Check out the development features of the PlayStation yourself. Experiment with 3D Graphic displays, real-time action, movie quality special effects, CD quality audio sounds and music featuring new tracks from the great Sony bands! The The, Dag, Korn, Mother May I and Dandelion!

See and Hear for yourself the raw power behind the new video game system that's gonna give you the most graphically realistic experiences you've ever imagined! 

Discussion
Okay, obviously biased comment coming up:

This was probably the coolest marketing idea ever made for its time frame.

In a modern world with viral web marketing, multi-million dollar ad campaigns, and sponsorships all over the place, the Sony PlayStation’s original tease for the consumer was nothing but a compact disc ¬– very, very interesting compact disc. When you pre-ordered the PlayStation system, you were given the “Hear It Now! Play It Later1’ demo, which would be later released as the “Developer Demo” in the bundled systems.

The concept was that from the get go, it was a free music CD as a thank you for the reserve. When played in a regular music CD player, you got to hear several album songs from Sony bands, as well as some marketing commercials from Sony. The backend of the tracks were the in-demo music selections, mixed in with some bizarre voice-overs. These voice-overs were essentially the viral part of the marketing. Some were actual sound bites from various games, others were the announcer spewing out random babble that you would only know what it meant once you had the game. For example, in between two songs, he calls out EIji’s special Hidden Move from Toshinden.

Once you had your PlayStation on that fateful September 9th, you could then actually play the demo disc, which provided the player with actual tech demos provided to developers. Each demo related to a specific function, be it textures, lighting, object manipulation, scaling, or full motion video.

The most famous of these demos, at least from the technical standpoint, was the Dino clip. The ‘roar heard round the world’ was in effect a recreation of the then other famous T-Rex: Jurassic Park’s, released 2 years earlier. Being able to control the actions, including roar and head turning, of the walking beast wowed gamers everywhere. It also marked a true milestone for the home consoles – despite the 3DO and Jaguar coming first with 3D graphics, the PlayStation was the first to truly force it into the limelight, so much so that Sony tried to downplay most 2D games.

Now almost 15 years old, I went back to this demo for sheer nostalgic purposes, and truth be told, I’m still blown away by some of the contents. The FMV demo, when presented in S-Video really is hyper detailed, and the diffusion demo is still so pretty to watch.

With the next generation of systems, specifically the PS4 (gah!) likely going to strictly downloads or close to it, marketing gems like this will be lost to the internet oceans.

Hears to playing it now.
 

• There is a variant - see below.
   
• 15 years later and only now do I catch a weird audio glitch in the game. If you leave the demo disc at the menu selection screen, every so often the music tracks will glitch into an audio clip of ESPN Games. This particular track was only supposed to be heard with the demo disc inside a regular music CD player.
   
• In a CD player, the disc is divided into several sequences - Several intro voice-overs, real band music, then a mix and match of the playable demos' background music and announcer quips. You just need to skip track 1 - that's game programming.
   
• The Video portion - in which a girl applies make-up and random city montages fly by - may seem odd for a game system demo, but it served two very important purposes. First, it showed that the PlayStation was capable of full screen video, especially compared to the Saturn and Sega CD. Second, it showed off how high the quality was when you could see the textures on the make-up, the girl's cheeks, and hair.
   
• The Manta demo could have been the inspiration behind Aquanaut's Holiday...
   
• The first picture in the last row could be confusing - essentially it's the PlayStation showing it can wrap video footage around a textured object. While the face may not have been a great choice, this would have been easily used if you wanted planets to have moving atmospheres, etc.

What's interesting is that they added the PSRM and SCUS number to this one on the outside. On the original, there's no PSRM and the SCUS is only visible through a PC read of the disc.