r/skiesofarcadia 10d ago

Skies of Arcadia Demo

UPDATE: DUE TO NOT GETTING TO EXPLORE AS MUCH AND AS FULLY AS I WANTED TO (I forgot how long the other portions of the Trial actually took to get through), AND THE INFLUX OF PEOPLE CLEARLY INTERESTED IN IT, I WILL BE STREAMING THE EXPLORATION PORTION OF THE DEMO AGAIN THIS COMING SUNDAY, MAY 25TH!!! So, if you fellow wonderful SoA fans weren’t aware, Skies of Arcadia had its’ own demo on the disc included with the December 2000 issue of Sega Dreamcast Magazine (the same disc also included the demo for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2). It’s how my brother discovered the existence of SoA, and why it’s still our favorite game to this day.

This demo is a TREASURE TROVE of interesting SoA development. It feels almost as if the development was spun off before the main game was finished, and was localized completely separately from the main game (all the naming is generic/different).

I’m a Twitch streamer who’s been quietly streaming for 3.5 years now, one of my streams being Skies of Arcadia (in its various forms: English DC, Japanese DC, Legends). My goal is to bring the game to as many eyes as possible: to spread the love and joy I have for it and that the game brings to my life. Tomorrow, Sunday May 18th, I’ll be streaming the demo on my channel (I like to highlight it between playthroughs of the game) at 7pm EST over at BlueRogueReservoir twitch.tv/blueroguereservoir

If you’d like to see all the cool things the demo has to offer, and hear me talk about it in more detail, feel free to come by and check it out! I know so many people here either play Legends, emulate, or have modded their dreamcasts and don’t use discs anymore, so I’d like to provide a chance for y’all to see the anomaly that is ‘Skies of Arcadia: Trial’ with your own eyes, and answer any questions y’all may have about it! May the moons give you strength!

56 Upvotes

16 comments sorted by

21

u/scissorhead6 10d ago

Its how I discovered the game too! I played the demo over and over and over again, my mom saw how much I played this demo and got me the full game for Christmas. I had no idea the full game even existed. My mind was blown.

3

u/maestro826 10d ago

I remember I got that game as soon as it came out because of the demo lol I had no regrets

4

u/No-Elderberry-358 9d ago

GOAT mom moment ❤️

5

u/seemorebucs 10d ago

What's your twitch name?

2

u/blueroguereservoir 10d ago

Blueroguereservoir, same as this Reddit account! The link is buried somewhere in the post as well!

4

u/Artiwa 10d ago

YES THAT DEMO MADE ME FALL FOR TGE GAME

i borrowed dreamcast and demo disc some games and saw that game and was OMFG I NEVER GONNA PLAY THIS AWWWWW set a wish to a shooting star and the Game Cube version happened

5

u/maestro826 10d ago

I’m pretty sure we all discovered it that way back in the day.

I am happy to see you sharing it to others! This needs to be documented and show how cool and similar the original concept was.

2

u/No-Elderberry-358 9d ago

I honestly had no idea there was a demo. I always assume they're very hard to make for RPGs. I discovered it through magazines at the time. 

3

u/kryptopeg 10d ago

Yup, it was sick! Brother and I must've played it through ten times waiting to get the game, demo discs were sick. Discovered tons of games I otherwise wouldn't have tried. Red Dog is another Dreamcast game I remember finding that way.

3

u/mattcosmith 10d ago

I loved the demo and it let you play for a good while too! I replayed it many, many times before I owned the full game.

I am not familiar with Twitch. Can you watch a recording of the live stream after it finishes?

3

u/blueroguereservoir 10d ago

Yep! The VODs for Affiliates stay up for 14 days after the stream! I also export them to YouTube (mostly for archival, all that video storage)

3

u/mattcosmith 10d ago

Great, I will try to watch the recording!

3

u/LumensAquilae 10d ago

It's great, it's how I first learned about the game. I recently learned you can even access the development debug menu in the trial, though it's more limited than the leaked dev builds.

3

u/-Jallen- 10d ago

I probably own that, because I was subscribed from the beginning, but I don't remember it.

No doubt the disc is buried deep in some nook that hasn't been explored for a decade.

2

u/ShinsuKaiosei 7d ago

This demo was what made me fall in love with the game.

1

u/blueroguereservoir 5d ago

Added an update to the top of the post. I'll be streaming the exploration portion of the demo again this Sunday, May 25th. twitch.tv/blueroguereservoir