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[MrFlibble]

Litude has posted info about an early self-running demo of Heroes of Might and Magic at RGB Classic Games Forums:

Originally Posted by Litude

Found an interesting self-playing demo of Heroes I, download it from here (162 MB). It's quite early, being from January 1995 so a few differences are noticeable like the intro being quite different and music pieces are used in different places in the preview. Sadly it isn't playable. Judging by the file names and the time frame, this preview might have been also used at CES 1995.

EDIT: Actually, seems like you can play it simply by deleting the file DEMOFILE.BIN from the game directory. It is quite unstable though (visiting artifacts or locations like mills will crash the game), but a nice early look at the game nonetheless.

[MrFlibble]

The Settlers II: Veni, Vidi, Vici Demo v0.16 (German)
The first public demo of the game, made prior to its release. Unlike the regular Internet demo (v1.02), this one contains the animated intro, albeit without background narration. There are also several minor differences from the final version, and leftover development files in the game data.
Download The Settlers II Demo v0.16

Also, Litude has been very kind to upload the image of PC Gamer Volume 4 Number 1 (January 1997) CD, which contains The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall Betony demo. You can get it here. Kudos to Litude for sharing that!

[MrFlibble]

I've played around with the early Heroes of Might and Magic demo a bit. Except said crashes when you try to pick up artifacts and enter special locations, the demo is quite playable. There is no movement limit, or building limit per turn (ending the turn will also crash the demo), and there is also no AI action at all (two enemy heroes are present on the demo map, and can be fought though). Picking up resource piles (but not the "enemy campfire" event) do not lead to crashes, and you can also capture mines, enter castles and cities, build structures in castles and hire troops as normal. Spells also work most of the time.

There are quite a few interesting things in the demo, for example, the hero list on the sidebar shows generic hero class icons instead of individual portraits:


Another interesting difference is that on battle screens, the hero is visible, much like in Heroes of Might and Magic II and subsequent games in the series, while only the hero's tent is visible in the final version of the game:


Unlike the final version, the hero was supposed to be able to command the catapult during castle sieges:


The catapult cannot be targeted manually, only given orders to fire. Notice there's a "siege skill" in the list hero's characteristics, which must have somehow affected the efficiency of the hero's catapult's attacks.

There are also many minor differences in graphics, both on the adventure map and in castles/towns.

If you give it a try, note that you can actually save the game and then replace your save with the original one (for some reason or other newly saved games end up in the demo's root directory, not in the GAMES folder). This way you can experiment with the demo and be able to return to your saved position in case of crashes, rather than start everything from the beginning each time.

[Scatty]

That's quite interesting MrFibble. I also read somewhere, few years ago from now, that the makers of the HoMM series were originally even tinkering with the idea to make the hero participate (as in like the units, doing damage) in the battles, which only really was implemented as much later as in HoMM IV though.

[MrFlibble]

Here's a preview of Heroes I from an issue of Interactive Entertainment CD-mag, showing some more pre-release screenshots:
http://youtu.be/TjZIKL4NDdA

Curiously, the hero image is replaced by the tent already, while another screenshot shows no hero on the battlefield at all.

I've also had the impression that in the demo, enemy units sometimes try to attack the hero, although it could have been that they were just using the area of effect attack (it was a phoenix) to attack the player's unit adjacent to the hero.

[MrFlibble]

Blood Shareware CD
An enhanced version of the shareware episode of Blood was released on CD. The extra content includes video sequences and CD Audio soundtrack. The CD is available from Shareware CD Archive at archive.org:
Blood Shareware (Monolith Productions) (1997)

You can also get the CD shareware at RTCM website which is dedicated to Build engine games.

The Shareware CD Archive also has the shareware CD editions of Duke Nukem 3D, Quake and Starcraft:
Duke Nukem 3D Shareware Episode v1.1 (1996)
Quake Shareware CD (1996)
StarCraft Shareware (1998)

[MrFlibble]

BTW, the Starcraft shareware CD contains the full five-mission Loomings campaign (also released as an add-on for the full game as Precursor Campaign), not the shorter three-level version from the downloadable demo. There's also the intro from the full version, more music tracks, full unit speech (the downloadable version only has a limited number of unit quotes for each unit), and video previews of other Blizzard games.

[MrFlibble]

Apparently the demo version of Shadow of the Comet differs from the full version in a number of ways. Here's a video of the demo, the differences are listed in the video description. There are in fact two versions of the demo, one shorter and one more extensive, both of which are available for download here. Each has two modes, a self-running slideshow/animation and a small playable area consisting of several locations.

In other news, Litude at RGB Classic Games Forums has posted some of his recent findings, which include a beta demo of Corridor 7: Alien Invasion:

Originally Posted by Litude

Capstone Software
Corridor 7: Alien Invasion
Found two early pre-release beta demos of this game and also found two untouched installers (game binary differs slightly, some new info on the exit screen of the game in the later one) of the actual demo.
Beta Demo (01/05/94) - Files
Beta Demo (01/28/94) - Installer

[MrFlibble]

Just like with the demo of Half-Life, the Gunman Chronicles demo includes levels not found in the full version of the game.
Download Gunman Chronicles Demo at FilePlanet

[MrFlibble]

I of the Enemy: Ril'Cerat
I of the Enemy: Ril'Cerat is a free stand-alone prequel campaign to I of the Enemy, a 2004 indie oldschool science-fiction real-time strategy/tactics game. The prequel campaign, which serves as a demo of the game, is not included in the full version. A different demo of I of the Enemy is also available, which features the first five missions from the full version that take place sometime after the Ril'Cerat episode.
Download I of the Enemy: Ril'Cerat from Brothersoft Games
Download I of the Enemy: Ril'Cerat from FileForum
Download I of the Enemy demo from Softpedia
Download I of the Enemy demo from FilePlanet
Download I of the Enemy non-interactive tutorials add-on from FilePlanet (can be used both in the demo and the Ril'Cerat episode)

You can also download the manual for the game in Microsoft Word format from the official downloads page (Wayback Machine archived copy).