If you're based in the UK and were alive when the original PlayStation launched, then you'll almost certainly be aware of the various 'Demo' discs which were bundled with the system and given away with copies of the UK's Official PlayStation Magazine.
These discs were essential items when it came to deciding what game you'd be spending your pocket money on next, but they were also audio-visual treats packed with amazing tunes, stunning footage and even some rather freaky 3D effects.
Daryl Baxter recently had the good fortune to chat with one of the key creatives behind these discs, Harry Holmwood, who composed some of the themes heard on them.
Holmwood was part of Sony Computer Entertainment's UK team in the very early days, and helped with game development, even getting the chance to contribute some music to Total NBA 96. Another significant contribution was putting the music over the groundbreaking T-Rex real-time demo that convinced so many people to part with their cash for Sony's new console.
"I was the only person interested in sound and music, really, so I just ended up doing it as a sideline by default," he tells Baxter. "I persuaded Phil Harrison [then Executive Vice President of Development at Sony Entertainment Europe] to let me buy some incredibly exciting music equipment and used that stuff to do the various demos, etc."
Holmwood's music is therefore burned into the memory banks of millions of players, a fact that still stuns him to this day:
"I've been in the games industry for 33 years now and have obviously done loads of things in that time. These demo discs, if I added up all the time the tunes took, are a few days, maybe a week at most. But I suspect these are the only things that anyone's going to remember. It's cool. I still get people contacting me about them every now and then, and it always absolutely makes my day. After university, I wanted to be a musician, but quickly realized I didn't have the talent to do it for a living. But I did for a very short time with Sony in the nineties and, by virtue of being in the right place at the right time, ended up with some of my stuff being on millions of discs. An amazing stroke of luck."
One reason these demo discs might stick in the memory of some people is the aforementioned freaky visuals, which came courtesy of Pete Johnson. "Some of the magazine menu backgrounds he made were really quite nasty, like scaly skin pulsing and breathing," recalls Holmwood.
"I made a couple of equally nasty tunes to go with those. I think it was Demo 1 Vol 3 that had the nastiest graphics, and I wanted to make it sound like a bad trip. It amazed me that we got away with it. Putting something like this on the front of a big magazine felt a bit naughty, but nobody complained! Although I don't think that one got used again after I left. It really is quite unnerving. There's what I assume is a scuba diver breathing sound effect in there that just makes it horrible. Sorry if any kids were left scarred by that one!"
You can read the full interview here.