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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"...but can it run ''[[Crysis (Video Gameseries)|Crysis]]''?"''|[[Memetic Mutation|gamer in-joke]]}}
 
Whenever some new technology comes out, companies want to find ways to market their product. The best way to do it is to show it off. This usually happens in the PC hardware world where graphics card vendors put out tech demos to show it off. Or in an environment that's limiting such as video game systems, smartphones, and tablets, a proof of concept to show that hey, that piece of hardware really can do it.
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* ''I, Robot'' provided a demonstration of 3D raster graphics. It even had a minigame ''Doodle City''.
* ''Hard Drivin'' is seemingly the first 3D racing game. The 3D board it featured was actually quite huge, looking like several modern-day computer motherboards stacked.
* ''Virtua Racing'', Sega's first 3D arcade game, was originally designed as a proof-of-concept demo for the state-of-the-art polygonal graphics hardware which (with some upgrades) would go on to produce such hits as ''[[Virtua Fighter (Video Game)|Virtua Fighter]]'' and ''[[Daytona USA]]''.
 
 
== PC ==
* ''[[Crysis (Video Gameseries)|Crysis]]''. When released, only a handful of computers could actually handle the "High" setting at 1280x800. Even fewer could run the "Very High" setting at 1280x800 above 10FPS. [[Zero Punctuation|Yahtzee]] summarized it best, saying that the game must have been designed for some ultra high-tech supercomputer ''[[In Space|from space]]''. Although the lower settings could perform well and still look better than most games at the time. ''Computer Shopper'' still uses it to bench-test new hardware.
** This had the unforeseen additional effect of lots of people pirating the game just to use it as a tech demo, just because they "didn't want to pay for the whole thing" (and [[Failed a Spot Check|didn't think to check if Crytek had released a demo version]]).
** [[SCP Foundation (Wiki)|SCP Foundation]][http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-062 -062] is a highly advanced [[Quantum Mechanics Can Do Anything|quantum computer]], believed to be from the future.
{{quote|''Yes, it is fun to joke around about whether or not SCP-062 would be able to run Crysis. However, if I find any more bored guards trying to install the damn game onto SCP-062 one more time… You just don't want to do it. Okay?''|''Dr. Tong''}}
** CryTek almost averted this with ''Crysis 2'', until they released a patch that enabled [[Direct X]] 11 functions and all new "Ultra Detail" mode. Now it's back up here.
* ''[[Far Cry]]'' was actually a tech demo first for NVIDIA's GeForce 3 cards. Later patches added Shader Model 3.0 features like HDR lighting that could only be utilized by the then-newly-released GeForce 6800 cards.
* ''[[Battlefield (Video Gameseries)|Battlefield 1942]]''. In order to take advantage of the large draw distance (which was unheard of at the time), one needed 1GB for maximum draw distance. The trouble is, RAM was expensive back then, and most of the world was fine on 256MB.
** ''[[Battlefield 3 (Video Game)|Battlefield 3]]'' has no ability to use [[Direct X]] 9. This means it is not playable on Windows XP machines. It is arguably one of the first applications that will have a real impact in driving people to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7.
* ''[[Cryostasis]]'' had extremely advanced fluid simulation on release, although even recent computers can have trouble running the game thanks to a lack of multi-core processor support.
* ''[[Supreme Commander (Video Game)|Supreme Commander]]'' has much greater multi-core support than most games, with performance scaling heavily with the number of cores.
** Somewhat less conspicuously, it is also one of the few games that can accomodate multiple monitors in a useful way.
* Despite being at least seven years old now, ''[[Sim City|Sim City 4]]'' actually stresses modern (as in 2010) midrange systems if one attempts to run on maximum settings. In fact, even though the game is completely 3D (or so [[Word of God]] claims), the reason why there are only four perspectives is because the amount of processing it would take to keep the detail that good in a 360 view would make the game unplayable from a performance standpoint.
** To note, if the game runs a ''whole lot'' smoother if you turn off shadows completely.
* Just about every single one of [[Id Software]]'s games has started off (before further development) as an excuse to show off whatever piece of technology John Carmack had just recently mastered:
** ''[[Commander Keen (Video Game)|Commander Keen]]'' was made to show off the smooth-scrolling graphics engine, which was once thought only to be possible on the [[Nintendo Entertainment System]], and was previously used to develop a proof-of-concept game resembling ''[[Super Mario Bros 3 (Video Game)|Super Mario Bros 3]]'' (that was never released).
** ''[[Wolfenstein 3D (Video Game)|Wolfenstein 3D]]'' and ''[[Doom]]'' were made when Carmack decided to one-up Looking Glass Studios and their ''[[Ultima Underworld]]'' series' 3D visuals.
*** Carmack claimed he could make a ''faster'' renderer, not a ''better'' one. ''[[Ultima Underworld]]'' and ''[[System Shock]]'' were far more punishing on the hardware of their era than even ''[[Doom]]'' was.
** ''[[Quake (Video Gameseries)|Quake]]'' was the company's first fully-3D game, and explicitly demanded to be run on the recently launched Intel Pentium processor.
*** While Quake was primarily designed to run only on the CPU, its experimental support for hardware accelerated graphics was one of the major factors driving the introduction of graphics cards to the consumer market.
** ''[[Quake II (Video Game)|Quake II]]'' showed off a brand new game engine with colored lighting, and like ''[[Unreal (Video Game)|Unreal]]'' spurred more and more consumers to buy graphics acceleration cards.
** ''[[Doom]] 3'' had extremely complex lighting.
** In turn ''[[Quake IV (Video Game)4|Quake IV]]'' stressed processing power due to its more wide open spaces and more advanced shading than ''Doom 3''.
** ''Rage'' is basically a demonstration of their new id Tech 5 engine, and especially its ''Virtual Texturing'' feature (an improvement on the MegaTexture technology developed earlier).
* ''[[Oblivion]]'' was a common benchmark in 2006. It can still easily overload the fastest computer systems on the market.
** A few years prior, ''[[Morrowind]]'' was the benchmark.
** ''[[Skyrim]]'' is the new benchmark, with what a new engine and a huge overworld.
* ''[[Unreal (Video Game)|Unreal]]'''s graphics were near-unparalleled at the time of it release and various set-pieces were intentionally designed to show-off things it competitors couldn't do. For instance, the first level was set in a crashed prison ship with the sort of dingy brown and grey textures you'd seen in the original ''[[Quake]]''... and then you set foot out in the open world, with vibrant greens and blues and draw distances that surpassed anything seen before. It also played a major part in heavily increasing the sales of graphics accelerators.
** Strangely enough, the Unreal Engine series became such a flexible engine that the third iteration can be run on smartphones, all the way up to running such high visual quality (in UE3.5, 2011) that it in order to run it with maximum detail at 1080p smoothly, a setup of ''three'' GeForce GTX 580s are needed.
* ''[[Shattered Horizon]]'' has very advanced benchmarking tools. Not surprising when it's from the same developer responsible for the ''3DMark'' line of benchmarks. On top of this, it requires [[Direct X]] 10, and by extension Windows Vista or later.
* ''[[Il-2 Sturmovik|IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946]]'' can still drag high end systems built in 2010 below 20 frames per second with the graphics set to "perfect" mode. Quite a feat considering the game was first released in late 2001.
* ''[[Audiosurf (Video Game)|Audiosurf]]'' is a less traditional demo. It shows off its developer's interactive audio visualizer.
** Ditto with ''The Polynomial - Space of the music''.
* ''[[Serious Sam]]'' came with various attempts to show off its engine (there's even a built-in tech map, accessible from the menu, which is literally a gallery of the engine's graphic effects).
* ''[[Soldier of Fortune]] II'' was rather jerky at maximum detail even with the higher-end hardware of its time.
* ''Microsoft Flight Simulator X'' is sometimes accused of this. Nowadays, a budget gaming PC can run it on full settings with minimal lag. When it was released... [http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B000GBPLYI/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_summary?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending less so.]
* ''[[Deus Ex: Invisible War (Video Game)|Deus Ex Invisible War]]'', released in 2003, dragged down contemporary PCs and video cards to slideshow level on high resolutions. Like ''Doom 3'' a year later, it used complex lighting and shading for its time.
* A lot of games by the defunct Rage Software really showed off the capabilities of then-current 3D technology. ''[[ExpendableMillennium (VideoSoldier: Game)Expendable|Expendable]]'' and especially ''[[Incoming]]'' were often bundled with graphic cards.
* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' probably wasn't intended as one of these, but at least one reviewer has put it to work stress-testing a new laptop.
* ''Space Manbow'' showed off the graphical capabilities of the [[MSX|MSX2]]+, in particular its smooth horizontal scrolling.
* ''[[MirrorsMirror's Edge]]'' based its entire art style around the Beast global illumination software, which simulates indirect lighting to make colorful scenes look almost photorealistic. While the game itself sold poorly, GI later became a standard feature of Unreal Engine 3 and is used in games like ''[[Dragon Age]]'' and ''[[Infinity Blade]]''.
* ''Vette!'', being one of the very first true 3D PC games (and [[Ur Example|the first]] [[Wide Open Sandbox]] driving game), severely choked down hardware of the time at full detail.
* The sequel to ''[[Total Annihiliation]]'', ''Kingdoms'', was so sluggish upon release that the manual listed steps to increase game performance, finally suggesting that the consumer buy a faster computer. Especially bad because this was a 3D real-time strategy game without state-of-the-art graphics, and was fixed with a subsequent patch to be much faster after reviewers and gamers complained.
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* ''[[Fantavision]]'' seems to have been made because firework explosions are excellent exhibits for the smooth textures and higher resolution of the [[Play Station 2]].
* ''[[Ridge Racer]]'' was a bare-bones driving game that just so happened to show off the original [[Play Station]]'s 3D effects spectacularly. (In fact, the original arcade version did a lot more - 60fps at 640x480 compared to the [[PS 1]]'s 30fps and 320x240.)
* Name any first-generation [[Super Nintendo Entertainment System|Super Nintendo]] game. These games would show off the Mode 7 capabilities of the system. Some notable examples would be ''[[Super Mario World (Videovideo Gamegame)|Super Mario World]]'', ''[[F-Zero]]'', ''Pilotwings'' and ''[[Super Castlevania IV]]''. Star Fox was this for the Super FX chip.
** Pilotwings is a Tech Demo series. Whenever it is released it shows off the latest graphical tricks.
* ''Killzone 2'' is arguably a tech demo for the [[Play Station]] 3. Heck, even one of the commercials for the game (the one where it tracks a bullet fired from the player character) can be downloaded and run on the system, in real time.
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** And yet, two years later they've managed to improve on it for the third game.
* ''[[Lair]]'' appeared to be an attempt to show off the [[Play Station 3]]'s ability to do Motion Control and native 1080p graphics. It couldn't do either very well.
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots]]'' shows off all the [[Play Station 3]]'s hardware features. Surround sound, Bluetooth headset support for Otacon's codec calls, motion control for the Screaming Mantis battle, and most importantly, Blu-Ray for holding [[Story to Gameplay Ratio|loads and loads of long-winded cutscenes]] (the latter point is even [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] when Otacon calls Snake and tells him to [[Medium Awareness|swap to the second disc]], but then he remembers that the game is on Blu-Ray).
* ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]''. Square really took the opportunity to show off some of the stuff they couldn't do on the [[SNES]], like polygons and pre-rendered cutscenes.
** To test their graphics engine for ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'', Square created ''[[Parasite Eve (Videovideo Gamegame)|Parasite Eve]]''.
** ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]'' was meant to be a [[Play Station 3]] launch title and spent roughly ''seven years'' in development because it was being developed with a brand-new graphics engine that will be used in all future [[Square Enix]] games.
* ''[[Wii Sports]]'' and ''Wii Play'' show off the Wii Remote's motion abilities. ''Wii Sports Resort'' and ''Wii Play Motion'' show off WiiMotion+. Wii Fit shows off the Wii Balance Board, however it has yet to be implemented well in any other game.
** And now, with the release of Playstation Move and Microsoft's Kinect, we're seeing variations on ''Wii Sports'' for those systems: ''Sports Champions'' on the [[PSPlay Station 3]], and ''Kinect Sports'' on the Xbox360.
* ''[[Malice]]'' provided a demonstration of the [[X Box]]'s bump mapping capabilities but ended up being released for both Xbox and [[PSPlay Station 2]] several years after people stopped caring about it.
* ''Backbreaker'' started as an attempt to show off Natural Motion's Euphoria physics engine with a simple "Dodge the tacklers" football game, but eventually was expanded into a full simulation.
* ''[[LuigisLuigi's Mansion (Video Game)|Luigis Mansion]]'' was this for the Gamecube. Fire effects, water effects, ice effects, transparent, glowing ghosts, Luigi's flashlight, the Poltergust 3000's wind tunnel, cloth effects... it goes on. It shows off the high poly count by repeatedly showing off how round it can make locked doorknobs. Heck, it even shows off the analog shoulder buttons and the c-stick, as both are integral to the game. It was even a test for 3D at some point in development.
* ''[[Pikmin (Video Game)|Pikmin]]'' was brought to life from the original GCN tech demo, "[[wikipedia:Super Mario 128|Mario 128]]".
** [[Super Mario Galaxy (Video Game)|Super Mario Galaxy]], while not a direct example, was used to show off several things not seen before in a Wii game, like the unique gravity system and [[Scenery Porn|the amazing space opera-like scenery]]. Heck, the reason the minigames are there is probably to show off the controller!
* ''[[Perfect Dark]]'' required the RAM expansion pak to play the single-player campaign, and even then the framerate was horribly choppy. The XBLA [[Updated Rerelease]] was much improved.
* The N64 version of ''[[Turok (Video Gameseries)|Turok]] 2'' was one of the first games for the system to use the expansion pak for high resolution textures, and its framerate was also rather sluggish.
* ''[[Battletoads (Video Game)|Battletoads]]'' can be noted for its fast paced gameplay, virtually no slow down or flickering, and then advanced effects, such as the waving fire in Volkmire's Inferno and the rotating Dark Queen's Tower.
* ''[[Super Mario 64 (Video Game)|Super Mario 64]]'' not only showed off the N64s graphics, but it was also meant to show off the ''controller.'' This brought to light a direct flaw in the N64's controller, in that it seemed at first to be built solely with ''Mario 64'' in mind and no other game. (Why would a 2D game need camera buttons?) But then developers figured out how to use the camera buttons as action buttons. For instance, they provided the classic 6-button layout for fighting games, and [[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|Zelda]] famously used them for quick access to your inventory.
* ''Super Demo World'', a [[Game Mod|Rom Hack]] of ''[[Super Mario World (Videovideo Gamegame)|Super Mario World]]'', was created to show off the abilities of Lunar Magic, a rom editor.
* One of the major selling points of ''[[The Force Unleashed]]'' was its use of the Euphoria animation engine, the same one used for ''Backbreaker'' and ''[[Grand Theft Auto IV]]'', enabling fluid character motion and [[Wreaking Havok|physics based on Force powers]].
* ''[[Sonic Adventure (Video Game)|Sonic Adventure]]'' did this for the [[Sega Dreamcast]]. You ''know'' you wanted to play that game once you saw Sonic running from that killer whale in the commercial. The whole reason that Chaos was made of water was because they wanted to show off the system's capabilities - this is especially apparent in the cutscene where Perfect Chaos floods Station Square & bursts out of a building.
** ''[[Sonic Unleashed (Video Game)|Sonic Unleashed]]'' was the first game to use the Hedgehog Engine, which not only provided [[Scenery Porn|prettier backdrops]] and more consistent lighting through baked GI light probes (to amend complaints that [[Uncanny Valley|Sonic stuck out like a sore thumb]]), but it could simulate Sonic's [[Super Speed|trademark]] more accurately ([[Crowning Moment of Awesome|and incredibly]]) than previous games. The engine was reused in ''[[Sonic Generations (Video Game)|Sonic Generations]]'', to arguably even greater effect. Unfortunately, many of the engine's innovations were being developed by other companies around the same time (like [[MirrorsMirror's Edge|DICE]] and [[Wipeout (Video Game)|Studio Liverpool]]), limiting the Hedgehog Engine to Sega's own studios.
* 2006's ''Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis'' Demonstrated the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE), which is later utilized in ''[[Grand Theft Auto IV]]'' and ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]''.
* ''[[Zone of the Enders]]'' was treated by Kojima Productions as a warm up to see what they could do with [[Play Station 2]] hardware before tackling ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 2'', which used to same engine (and the demo of which was a major selling point for ''Zone of the Enders''). It shows, too: The game doesn't take very long to beat, and many of its environments look like they're straight from the PS 1 era.
* ''[[Drakkhen (Video Game)|Drakkhen]]'' is a very, very early example of a partially 3D video game.
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]'' ''3D''. The biggest selling point of this game aside from being a re-release of one of the most beloved games of all time was the fact that the graphics had been updated.
** Arguably, the original N64 title fits this trope, displaying several graphical effects unseen before and a ([[Technology Marches On|then]]) large overworld with plenty of side-quests.
* ''[[Rayman Origins (Video Game)|Rayman Origins]]'' is the first game to utilize the UbiArt Framework, which smoothly integrates artwork into the game and easy animation of 2D characters. It shows in the huge amount of [[Scenery Porn]] and cartoony characters.
* ''[[Hydrophobia (Videovideo Gamegame)|Hydrophobia]]'' was created with the purpose of showing off HydroEngine, the engine behind its pretty sophisticated fluid simulation effects.
* While the Dual Shock had been out for a while before its release, ''[[Ape Escape]]'' was designed specifically to push sales of the controller by splitting movement and actions between the two joysticks.
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword]]'' was pretty much a huge advertisement for how accurate the WiiMotionPlus is, while still being comfortable for long playtimes. Heck, a good chunk of the development period was dedicated to deciding on a control scheme.
* ''[[Super Smash Bros]] Melee'' and ''Brawl'' could serve as one to their respective consoles. The amount of action that goes on in the game and yet it never dips below the buttery smooth 60FPS is an impressive feat.
 
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* ''Yoshi's Touch and Go'' for the [[Nintendo DS]]. ''Super Mario 64 DS'' probably counts too.
* ''[[Steel Diver]]'' for [[Nintendo 3DS]].
* The [[Nintendo 3DS]] had a bunch of these built in. There was ''[[Face Raiders (Video Game)|Face Raiders]]'' and a handful of AR cards to show off its 3D camera and [[Augmented Reality]] capabilities, and ''[[Find Mii (Video Game)|Find Mii]]'' and a puzzle game for its StreetPass mode (the puzzles are small 3D animations originally demonstrated at E3 2010).
** Soon afterward, ''[[Pokémon|Pokédex 3D]]'' was released to demonstrate not only [[Augmented Reality]] and StreetPass, but also that you can get stuff off of an online eShop.
** ''Ocarina of Time 3D'' started life as a tech demo and eventually became a full port.
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* ''[[Infinity Blade]]'' is the first Unreal Engine 3 game on handhelds, and thus was designed to be a showcase for the engine, making use of the iPhone's biggest strength (its console-quality amount of RAM) for [http://epicgames.com/infinityblade/img/s2.jpg photorealistic baked lighting]. Some consider it a [[Dancing Bear]].
** ''Shadowgun'', which came out shortly afterward, [http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/03/23/shadowgun-optimizing-for-mobile-sample-level/ was similarly designed to show off the rival Unity 3D engine]. Both it and ''Infinity Blade'' are used as demo programs for their respective engines.
** ''[[Aralon (Video Game)|Aralon]]'' is the same deal.
 
== Multi-Platform ==
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/904295"