When it comes to actual tech demos, I bought this one on VHS, watched it plenty times


I bought many others on Laserdisc later, like this one


Doesn't look like much today, but from before half-life came out

Btw is it just me, or have ads increased 1,000 fold on you tube in the past couple years? Double ads, unskippable ads, ads every 5 minutes, wtf is going on.

This was played on a huge screen at CES 1992 I believe.

It's showing off SEGA CD. The idea of videos playing on consoles at the time was still novel but not new either.

While not directly related to gaming, I find the stuff that the demoscene is able to to simply amazing. Just look at this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ6ZzJeWgpY

That whole program is only 64k large, meaning it fits easily on a NES cartridge with space to spare. All the graphics are calculated, as textures would simply not fit into such small storage space. Same goes for the audio.

The Unreal Engine 5 Feature Highlights is up there for me, the music makes it so incredibly epic, gives me goosebumps:

And yeah, the 2011 Wii U Zelda demo was gorgeous, I truly hope we see a Zelda game that looks like that but better in my lifetime.

The Unreal Engine 3 Samaritan demo also makes my shortlist; it still looks impressive today a decade later, which can't be said of many things in the fast-moving world of gaming graphics tech.

Another favourite of mine that I haven't seen posted yet: