Sometime in the late 90s, it's Sunday and you're sitting around your room bored contemplating playing Rollercoaster Tycoon or The Incredible machine - but then it hits you, you remember you had picked up an issue of PC Gamer last Friday and hadn't looked through it yet.

You open it and in a plastic holder stuck to the card stock of the front page with snot-like glue, it's the Eidos Demos Volume 4 disc. You pop it in and see a splash appear on your Windows 98 SE screen, you cycle through different demos represented by a graphic and with some very interesting titles:

● Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
● Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft
● Final Fantasy VII
● Warzone 2100
● Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines

And what's this? Thief: The Dark Project - now THAT sound interesting. You select it and install it. Once in the game menu, you skip training at first to find yourself in some kind of courtyard. As you focus in on a very strange looking street light with some orb of power on top, you hear a guard to your right says "how's it going?".

With a smile on your face (as it appears to be more of a simulation than a shoot-em-up), you walk over to another guard drunk off his rocker and singing. You notice a key on his belt and you start hitting mouse buttons to take it, and with that, his demeanor turns to shock with a "ouuhhhhh what the helllll" and begins to attack you. The previously friendly guard behind you also turns to anger. At that moment you don't know what these enemies are capable of, how smart they are, but they seem to put you completely present in the situation.

You don't know it, but this moment would have you playing the demo over and over and it would mark the beginning of a very long career of partaking in the next titles in the series, and playing absolutely groundbreaking fan missions that stretch the boundaries of what you thought was possible in the game.

Sources: https://archive.org/details/redump-id-12909