Play-Pre 2 Volume 0 - February 2001 (Japanese PS2 Demo Disc)

This is the first Japanese PS2 demo disc, to my knowledge. It contains videos for a number of games coming out early on in the PS2's lifespan, and no interactive gameplay demos - with the exception of being able to change viewpoints in the Gran Turismo 3 demo. There's a nice balance here between technically impressive games for the time and trailers speaking to how weird and experimental the early PS2 era was. You have a bizarre space-themed interactive music software about the idol group Morning Musume right next to Onimusha and Gran Turismo 3. Wild! TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - Introduction 00:51 - Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (Rolling Demo) 05:01 - Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (Video) 08:13 - [¥] Space Venus Starring Morning Musume 09:04 - Onimusha 12:20 - Kessen II 14:02 - Shutokou Battle 0 (Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero) 16:04 - Z.O.E. (Zone of the Enders) Movie 1 17:55 - Z.O.E. (Zone of the Enders) Movie 2 19:40 - Shadow of Memories 21:12 - World Soccer Winning Eleven 5 (Pro Evolution Soccer) 24:10 - [¥] Let's Go by Train! 3 25:50 - Klonoa 2 28:35 - Sky Gunner 31:54 - Tsugunai 34:46 - [¥] Phase Paradox 36:00 - [¥] Poinie's Poin 39:22 - Boku to Maō (Okage: Shadow King) 42:26 - [¥] PoPoLoCrois 3 45:34 - CM Collection (Japanese exclusives marked with ¥) GAME NOTES: • Gran Turismo 3 is a Polyphony Digital game, just like Motor Toon Grand Prix which kicked off the original PS1 series of Play-Pre. I doubt that's an intentional connection but there you go! • A difference I notice between these trailers and the final games is Eike from Shadow of Memories has a more springy jogging animation. That's about it! Major spoilers in that trailer, by the way, but you probably wouldn't pick up on them without context. • Poinie's Poin has full English voice acting and text (with an option for a Japanese dub), so it's fully playable to non-Japanese speakers like myself. I can guarantee it'll be a cult classic pretty soon. • Of the commercials, the weirdest to me is this riff on The Little Match Girl where the power of the video game Crash Bash saves the life of a barefoot homeless girl freezing to death. I also really love the atmosphere of the one where someone reflects on his grim real life surroundings and thinks about Dark Cloud.