The Lighthouse Demo - Soul Reaver - Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds

The Lighthouse Demo

The Lighthouse Demo was the first playable version of Soul Reaver ever released to the public. It has no official name, although it appears to have been designated "proto1" internally. It is only available for the PlayStation, but can be played using an emulator like ePSXe.

As its name implies, this was a brief demonstration of part of the lighthouse area which contains the Sunlight Glyph in the final version of the game. The Lighthouse Demo was created very early on in the development process of Soul Reaver, and is substantially different to play. Raziel actually has a wider variety of unarmed attacks than in the retail game, including a claw-thrust-to-heart move that would later appear in Soul Reaver 2 and a downwards-slashing attack with both claws simultaneously.

In the initial stages of striking, Raziel leaves behind a trail of blue "motion lines" just as in the final version of the game. However, if he continuously attacks the trails change to yellow and then orange. This leads to brilliant trails across the screen, particularly if he has a weapon equipped. There is no direct command to initiate Raziel's finish move in this demo, and it is somewhat unpredictable as to when he will execute it.

This demo does not include the ability to shift into the Spectral Realm. Raziel has the ability to swim, but none of his other special abilities or Glyphs.

The Lighthouse Demo is available on a number of PlayStation magazine coverdiscs, and is also included as a bonus with the PlayStation versions of Akuji: the Heartless and The Unholy War.

There are three known versions of this demo. The gameplay itself is identical, but different versions may incorporate alternate intro/outro screens, bug fixes, or other minor changes.

1998-08-25 NTSC build: this version is included with The Unholy War.
1998-10-26 NTSC build: this version is included with Akuji: the Heartless, and on most (if not all) NTSC (North America) demo discs.
1999-01-05 PAL build: this is the version on most (if not all) PAL (Europe/Australia) demo discs.