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Parasite Eve on PS1 came with a demo disc that had videos of Final Fantasy VIII, Bushido Blade 2, and Brave Fencer Musashi, but more importantly, it had a playable demo of Xenogears, up until the Gears attack the village. Xenogears was a pleasant surprise that became one of my favorite PS1 games and was the forerunner to one of my current favorite series, Xenoblade Chronicles. 

Dragon Quest XI S had a great demo on the Switch, and you could transfer your progress to the final release.

Speaking of Dragon Quest, I got a demo for Dragon Quest VIII on PS2 which really sold the game for me. And the final version of the game contained a playable demo of Final Fantasy XII, which was a great twofer.  The DQ8 demo played up to the first boss, while in FF12's demo, you could pick between two different areas with two different sets of characters.

Doom Episode 1: Knee Deep in the Dead was a shareware title composed of the first eight levels. A lot games from id Software and Epic Megagames, as it was called in the 90s, were distributed this way, with the full releases being episodic as well.

Cage Match:

It takes a lot more than virtual tiddies and azz to make a game these days, and there are plenty of games that offer that in more robust titles. So I'm going with Super Mario Sunshine. It may not be Mario's best game, but it was emblematic of the experimental nature of some of Nintendo's Gamecube classics, and it is still a Mario game. Fun fact: I actually have Tomonobu Itagaki on my Facebook friends list.

Do you remember the PlayStation Underground demo discs?  I loved those.  They usually had lots of game demos, video interviews and such, and maybe even a demo of a Japan only game or a super simple full game.  

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Oh, that's easy, even though I wasn't really a Microsoft person my favorite demos (like, ever!) were in 2007 and 2008 for the Xbox 360.  August 21st, 2007 was the release of the Skate demo, a demo so good some people say it stopped people from picking up the real game.  Sure it was only the first area, but it introduced an insane new control system that you could do *fully* right from the start.  No unlockables or pesky mechanical progression here, everything you can do in the game you can do right in that little community center skatepark.  Well, for 30 minutes at a time, anyways.  I spent hours and hours replaying it and trying little tricks, looking up online for glitches and neat little lines, until I was absolutely sick of it.  And apparently so did everyone else, instead of actually *buying* the game.  It cemented my love for the series that I would never regret (well, barring the terrible Skate It spin-off for the Wii, DS, and iOS, yikes.  Also, who knows how that new one will be!  But besides that, 3 golden games).  October 31st, 2008 was the the release of the Mirror's Edge demo, another game with controls that blew my mind.  And while it didn't have the longevity of the Skate series there's actually a decent official 2D version made in Flash by the guy that did Fancy Pants Adventure.  And Catalyst... exists.  Sure it got most things wrong but much of it is fine.  I think?  Anyway, Mirror's Edge is great, just fast paced first-person parkour with a bunch of neat little tricks and shortcuts you can learn in grand, sprawling handcrafted levels with an absolute killer soundtrack.  You can run, you can slide, you can kick off buildings and hit difficult speed-saving rolls.  Eventually, years later, I even hit the in-game speedrun times and max starred the time trials (including the DLC), which is no mior task.  It might've been the first game I really put a lot of effort into!  At least something that wasn't like, I don't know, Contra or Battletoads or something.  But into something *actually* fun.

VIDEO GAME CAGE MATCH:
I'm sorry, I gotta go with the people on this one.  And I've seen more pictures on social media of shirtless Mario then I've ever seen of shirtless Dead or Alixe Xtreme Beach Volleyball characters.  Apparently it's just what the people want!  I don't even care if it's the wrong game.  You're thinking of it right now.  Shirtless Mario.  Don't lie.  Super Mario Sunshine wins!

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I've never really bothered much with demos. They weren't a thing for much of my childhood (other than the occasional store kiosk) and by the time the internet had made demos easy to get I had such a backlog of games that it didn't make sense to play snippets of upcoming games when I had so many good ones with me already. We did end up with some demo discs back in the day, though, like the one that game with our PS1. The highlight on there was a Tomb Raider demo where you fought tigers and a T-rex. It was cool but the controls were difficult and I never did get the urge to play the full game. Also on that disc was a demo of Crash Bandicoot, which actively convinced me to NOT get that game. Later we got a GameCube demo disc (I think it was $5 at Target) and we played the Soul Calibur 2 demo a bunch. That was fun. The disc also had Splinter Cell, which I tried a lot because surely THIS time I'd figure out what they wanted me to do but, alas, I never did and the series has remained forever dead to me.

Cage Match:

This one is tough. On the one hand, Mario has overcome so many enemies and obstacles in his career that it's hard to imagine this being more than a slight speed bump for him. On the other hand, Extreme Beach Volleyball has copious fun bags with the best jiggle physics for the time and NOT copious clothing (plus I hear the volleyball gameplay is actually pretty fun). But then again, take a look at Mario. Look at the blank stare in those blue eyes. I'm not sure any sort of jiggly distractions or suggestive poses would work on him. Is he a man into mammaries or just a platforming automaton? Think of the last time he really showed romantic interest in Peach. In Odyssey he clearly was only concerned that Bowser would steal his trophy and Peach blew them both off in favor of going on her own adventures. All I'm saying is that I doubt the saucy spectacle of the DOA girls will get his blood pumping as much as the challenge of crushing their spirits and emerging victorious. Super Mario Sunshine wins.