Euro Demo 39 (OUKPSM39)

## Overview

The 39th issue of OUKPSM. Released in December 1998.

## Interface Info

**Interface Background:** OPSM Advert

**Number of Icons:** 12

**Selection Style:** Single (L/R, B)

**Background Music:** #5 ('98-'99, Harry Holmwood, Jason Page)

## Playables

* Bust-a-Groove
* Colony Wars: Vengeance
* Future Cop: LAPD
* Sentinel Returns
* Spyro the Dragon
* Tomb Raider III
* Victory Boxing 2
* Wreckin Crew

## Videos

* The Adventures of Alundra
* Formula 1 '98

## Extras

* Net Yaroze Advert
* Pants\* (Trouser Trouble)

## Trivia

* There's a hidden application in this demo called Pants. To do this, hold L1 + R1 + Up, then press X. Credits to Razorblade1812 for finding it out!\* **NOTE 1:** You cannot highlight Wreckin' Crew or Mah Jongg while inputting this code, since it won't work. This is the 2nd demo disc after Euro Demo 33 (OUKPSM16Vol.2) to use this code that was used to access the Star Fighters hidden Net Yaroze game on said disc.

* **The whole story:** Razorblade1812 first discovered this hidden app on the night of October 5, 2019, just when he was contacted and asked by Polish Demo disc let's player and collector Axedim90s about where the hidden Star Fighters game found on Euro Demo 33 (OUKPSM16Vol.2) is found on and how it is accessed, just as he was curious about secret content in demo discs. Realizing that there seems to be more than just the hidden Star Fighters game on Euro Demo 33, he started up his Raspberry Pi with Lakka (the Libretro OS) and the PCSX-ReArmed core installed, and searched through every single demo disc while inputting the same code that was used to access the hidden Star Fighters game on Euro Demo 33 (L1 + R1 + Up + X), only for most of the discs to reset their interfaces and background music and lock-up the controls, prompting him to reset the discs, given that the data needed for said hidden game are nowhere to be found on the other discs, especially since many of the discs after Euro Demo 33 strangely still have the path to the hidden game's executable (/STAR/MAIN.EXE) written in their respective executables (DD.EXE), until he got to Euro Demo 39 in where he inputted the same code, in which he was greeted by a blue screen with text saying something about "pants" (pictured below), until he pressed the X button as the screen said so and the app crashed. He shortly after tested the hidden app on ePSXe, only to crash just before the blue screen. Curious to see if it fully works on real hardware, he joined a livestream run by Axedim90s in where he was playing the demo of Lifeforce Tenka (Codename: Tenka) while let's playing Essential PlayStation 6 on which the demo of said game is featured. During the livestream, Razorblade1812 told him about his latest discovery, and after he was finished let's playing Essential PlayStation 6, he booted up Euro Demo 39 using real hardware to see if the hidden pants application Razorblade1812 first discovered, would work, only for the app to immediately crash before the first screen, the blue screen with text. Still curious, he tried to access it with a spare disc, only for the same crash to still persist, even when he used different models and his PS2 and PS3, but still to no avail. Still feeling very puzzled, he eventually hooked up his PlayStation Classic in where, since the PlayStation Classic uses PCSXR, the same emulator with which Razorblade1812 discovered the app in the first place, he eventually was able to make the application work and was greeted with the same blue screen with text that Razorblade1812 saw much earlier, until he also pressed X and the app crashed just as before. Still feeling very puzzled, he collaborated with Razorblade1812 to investigate the mystery behind the barely-functioning application, in where, as told by Razorblade1812 after he examined the data of the app himself, he looked inside the folder PANTS located in the disc's root directory, which contained the application's executable (PANTS.EXE) as well as a couple of MP3 files which are actually TIM files which can be opened using PSicture or any other TIM viewing tool, one of them showing the letters TROUSEBL, and others "humourousy" showing photos of, as the name of the app probably would imply, "pants" worn by different people, most likely SCEE employees hence the playtesting and programming equipment and office environments shown in the photos, with the exception of a woman who was at a nightclub when she was photographed.
	+ The executable of the Pants application also contains text which highlights the application's actual title being "Trouser Trouble", and that some of the text describe about panic time at the demo disc coding department within SCEE's main office. It also highlights two TIM files that are apparently missing, which is presumably the reason why the hidden game did not work initially. It is unclear if the application was cancelled or simply left unfinished, hence the fact that only the first screen works.
	+ The executable also shows a list of credits of SCEE staff who (supposedly) worked on this hidden game, who were MikeD (aka. Luxocrates as known on Reddit (see below)) who coded and made music tracks 2 and 3 for it, PhyzC who made music tracks 1 and 2, ShishB who would have probably been the Sound engineer for this project and MarkB who did "Creative Writing" for this project.
	+ The trousers shown in the MP3 files when opened and viewed with PSicture appear to have been worn in order by MarkC (presumably Mark Christy who was also the QA lead tester on Demo One Versions 6 and 7) (PANTS.MP3), George Bain (GeorgeB), the developer behind Star Fighters (SHORTS.MP3), MikeD (CHINOS.MP3), JamesR (JEANS.MP3) and a random party girl whose name is unknown (FLARES.MP3).
* In 2021 Polly's Archive managed to get the game to load using DuckStation. Gameplay can be seen here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX65dsShF7o
* The whole story - In 2021 After some digging online Polly’s Archive discovered a reddit post on r/tipofmyjoystick on an unrelated thread, but in their amazement the developer of this game “Pants” was commenting there and talking about it. Luxocrates - “*My last disc I think would have been #39, which I celebrated by sneaking my own little game onto the disc, activated by a secret button press in the menu (don't recall what). It was called 'Trouser Trouble' and is a trivial block-sliding game in which you're rearranging images of Dev Support team members' pants. Sadly, I screwed up the executable linking for that one — I didn't adjust the stack pointer to not require the double-sized memory that dev kits had — so it won't play on consumer hardware. But play the audio on a CD player and you'll hear the three kitsch little ditties that a friend and I composed for it.”* So with new found determination they were going to get this game running. They decided that the Emulator DuckStation was the most promising place to start. After a couple of hours fiddling with it and not being able to get the game to boot successfully, they stumbled upon an option in DuckStation. The option was “Enable 8MB RAM (dev console).” Thinking back to what the developer had said about the game requiring the additional memory to boot, they checked the option box and tried it. The OPM CD 39 demo menu loaded, they did the button combination expecting it to fail and….. the blue screen launcher with text loaded. This was as far as anyone before had ever gotten before. Then after they pressed the X button…. THE GAME BOOTED!

## Gallery

The main screen of the hidden Pants app.The loading screen of the hidden Pants app.The title screen of the hidden Pants app.The rolling demo sequence of the hidden Pants app.The "overall plot and synopsis" of the hidden Pants app.Gameplay of what looks to be a slider puzzle game (albeit a pretty boring one according to Axedim90s when he saw footage of the game himself for the first time).