I’d read on the Japanese Internet, but it’s still neat to go back to an old level and see parts of it redone solely for the demo. Getting this disc was also something of a months-long ordeal that took a lot of detective work, so, if nothing else, it’s nice to finally have it and dump it for a little bit of weird closure, insofar as a demo disc is capable of providing such things.

Enjoy!

-Pepsi

[demoban]

Release: Homeland Test Disc (DL-DOL-PHEJ-JPN)

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Ohisashiburi, as we say in Japanland when it’s been a little while since you’ve last seen someone. I’ve been busy with my main job of making Japanese games into English ones so you don’t need my degree to play them, hence the recent silence. But I haven’t left this blog by the wayside! Not by a long shot, especially since I paid for the demoban.net domain and everything.

Anyway! While we still have a few Japanese PS1 demo discs to go through before that backlog is finally clear, I thought I’d make up for lost time with something a little more thrilling than those upcoming leftovers by way of the Homeland Test Disc for the GameCube. Homeland, in a nutshell, is the one online GameCube game that doesn’t have Phantasy Star Online in the name. Developed by Chunsoft, it’s a fairly mechanically simple game, but its main claim to fame is that players’ GameCubes themselves can serve as online hubs to connect to in lieu of the now defunct central matching server right out of the box, meaning the retail game is still playable online in perpetuity, a rarity among online console games.

Although so far as I can tell that direct IP connection functionality unfortunately isn’t included in this beta test disc (the game can seemingly only tries to connect to a now long dead development server when you ask it to go online), the single player content itself remains playable! Given the relatively importance of text in the game in terms of figuring out how to get around and what’s going on overall, I would personally recommend you have at least intermediate reading fluency in Japanese before playing. That being said, if curiosity gets the better of you anyway, there is an English guide here, albeit one that appears to be written by a non-native.

There’s still more to come on both the PS1 and PS2 sides, but in the meantime, hopefully this tides you guys over!

Enjoy!

-Pepsi

[demoban]

Release: Club Nintendo Original eCatalog 2004 (DOL-D89J-DIS)

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Our first Japanese GameCube demo disc is finally upon us by way of this unique little software catalog given to gold and platinum level members of the Japanese Club Nintendo in 2004, back when their Club Nintendo was the envy of the rest of the world. Essentially, it’s mostly an overview of the big Japanese hitters coming to Nintendo platforms in Japan for the GameCube, GameBoy Advance, and then very new DS. Though most of what’s on the disc for each game consists of at most video footage and text overviews, there are two playable demos in the GameCube section: Naruto Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3, a Japan-only fighter yours truly is actually very familiar with from his high school years, and Viewtiful Joe 2. So far as I can tell, the video files don’t really play nice in Dolphin and while there are ways to extract them off the disc, apparently nobody has gotten around to writing conversion programs for easier viewing, meaning if you want to watch anything on this disc, you’re likely going to have to run this disc on an actual GameCube or Wii through means that should be obvious enough. 

(Edit: Catley on YouTube has generously gone to the trouble of capturing the footage manually and has thrown it all online here, in case you’re curious. Thanks a bunch!)

Anyway, onto the actual content lineup:

General Menu Controls: Y Button: Return to Main Menu X Button: Return to Current Platform Lineup Menu Start+B+X: Exit playable demo

GameCube Lineup: -Naruto Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3 (Playable Demo; navigate to d-pad symbol to play) -Viewtiful Joe 2 (Playable Demo; navigate to d-pad symbol to play) -Star Fox Assault -Metroid Prime 2: Echoes -Mario Party 6 -Mario Power Tennis -Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam vs. Z Gundam -Super Robot Taisen GC -Homeland -Pikmin 2

GameBoy Advance Lineup: -Pokemon Emerald -WarioWare: Twisted! -The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap -Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones -Advance Wars 1+2 -Tales of the World: Narikiri Dungeon 3 -Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories -Mega Man Battle Network 5 -Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation 2 -Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny -Zatch Bell: Unare! Yuujou no Dengeki 2 -Power Pro-kun Pocket 7 -Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure -Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls

DS Lineup (middle button in the bottom row of the main menu):

-DS Introduction -WarioWare: Touched! -Super Mario 64 DS -Pokemon Dash -Daigasso! Band Brothers -Polarium -Yoshi Touch & Go -Nintendogs -Mario Kart DS -Trace Memory/Another Code: Two Memories -Metroid Prime Hunters -Advance Wars: Dual Strike -Yakuman DS -Mr. Driller Drill Spirits -Kenshuui Tendou Dokuta -The Urbz: Sims in the City -Zoo Keeper -Feel the Magic: XY/XX -Zunou Ase Kaku Series! Vol. 1: COOL104JOKER & SETLINE -Mahjong Taikai -Puyo Pop Fever -Prince of Tennis: 2005 Crystal Drive -Egg Monster Hero -Pac-Pix -Meteos -Ganbare Goemon: Toukai Douchuu -Jissen Pachislo Hisshouhou! Hokuto no Ken DS

There should definitely be more fun and interesting GameCube demo discs in the coming months, so look forward to that!

Enjoy!

-Pepsi