I could swear I “played” it when I was a kid off a PlayStation magazine or Pizza Hut demo disk on a retail (well modded) unit

I think it came out on a demo disk at some point. You got to move the dino about and maybe the light source? It's been a long time!

For me it came on a disk caled Demo 1 which shipped with the first issue of the Playstation.

Same here, it came with a demo disk attached to the PS1. G-Police was on there too and Abe's Oddyssee I believe.

Yes, I distinctly remember rotating this model around on an original PS1 many (many) years ago.

Yep, I remember this too.

It was on a demo disk. I had it.

Yep, had it too!

I recall seeing it live in a devkit but I can't for the life of me remember the devkit specs. Note that that demo catered very expertly to the strengths of the PS1 hardware, it should run jut fine in a retail unit.

Yeah, the sort of things pictured in the dinosaur demo don't always match what's seen in retail PS1 games. I'd love to see a dissection of it.

Some things I can think of:

- Dinos were so in vogue and so suggesting of technological innovation. Jurassic Park came out what, 2-3 years earlier?

- Very limited z-sorting requirements, could likely be done with a simple bsp if sorting individual polys proved too taxing.

- Polys of fairly regular dimensions, not overly long in one direction. Helps with less visible sorting and clipping artifacts.

- No problem with lack of perspective correction, because textures are already shimmering due to the organic skin animation.

- That black fog has always been very effective. We love terrifying things emerging from the dark, which Doom3 tech proved again, and more recently VR.