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INTRODUCTION TO THE DEMOSCENE

General

• What is a demo?
• What is demoscene?
• How did the scene started

Introducing the scenes

• PC scene
o The best PC demos ever
 1987-1989
 1990
 1991
 1992
 1993
 1994
 1995
 1996
 1997
 1998
 1999
Diskmags, Graphic and Music disks and other

 PC Diskmags
 PC Musicdiscs
 PC Graphicdisc
 Other information
The best groups of the PC scene Favorite groups of the PC scene that I wanted to mention PC scene
links The future of the PC scene The Greek PC scene

o Some good Greek pc demos


o The best Greek groups
o Greek PC scene links
The CPC scene

o The best CPC demos


o The best CPC groups
o CPC scene links
o CPC demo achievements
The C64 scene

o The best C64 demos


o The best C64 groups
o C64 scene links
o C64 demo achievements
Final words

• How did I met the world of demoscene


• The real worth of demoscene

What is a demo?

We must not confuse the demos of the scene with the demos of games. Until now, many newbies knew
only the game demos. But there are some other programs which are called demos and we could tell
them multimedia demos. They were very famous on Amiga and many Amiga users may know them.
(Every Amiga user I know, knows the scene and asked me to show him some demos from the PC!!!
From the other side it is too hard to find a PC freak who knows or cares about demoscene.)

So, what are demos? Demos are demonstrations of a computer's abilities in graphics, sound and
programming, done by marvelous graphists, musicians and coders just for fun! So simple. You run the
demo, sit and watch it like you watch a videoclip. Although the demo is not a video file, but great and
Realtime 2d or 3d effects with very optimized code. Demos makes even lame old machines to look
very cool!

What is demoscene?

The creation of a demo had become a hobby of many freaks and there where many demomakers who
knew each other. They had formed somehow, something like an organisation of freaks who enjoyed
creating demos. This was called demoscene.

At the beginning every couple of demofreaks created a group which had it's coders, graphicians,
musicians or also sysops, mailswappers (Guys who had to send demos and other productions of their
group to other people, by uploading demos to BBS's and many other stuff, like the contacts of the
groups with other demofreaks), leaders, organizers and other...

Then they even organised parties with demo, graphics or music competitions in many countries starting
especially from northern Europe, where the demoscene started. And this have become to a hobby of
many demofreaks. Today there are happening many demoparties in many countries from Scandinavian
countries, Germany, Denmark to Spain, France, Italy, Greece, USA or even Australia! The most
machines has or had a scene. Even older computers like Amiga, Atari, C64, CPC or even Spectrum.
Freaks continue to code on these "prewar"(Very old) machines because they have a scene! (Even the
writer of this page is thinking to learn some CPC assembly and start coding demos on CPC!)

This is somehow the wonderfull world of demoscene. You see or make demos, be creative with your
computer (Extremely creative!), see things in a computer, that you wouldn't beleive that you could see
on this machine (Extremely optimized coding, the same I could say about music and graphics!!!), you
go to the parties, meet new freaks, meet freaks that knows very well to programm, manytimes even in
pure assembly, have fun!!!

I am not sure if I made you to understand the real worth, the real atmospher of demoscene but I think
that demoscene is the best thing ever created by a freak!!!

How did the scene started

Noone can really say when did this, what we call demoscene, started, or which was the first demo ever.
Some say from C64, others that they have seen a demo in other older 8bit machines, while other say:"
The first demo ever written, is when I wrote the program:10 PRINT "I AM THE BEST!" - 20 GOTO
10 .". When I bought my AMSTRAD CPC with 2 discs with games, they gave me also |CPM where
there was a demonstration of amstrad capabilities in graphics and sound! (Maybe this was the first
demo I had ever seen!). This may have happened with other computers.
But this, what we call demoscene, started from the well known crackers. These guys were cracking the
copy protection of a game, so everyone could copy it. They also had menus which you could choose
infinitive lifes and other stuff. But in some cracks, when you loaded a game, you could see a
demonstration with music and graphics. The pirate team logo, was scrolling around the screen, with a
nice tune on the background! I had seen this many times in many CPC games, and sometimes in older
PC games. Some say that the crackers wanted to show their programming capabilities through these
loader intros. Or they just wanted to show that they knew other programming stuff, rather than
cracking! The sure is, that demomania began from the crackers.
When was the first real demo released? As a demo, not as a loader of a crack. AMIGA was very
popular for her demos. AMIGA demoscene existed more earlier than PC scene, as I think.
The first PC demo that you can download in Hornet Archive is rax from raxsoft and it was realesed at
1987. However the demoscene was established on the PC after 1991. At 1991 were made the first
parties ever on PC. THE GATHERING 91 at Norway, THE PARTY 91 at Denmark and TSI 91 at
Hungary as I discover now on internet. As I see, the Hungarian party is maybe the first party ever, with
30-40 visitors!!! At 1992 and then, it had began too fast! Many parties were organized with
demo,intro,music and stuff competitions with hundreds or sometimes one or two thousends of visitors!
The most famous now are ASSEMBLY PARTY 92 and THE GATHERING 92 at Norway and THE
PARTY 92 at Denmark. Somewhere there beginned the PC demoscene. In northern Europe! As far as I
know, Scandinavians, Germans, and people from northern Europe are the best freaks. They are too
obsessed with computers!!!
The AMIGA and other 8bit machines demoscene, started more earlier. At the 80's there excisted a
demoscene for these old machines, but not for the PC's. The PC's were made for work. So when they
obtained the first graphics and sound, they came also in the scene.
This time they have gone too far. Every year many parties are organized, where the freaks from all over
the world gather together, to meet each other, take part in the competitions, to have fun or just beacuse
they like scene. Many parties are beeing held, and not only in Scandinavian countries, but also in
Germany, Denmark, Polland, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Greece, Russia, Israel, USA, Brazil and
Australia!!! They organize competitions as the best demo, 64kb intro, 4kb intro, 256 bytes(!) intro, best
music, graphics, raytraced pictures, wild demos, java demos, games, web page compo, quake or doom
online, utils, qbasic demos, hard disk throwring compo and whatever else crazy can you think! The best
thing in the scene is that the freaks are gathering in parties, have fun, meet new freaks, make new freak
friends, helping each other and having an underground feeling.
Some say that the scene is dying. No new clever ideas. The new freaks don't care about the scene
because they prefer multimedia and windows stuff. The golden days have past. From 1991 to 1995 the
scene was marvelous! Many new and very cool demos were written. Legendary groups have left their
name as FUTURE CREW or TRITON. Now the todays groups are making the same and the same
effects again, without some cool design. As we, on CPC, were remaining on rasters and scrollers and
everyone imitated the other, so are we now on the PC's with 3D and stuff. (You will tell me: "What
other exists?") We need some design. For some reasons they say that the demo times have past

I will try to give you a general view of the scene of each machine. I have involved with the PC and
CPC scene, and I have seen many good C64 demos in one PC emulator. I am planning to search for the
best SPECTRUM, ATARI and AMIGA demos, at the beginning so that I can tell you the best demos
and the emulator and sites you need to visit, to learn other machines demoscene...

PC SCENE

The PC scene is the scene where I started and it is the biggest, beacuse the most freaks have a
PC today. PC's conquer the world, that's the lame(?) truth...
It must have started from 1989. At Hornet Archive, there exists one demo at 87 and two
demos at 89. GR8 by FUTURE CREW and SUMMER HOLIDAYS by SORCERERS.
FUTURE CREW and SORCERERS were some of the oldest groups in the PC scene.
At 1990 we have 8 demos, at 91 we have 34 and at 92 88 demos! (Always according to
Hornet). And as I have told you before at 1991 were the first parties organized, THE
GATHERING 91 at Finland, THE PARTY 91 at Denmark and TSI 91 at Hungary! And then
ASSEMBLY 92 and many other partys with lotsa people! You must know that at Northern
Europe you will find the best groups, but this doesn't mean that you will not find cool groups
in other countries. I think that in North European Countries are living the best freaks!
92-94 are IMHO the golden years of demoscene. At 95-96 I had seen some cool demos, but
from 1997 and then the scene has started to getting worse. Ok maybe this is an illusion. We
are always talking about, if the scene is dying, or if the scene is still strong, and stuff from 95
until now!!!
Some say that the elite groups have left the scene, as FUTURE CREW and TRITON beacuse
they wanted to establish a game company. Some companies were taking the talents from the
scene, to work in their companies. So the new scene-freaks should now do what the elites
were doing in the past. Some others say that the new freaks are snobbing the demoscene,
cause of windows and multimedia stuff, while the older coders are still coding demos in pure
DOS, so it is too difficult to attract the new freaks to the demoscene. While the most demo
coders ignore the 3d accelerator cards, so they don't use it in their demos. Think about a new
freak now. He uses windows, with gui's, graphics, games with marvelous graphics and with
use of 3d cards effects, while the demos are in dos and with pixelized textured graphics. It is
too hard for a new freak to get to the scene! But I don't care about that. The bad think with
windows and new freaks is that they will change the scene. They will care only about
windows, pentium 2, and maybe they will snob the old legendary demos as SECOND
REALITY. One good thing about the scene is that you can still see cool demos with cool
effects, that run in older machines, while the new freaks would laugh when they would see
these machines!!!

Now I will write down a list of the best demos on the PC ever according to Hornet Awards
but also to my opinion.

The best demos ever on the PC

• 1987-1989
o CGA,EGA and beeper!
o See whatever exists. You will find 3 demos on Hornet and even if you find
more demos, somewhere else, it is worth looking, beacuse of history.

1990

o EGA and beeper. There are some demos with some new effects and not only
scrollers but very few. The birth of vector balls at MEGADEMO by
SPACEPIGS. Some VGA and Soundblaster stuff in ULTRAFORCE demos
like COLDCUT!
o The same here. But I will suggest some demos
o Atom by Sorcerers (Be carefull, beacuse it uses the beeper and makes too
much noise!
o Megademo by The Spacepigs (The oldest Megademo! And it is so cool for
it's epoch)
o Yo by Future Crew (For the history of the legendary FUTURE CREW.
Beeper also)
o Coldcut by Ultraforce (I think that it was in the list of classical demos in
Trixters oldskool site. I show it again and it was cool cause of soundblaster
support!)
o I had seen all of them but now I don't remember all of them. It is good to see
them all for the demoscene history.

1991

o Scrollers are still here, but we see some new good demos that goes further. But
the scrollers are also cooler with heavier graphics like some star scrollers,
sinus bars and other stuff. Soundblaster and VGA graphix of course. It has
been established. The first demos with flat shaded 3d graphics!
o 34 demos at Hornet.
o Ball Mania by Sorcerers (It was the first demo I had ever seen in the PC's
and that's the reason I put it. I can't describe my feelings when I saw that demo
with scrollers and messages to other guys! Very good and nice tune :)
o Cronologia by Cascada (The first good big demo I have ever watched! It was
marvelous for it's epoch with flat shaded polygons and a light source and very
very cool music (I am still singing it in my mind :))
o Mental Surgery by Future Crew (For the history. And it was cool. A simple
star scroller with nice music and some messages. Soundblaster of course. I
forgot to tell you that you will find soundblaster support and not only beeper in
the demos.)
o Putre Faction by Skull (In the list of classical demo at Trixters page. I show
it again and it seemed cool.)
o Vector Demo by Ultraforce (Ultraforce were cool that time! A very cool
demo with vector graphics which was running in a 286(Of course :) and you
could also control the objects from one menu!
o And as I said, what I haven't seen and it deserves to be in this list, I will put it
at the future.

1992

o The epoch of the marvelous classic demos, with many new fantastic effects!
The rebirth of the PC-demoscene!!! I can't even think the uncounted new
effects that were born. Classical demos as
UNREAL,PANIC,AMNESIA,CRYSTAL DREAMS. The time when we were
full of 3d flat graphix.
o 88 demos at Hornet
o Amnesia by Renaissance (A very good and beautiful demo from an American
group. There was some new technology about the sound. With some new
techniques and a plain sound blaster it could produce music with 13 digital+fm
music "CDFM"!(As I read in the Trixter's site)
o Big Bigger Biggest by Infernals (Another one of my first demos I had ever
seen. Maybe the biggest scroller I had ever seen!)
o Crystal Dream by Triton (Marvelous! It run's even in a 286 with flat
polygons and a beautiful starfield.)
o Preview by Dust(I liked this demo very much and for it's epoch it must be
very cool. Very good objects with many flat polygons. Nice vector balls, and
some of the balls are mignifier lens something that I have never seen in any
other demo with vector balls!And wiredframed 3d objects with antialiasing the
first time in a demo! I liked too much this demo.
o Fishtro by Future Crew (For history and not only!)
o Facts of Life by Witan (The demo which beat the fantastic demo PANIC by
FC but not fair. Interesting effects are the 3d vector sound equilizers, a scene
with many paralax scrollers and a rave style with dancing figures and pictures
that show off too fast according to the music. I liked this too much even if I am
not fan of rave/techno/whatever. It was so funny! Besides I prefer PANIC:)
o Black glass demo 1,2 (These demos are from Renaissance. The fastest(?)
vector balls I hav ever seen!)
o UNREAL by Future Crew (OHE DEMO!!!!!!! One MEGAMEGADEMO
by the famous FUTURE CREW! It is one of the 4th demos in Hornet that has
5/5 stars. So many parts, cool music and design and it need's only a 386!!!)

1993

o The epoch when SECOND REALITY was written, maybe the best demo ever
on PC's. We have gone too far, what can I say. CRYSTAL DREAMS 2 is also
supperior demo. We have left the logic of scrollers far away! We have start to
move away from the borring 3d objects like a simple 3d cube! The most
demos want's a fast 386.
o SECOND REALITY by Future Crew (If you don't know this demo then you
must be newbie on the scene. For many guys, the best demo ever! A good 386
or a simple 486 and you enjoy the perfect demo from FC!!! It is wonderful!
Marvelous music and design, the graphics were also good, and the code very
good. In the demo you can see some very realistic effects that even today I
wan't to see them again and again!!! Don't loose it, but I think that you must
already have it in your HD...)
o CRYSTAL DREAM 2 by Triton (A Wonderful Megademo by TRITON,
with very good and nice 3d flat object show, the best 3d star routine I have
ever seen, even today (Today they don't make star scrollers:). remember a
fantastic 3d scene with chess, with too many polygons 1300 or something?). A
very cool fractal zooming! Unfortunatelly my Cyrix is shit, and I can't see the
demo beacuse it crashes, among with many other demos. So there are too
many cool things in this demo which I don't remember now.)
o INCONEXIA by Iguana (Another cool demo from IGUANA maybe one of
my favoritest team. Beacuse they make good demos without only technology
but demos which you will love to watch. Cool music and some realistic
effects, and the birth of the classic fire effect!
o PANIC by FUTURE CREW (Another cool demo from FC. A characteristic
example of what we call trackmo.)
o SAGA by DUST (I had seen Dust preview and I liked it too much. So I
wanted to see some other demos from DUST, an unknown group for me
before. And I saw SAGA. That preview must be for SAGA. The same cool
vector balls, some cool 3d graphics, shit-bobs, the photos of the makers of this
demo as textures that were waving too realistic! A cool landscape and then it
stucked in my Cyrix. I will have these DUST in my mind...)
o ELEMENTS by XOGRAPHY (I had seen this before. I remember a cool
scene with a space ship that above of a city with texture mapping!
o ECLIPSE by EMF (One good 64kb intro from the very good Electromotive
Force. )
o Gravis Ultrasound Advertisement by TRITON (I haven't seen is beacuse I
don't have a GUS. You will tell me that to see the GUS advertisement you
MUST have a GUS, so what's the meening of this advertisement!!! Those
GUS guys are too obsessed :)

1994

o The birth of the Gouraud shaded graphics in CARDIAC, CYBOMAN 2,


HOLISTIC and many other. One doom-quake engine in UNTITLED by
DUST. And of course too much 3d. We are keeping far from simple objects
show and we show more virtual reality style scenes. I think that we are leaving
the 2d oldskool epoch and we are going to the 3d scene!!!
o ACT 1 by PSYCHIK LINK The first demo by Psychik link. Very nice
beautiful demo with cool music!
o VERSES by EMF (A very cool demo! One of my favorites. Marvelous
design and music. You will see here the morphing and the rotating of Bill
Gates head!!! But I liked also the start with the fractal shapes!)
o CARDIAC by INFINY (I remember some Gouraud shaded boxes. I have to
see that demo again.)
o CATCHUP by GRIF (Here you can see a characteristic virtual reality scene
of a fly flying in a room!)
o CYBOMAN 2 by COMPLEX (One intro from one of my favorite teams!
Well, this is the intro where I met COMPLEX and maybe the intro where I
saw some fast gouraud (or was it phong?) shading objects.)
o FRACTAL DREAMS by MENTAL DESIGN (Fantastic fractals in 4kb!
Static pictures. If you want to see fractal zooming you can get...)
o STONED by STONE of DUST
o HOLISTIC by CASCADA (I liked also CASCADA. One other demo with
3d object show, from flat polygon writers to gouraud shading with textures. It
isn't the zen of optimizing but I think that you will like it.)
o OPTIMIZE by FEENIX of EPICAL (It is optimized sure! In only 4kb you
can see some cooper effects, tile zooming/rotating, a wolfenstein engine and
some other effects which I don't remember now.)
o POOR by MAJIC 12 (I haven't seen it yet)
o SHOW by MAJIC 12 (Nor this (or do I?))
o That's all. And HEART QUAKE by IGUANA from me. I love these guys!
The make the most nice demos, without counting only in technology, but with
some very realistic effects some times and they get only 3,5/5 at Hornet! You
will see some very good effects and always with a very cool tune.
o But also the very good UNTITLED by DUST and maybe the best start I have
ever seen!
1995

o The time when 3d graphics was something common anymore in demos with
gouraud and phong shading! With some other technologies as enviropment
mapping and other fancy stuff. With DOPE as the best demo, which showed
many of these new 3d effects and it was also too optimized. And many others
as VERSES,DRIFT,STARS,ANIMATE and some others which I haven't seen
yet. Demos are starting to be stylish and psychedelic.
o PROJECT ANGEL by IMPACT STUDIOS (IMPACT STUDIOS with
their optimized demos! Many virtual scenes, with aeroplanes, spaceships and a
virtual fighter scene! It still remains on flat graphix, but it is cool.)
o ANIMATE by SCHWARZ (A very nice 4kb demo. One of the four demos at
Hornet that got 5/5 stars!)
o DOPE by COMPLEX (Optimized scenes with Gouraud and Phong shaded
objects with blur mapping, environment mapping and whatever you want. A
simple 486dx is enough for the dream!)
o JUICE by PSYCHIK LINK (A VERY Beautiful demo, it seems that Psychik
link is going to be my favorite demogroup!)
o DRIFT by WILD LIGHT (Very cool 64kb with an optimized(optimized is
always relative...) 3d routine and gouraud shaded objects.)
o INTO THE SHADOWS by TRITON (TRITON were making a game, INTO
THE SHADOWS at 1995, but they left their projects, for some reasons. This is
an unplayable demo of the game. You will see the coolest animation that ever
exists and with a Quake engine. They have said that the engine would be even
faster than QUAKE!!!)
o STARS by NOOON (Another terrific demo by NOOON. Watch at the style
and at the 3d graphics!)
o OS/2 WARP DEMO by VALHALLA (This demo must be only for the OS/2
operating system. Haven't seen it.)
o X14 by ORANGE
o PROJECT XYZ by ORANGE (Very good demos according to the marks at
Hornet but I haven't run them yet.)

1996

o The establish of Psychedelic demos!!! I liked too much CAERO with a cool
nature virtual scene. And of course the very cool and optimized DISGUST by
CAMORRA.)
o From this point I will write many demos without comments beacuse I haven't
seen yet. But if you want comments or maybe reviews, I will make my favorite
demo list in another section on this page
o LATEX by BLANK
o STROKE by IONIC of ASTROIDEA
o CALEIDOSCOPE by BYTEAM
o TOASTED by CUBIC TEAM,$EEN(Very nice with a very good
Rollercoaster scene!)
o FASHION by LOGIC DESIGN (I have seen this :)
o CAERO by EMF,PLANT (Don't loose this!)
o HEADACHE by PSYCHIC LINK (I want to see that damn!)
o INSIDE by CNCD
o MAXIMUM REALITY by UNIQUE PC (A very optimized 4k intro with
fast phong shading!)
o TRANSGRESSION 2 by MFX (Realtime rendering or something in 64kb! I
think it needs a Pentium.)
o CONTRAST by OXYGENE
o PAPER by PSYCHIC LINK (This 64kb intro will write history. The best
design in an 64kb intro ever!)
o PURE SPIRIT by THE COUNSELLOR of SPIRIT NEW STYLE
o LIFE by PUPU of URINATE
o Marvelous demos, but I haven't seen them yet...

1997

o The same but with advanced techniques on 3d graphix as transparencies or


fancy lights and stuff! Psychedelia rules the scene. The first demos for
windows(bliach!!!).
o 303 by ACME(From Statix again, hmm it crashed in a part, I have to see that
again in my new computer. And with vocals :)
o ASTRAL BLUR by THE BLACK LOTUS (One amazing TBL demo, only
for WINDOWS (If the newbies didn't understood, all the other demos are only
in DOS! HAHAHAHahaha...)
o SHAPESHIFTER by CHROME
o TYPHOID by REACT of GYROSCOPE
o JIZZ by THE BLACK LOTUS (TBL,windows, and stuff :)
o SINK by PULSE
o ROBOTNIK by RAGE (This is a very cool demos with very cool virtual
reality scenes, according to the ideas. When you see 200 times a demo with 3d
cubes, you want to see something diferrent. Scenes of a robot, a scull, and a
city (with very ugly 3d engine, what happened guys, deadline???) a good
video at the beginning for the atmosphere and many others which I don't
remember now. If you don't have a Pentium when you run the demo it sends
you in DOS with a message that says:"Buy a Pentium Jerk!"!!! Just write
ROBOTNIK /O . Don't hear them. In one 486dx33 many effects are running at
full framerate :)
o OMNISCIENT by SANCTION (DESCENT in 4kb. You should see this!!!)
o THE DREAM by SPIRIT NEW STYLE
o STASH by THE BLACK LOTUS (Third windows demo by TBL. Their
demos are starting to look like each other. They don't make some real-life
(Wow, I said real-life :) virtual scene.)
o TRIBES by PULSE,MELON(You have to see that! Very Epic!!! There is a
scene with lot's of small lights which is very cool! Hmm, it crashed in a part
but I will try that too)
o OUTLINE by EXACT (You will see also here, what optimize means. In
space, not in speed.)
o ELECTRONICS by DOOMSDAY (Very nice demo by Doomsday)
o BOOST by DOOMSDAY (This demo rocks! I think I am starting to like
these guys!)
o I see now that the most cool demos nowdays are small intros.

1998

o I am not sure, but the first demo which supports 3d accelerator cards, was
made at 1998. I remember too good 3dfx demos, FINAL REALITY and
NATURE but there must be others. But the most coders are still remaining in
software 3d effects, and they have some good optimized results like
transparencies, fancy lights and blobs, but I haven't seen interpolation in
software mode!
o CLONE MEETS CLONE(Very famous 64kb intro)
o THE FULCRUM by MATRIX(This demo rocks. It has some very beautiful
and atmospheric 3d scenes!)
o MESHA by PICARD of RHYME(Look what can be done in only 4kb!)
o FINAL REALITY by FUTURE CREW (The return of FC! It isn't
considered as a demo but it is a benchmark for 3d cards and not signed by FC
but from Remedy Software, the game company the FC have founded. You
should wait many good things from these guys. They are making a game now,
Max Payne, doom clone or something like that. (maybe with Tomb Raider
view.))
o NATURE by VERTIGO (Maybe the best demo of 1998 with 3dfx support!)
o There exists many other good demos which you must see but I don't now yet.)
o SQUARE by PULSE (A very very stylish demo. It is like a videoclip! Statix
participates also.)
o SUNFLOWER by PULSE (Some very beautiful nature scenes. Great effects
and art!)
o You should see some demos from DOOMSDAY,BYTERAPERS or PULSE
(SQUARE is marvelous like a videoclip!).

1999

o What is going to happen at 1999; Will windows be established as the ultimate


OS for demos? Will we see more 3dfx demos? I see that the things are going
too slow. Coders still prefer DOS and they are snobbing 3d cards. But I like
that too. We are seeing already demos which need a Pentium 2 to run
perfectlly and I cannot tell that they have very heavy techniques and stuff. I
love the truth, that I can still run a DOS demo, with a simple Pentium or
sometimes even with a 486 or 386!!!
o PAST by ORANGE (The first good demo of 1999 I saw. 3 nice virtual scenes
with very beautiful 3d graphix and few psychedelia. It is not elite, but I liked
it. And I haven't seen it yet, with music.)
o STATE OF MIND by BOMB(Great design!)
o YUME 2000 by DJ.INF (I liked that demo! It features a female Japanese
singer, has great soundtrack and it is very well designed. But too lame slow
code...)
o MOAI by NOMAD (Very funny idea, it seems that it is going to run well on
my Pentium 200mmx, haven't tried it on my computer yet)
o CONTOUR by TBL (I liked the new demo from TBL, has cool music, some
nice effects and a very beautiful zooming near at the end!)
o ORIGIN by ASTEROIDEA (This is a very cool 3d accelerated demo, It is
very fast(Actually I saw that on a Pentium 2 :) and impressive.)
o MORALHARDCANDY by REPLAY (Some say that it is one of the best
demos of 1999. It has a strange style with flat polygons, antialliased wired
graphics, e.t.c. which I didn't liked to much(Although I will check that again).
Check also other REPLAY productions, if you liked that style!)
o FUTURE COLOURS by CONTRACT (Another good 3d accelerated demo.
I have to see that again.)
o WONDER by SUNFLOWER (It must be cool, but I don't remember it, I saw
that only one time. SUNFLOWER is a new group where UNREAL by PULSE
belongs now, check also ZILOG!)
o SHAD 2 by COCOON&SYNDROME (This demo had very big
requirements, PENTIUM 2, the demo was 15MB, and it wanted 128MB Ram!
It features some Heavy metal inside. It proves that PC demos have become too
much art today! Great!!!)
o Many others, I will write them down...
o I can't remember many this time.JUMPY and KOWWBOY were cool.
ORGANIC and FRACTAL LIFE 2 were two very cool 4kb demos. And two
3dfx demos at TRIP99 party, TOYS and THE ETERNAL GAME.
o That's all. This list will be updated, but I think that I will make my personal
favorite demos list in the future.

Diskmags, Music discs, Graphic discs and other stuff in the PC scene

I will write, which are considered the best or the most famous diskmags/graphical discs/music
discs in the scene of PC. The truth is that I have seen only 2 or 3 diskmags this time and the
same for the graphics and sound. But I can tell some words.
The most famous and active diskmag is HUGI. It has many good articles, and anyone can
send an article or just answer to some polls. But I haven't seen some worldcharts of the best
coders,musicians,graphicians, and stuff and I don't know why. The graphics are at resolution
640*480 with 65536 colours but I think that the code is slow. It scrolls line per line and not
pixel perfect as some other older diskmags. And it is too slow in a 486 but now I think that
the player must be the problem, cause it takes too much CPU power. Well I had an arguement
with the Pentium guys at comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos newsgroup with this thema, but I think that
we have calmed down :)
IMPHOBIA was another famous diskmag but it has stopped a long time ago. Last issue was
12 at 1995 I think. It had a 320*400 resolution as I think, with 256 colours but with very good
coding and very smooth horizontal pixel perfect scrolling (Like DEMONIAK 6 by ARKOS)
and with full framerate in a simple 386sx. (I don't know if it could run in more older
machines). Good articles and world charts of the best
demo,group,intro,coder,musicer,graphist and even the best game! Very good graphics, and
oldskool pixel painted.

If you want after all to be informed about todays PC scene, HUGI is the best sollution, as far
as I know.

From musicdiscs. I have seen CHAOTIC MIND by SKAVEN the famous musician of
FUTURE CREW. I always liked his music more than PURPLE MOTION, not only because
they were not techno, but because they had something special, something psychedelic.
This musicdisc is very cool with very very special music. 8 unique tunes by SKAVEN of FC.
There exists also a dos shell so that you can work in DOS and still hear the music. But it eats
too much conventional memory and so I can't even run Norton Commander. But there also
exists the S3M files so that you can run them from your favorite player! 1992
EPIDEMIC from many guys A music disc from 1995. It has 20 tunes by many musicians as
SKAVEN, PURPLE MOTION, C.C.CATCH from RENAISSANCE and many others I don't
remember. Good tunes, maybe not so special as SKAVEN but it is worth downloading. There
is also a DOS SHELL and it eats less conventional memory (there must be the complexity of
the songs that cares.). I liked too much PURPLE MOTION's music. He says that it goes well
for a flipper game!!!
On the net there exists too many graphic and music disks that takes the same marks with
these two musicdiscs. But I haven't seen them yet. The same happens with graphic discs.

From Graphic disks I have seen and liked SUN by LAZUR of PULSE and WILD by
LAZUR of PULSE. With marvelous graphics in higher than 320*200 resolutions. Also 5977
by LAZUR of PULSE was excellent and it starts with a cool intro and a rather big mouse
pointer! (You will see :)
I have seen only these. You can look at GRAPHIC DISK AWARDS at HORNET.

Other informations about the scene of PC

• DSSK3 (Demo starter kit version 3. Many general informations about the PC-scene
which can someone read from a GUI. But if you read one text, you see in the
background a very tiring light, but I am sure that you can disable it. Besides you can
read the informations with your favorite programm beacuse they are in ASCII. What
is the scene, which are the most famous groups and demos on the PC, how to achieve
good design on demos, which OS should you prefer, some interviews, some basic
assembly graphix tutorials and many other very useful informations. Whatever you
want to learn about the scene.)
• DEMO FAQ (The official FAQ for DEMOS. It has whatever you want. Even more
than DSSK3 (except maybe the coding and some other parts.) . Beacuse it is a FAQ :)
• DELUXE PAINT (The famous(?) drawing programm which were using in the
oldskool days the graphicians. Now they don't use to use it but they scan a photo and
that was all. But that's another story. Whatever oldskool graphix you will see, must
have happened mainly with this programm. I will try to find it.
• FAST TRACKER v2 by TRITON (Maybe the most famous tracker with the most
capabilities)
• SCREAM TRACKER v3 by FUTURE CREW and IMPULSE TRACKER (Two
other famous trackers)
• HORNET ARCHIVE was the best web page for pc demoscene. Basically you could
download from there everything you wanted about demoscene, from demos, music,
graphics to code, infos, diskmags, invitations and other stuff. It had the biggest
demoscene directory ever in www. But now it stoped updating new stuff, and
probably it will close completely. You can still download some files but the uploads
and other things as the top downloads have stopped working. The adress is
www.hornet.org . TREBEL ARCHIVES is going to do now what HORNET
ARCHIVE did in the past. The adress is www.trebel.org
• For the Greek guys:"Do you know that a Greek PC-scene exists? We organize THE
GARDENING party at Patra from 1995 until today. Some famous Greek groups
are:DEUS (The organizers of the party), A.S.D. (One of the oldest groups),
DEMANIACS, RED POWER, DEBRIS and many other.
• Some other demoo E want to talk about!DISGUST by CAMMORA the fastest 3d
phong and such stuff 3d graphics I have ever seen! This demo rocks and it has also
good design. I have seen some other Camorra demos and I think that these guys kicks
ass!!! In Trixters site it says that it wants a 386 and in my 486 it rocks! What else can
I say.
• This demo has a scene with a Porsche with 8000 and something polygons. Well, this
part wants a good Pentium. There was a scene in DOPE by COMPLEX where there
was coming an asteroid and according to the text writer, this object consists of 7800
phong shaded polygons! This was running very good on my humple 486. While in
STARS by NOOON I remember a bee consisting of 20000 something polygons but
they say that it is a fake...
• Do you have a 286? (Don't laugh you Pentium guys :). Get LEGEND by IMPACT
STUDIOS and see what a machine really can do if the coder wants (Well, I have
already felt it in the CPC-scene!!!). IMPACT STUDIOS did this DEMO to show that
no 486 is needed to make a good demo. IMPACT STUDIOS with your cool
optimizing, you are cool guys! 286 lives again!!! (I have seen also the demos from an
XT party but not tested them in an XT yet :). Flat and textured graphix with many
polygons, many many beautiful shaded dots and many heavy calculated mathematics
that run at full frame rate in a 286 at 16mhz!!! The Pentium guys at the demoscene
newsgroup where talking about some games with flat shaded worlds, where you could
walk like DOOM and watch up and down like QUAKE. These worlds were running at
full framerate on an XT!!! What PENTIUM and EXIUM are you talking about!
Maximum optimizing! (I am too obsessed with the idea :)
• Demos can have secret parts. Some keys compination, some command line
parametres in DOS, and other stuff. SECOND REALITY secret part is to run the
demo with the parameter U. SECOND U. So simple. (But hard to find!)

The best groups of the PC scene

• FUTURE CREW - The most famous and maybe the best group on the PC-scene
ever! However is involved in the scene must know this group with it's famous demos!
FC changed the scene with some wonderful demos as UNREAL or SECOND
REALITY, maybe the best demo ever with 5/5 stars at Hornet!!!!!!! Don't loose these!
They have made also PANIC and all these at 1992-1993. Other demos are: GR8, YO!,
MENTAL SURGERY, FISHTRO,SOPPA, WAITE GROUP ADVERTISMENT and
they made also a Tracker, SCREAM TRACKER until it's 3d version and a diskmag
with charts, WORLDCHARTS. After 1993 they have left the scene and they have
their own company, REMEDY SOFTWARE where they are working for a PC action
game, MAX PAYNE. Signed by their company, they made another demo at 1998
which is afterall a benchmark for 3d accelarator cards.The demo is called FINAL
REALITY. The time they left the scene, they had these CODERS: PSI, TRUG,
WILDFIRE. MUSICIANS: PURPLE MOTION (The raver of the gang),SKAVEN
(Marvelous music!). GRAPHISTS: PIXEL, MARVEL, did I forgot some other
guys... From Finland.
• TRITON - The second best group that time! According to some people, TRITON is
the group that finally beat FC with their wonderful demo, CRYSTAL DREAMS 2
(5/5 from Hornet!!!). With CRYSTAL DREAMS 1,2 it is considered as the second
best group in the history of demoscene! It came from the old group THE PHYSICAL
CREW who changed their name to TRITON which was the name of a moon of
Neptune, according to the readme file I read now(?). Then theu involved in the
computer game industry, and they would release INTO THE SHADOWS, which has
until today the best animation ever existed in a game. It had an engine similar to
QUAKE but much more faster as I have heard!!! Unfortunattely something terrible
happened with their plans and they stopped the whole project (Their company
bankrupted or something, I don't know exactly...). I have heard that one of the coders
is programming one game and he evolves their old engine. (I think they call it
SORCERY or not? I don't remember, I heard it from a friend). Let's see. CODERS:
VOGUE. GRAPHISTS: LOOT. MUSICIANS: MR.H. (In the readme file, it doesn't
say what is doing each other so I may have some mistakes :). From Sweden.
• ELECTROMOTIVE FORCE - According to the DSSK3 guy, EMF is the group
which does what FC did in the past! One of my favorite groups, with favorite demos
as VERSES, CAERO, ECLIPSE and PORNO which I haven't seen yet, but the guy in
the DSSK3 suggests. CAERO was released at 1995-96 and I don't remember any
other newer demo of them. Did they left the scene? The DSSK guy says that maybe
they joined PLANT. They have made CAERO with them. This group was founded at
1991 and their members were at that time: DEVASTATOR, DR.LIZARD, DRUID,
SKYRIDER. Nowdays(?) condition: CODERS: DEVASTATOR, SARACEN,
SAINT, THE GRIM REAPER, DAEMON. MUSICIANS: WHALEBONE, EDGE,
PRISM. GRAPHISTS: SARACEN, WHALEBONE, NiK.
MISC:DEVASTATOR(bbs), DRUID, VORTEX. From Finland.
• HORNET - E almost forgot HORNET. It hasn't made many demos but it is the
founder of the demoscene on internet. It created the HORNET ARCHIVE. The
hugest directory ever, with various demoscene stuff from demos, graphics,music,code
to infos, demoscene, results with a great search engine and web polls, link and many
many other cool stuff. They helped the demoscene to spread over the internet. If they
hadn't made the great page, many scene newbies, as I am, wouldn't even knew that
there exists a demoscene! What would we do? We would learn about the scene if we
may someday loged in a BBS and may learned that there was a scene. I wonder what I
would do if the HORNET ARCHIVE didn't exist. Maybe I would see until today, that
old demos I discovered in that CD-ROM! - HORNET made a demo and it is
EXPLICIT. I haven't seen it yet. I will check it. As I have told you many times,
Hornet has stopped. I was somehow shocked when I heared it. How would we know
what demo to download, what parties where held and other demoscene stuff? But
TREBEL ARCHIVES is going to be Hornet's successor. Tha's better. Now I have
passed the shock!!! From USA.
• PSYCHIC LINK - Another very very good group with some very very good and
beautiful demos as ACT1,JUICE,HEADACHE and their wonderful 64kb intro,
PAPER. They had a very good coder, STATIX. From England.
• COMPLEX - or KOMPLEX? Obsessed with MORTAL KOMBAT??? I liked too
much this group, cause of the very optimized 3d gouraud/phong/whatever scenes, like
CYBOMAN 2, DOPE, and others. They have made many other good demos, which I
haven't seen yet, and some wonderful JAVA demos. The cool coder, JMAJIC coder,
JUGI graphist and musician, REWARD graphist. From Finland.)
• ORANGE - Another very famous group. I haven't seen many demos from them, but I
remember the lunatic SECRET LIFE OF MR.BLACK and one new cool demo from
them, PAST. A very good and famous team. From Finland(?) - The question mark is
from the DSSK3 guy (and mine of course!) :)
• PULSE - Maybe the famousest group today. I see that it is first at doose chart, but
now I translate from Greek to English, Byterapers are the first (Things change in these
stuff :) . I remember the very best SUNFLOWER and SQUARE. They have made
many many cool demos but I haven't seen them yet. From Polland and France.
• THE BLACK LOTUS - TBL, the WINDOWS guys! Maybe they want to prove that
Windows is the final demoscene OS and they have made 3 marvelous windows
demos. JIZZ, STASH and ASTRAL BLUR. They have compresed too many data in
their intros and when you see their demos you think that they are 2MB demos for
example!!! From Holland and Sweden.
• COMA - From Finland. I haven't seen one demo from them. It is in the list of the
DSSK guy and they are also famous.
• VALHALLA - From England. I have seen SOLSTICE and it was very good.
• Do you think that I will put UTOPIA the group where the DSSK guy beelongs :)
• No, I will put our group (Hahahahahaha.... satanic laugh!), DIRTY MINDS, the
group where I belong! But I have forgot that it doesn't belong in the PC scene but in
the CPC!!! :)

Some other favorite groups I want to put here

• From historical to favorite group which I like too much!


• THE SORCERERS - Maybe the oldest and the most classic group It ever existed on
the PC-scene. The first demo I saw, was from them! It was BALMANIA and I liked
it. I remember that they have made some older demos and a newer intro, SINE which
was good but old and simple, I think. I haven't seen these guys any more in the scene!
• CASCADA - The first good group I met (When I say met, I mean met the existence
of the group and not that I met the gang personally!), and the first good demo I have
ever seen. CRONOLOGIA! Even today(from 1997 :) I sing the wonderful tune of that
demo in my mind. Very good musician ZODIAK, ICEMAN, PHAROS and MIRAGA
created this wonderful demo at 1991. Other good demos I have seen are HEX
APPEAL and HOLISTIC. I remember also the X-MAS demo mania they had in the
older days :) They are the groups who made funny and pleasant demos without having
in their mind necessary the technology. From Sweden. Although I beleive that the best
group to make pleasant demos to watch is...
• IGUANA - One of my favoritest groups, cause they made very nice demos and
sometimes with very cool and realistic effects! Well, I have seen only two demos
from them but they were very cool.INCONEXIA and HEART-QUAKE. They
discovered the fire effects in INCONEXIA, while you could see some other realistic
stuff with bouncing balls and then in HEART QUAKE they had some very realistic
and the same time funny effects, like the elastic polygons. And always the music is
very nice in their demos and this is what makes the demo pleasant! These demos got
3,5/5 stasrs at Hornet and that seemed to me strange. From Spain.
• ULTRAFORCE - Old legendary group who made some very good demos at the past,
with best of the best the VECTORDEMO, one demo with 3d flat graphix where you
could rotate the objects through a menu and all this was running on a simple 286!
Technologically marvelous that time. ULTRA FORCE are maybe one of the first
groups to use VGA and SOUNDBLASTER support in the early days when all the
others used EGA and beeper(!!!).
• THE SPACEPIGS - Another famous old group, with the first(?) Megademo ever,the
MEGADEMO :). EGA graphix and beeper and 286. But it was the first time I saw
vectorballs (I love vectorballs :)
• DUST - We leave the very old now. I didn't knew this group but I like it very much
now. At the beginning I saw PREVIEW (The first demo PREVIEW?) which came at
1992 and it was really marvelous for the older times. It started with a 3d object show
and it was unique, beacuse you didn't see 3d cubes but real life(arrgghhhh!) 3d
objects. And they had many polygons for their time. And then the best vector balls I
have ever seen (cause of the magnefy lens balls!). And then some wired 3D graphics,
but they were antialiasied!!! Very techonological far away for that time! So I wanted
to see some newer DUST demos. SAGA was marvelous with the same 3d vector balls
(And the magnifying lenz, kewl!!!) and many other cool stuff and then I saw
UNTITLED with the best start/introduction whatever I have ever seen!!! I don't know
what they do today. STONE was their CODER. He made also a cool 4kb intro with a
fractal zoomer! From Germany.
• IMPACT STUDIOS - For their very optimized demo LEGEND. I have also seen
PROJECT ANGEL which is also wonderfull! There were also some optimized stuff. I
can't wait to see some other demos of them. From France.
• CAMORRA - I have seen DISGUST from these guys and I like them too much now!
At last! Even more optimized and fast 3d graphix in my "humble" 486! What can I
say. Wonderfull work!!! MAF is their coder. From Polland.
• NOOON - Maybe the first time I saw fast 3d gouraud or phong shaded graphics in my
"Humble" 486. (Or did I in CYBOMAN 2?). After a while I saw much better stuff in
MAXIMUM REALITY, DOPE and then DISGUST. But STARS had also very cool
and very stylish design! Also NO! was very cool with a very psychedelic music and
scenes. From France.
• RENAISSANCE - This group made the very beautiful AMNESIA and I remember
some other demos with maybe the fastest vector balls ever, the BLACK GLASS
DEMOS. Their main coder is TRAN and he is very famous, beacuse he is the first that
started to programm in 32bit (Although I don't know exactly what this means now :)
in dos, and then he made a 32bit extender for DOS which use many other coders in
their demos, the PMODE. I have seen also the TIMELESS demo from Tran which I
found very psychedelic, beautiful and diferrent from what we see the most times.
From U.S.A.
• There exists many other famous groups, but I just haven't seen some cool demos from
them but I see them many times on the Greetings of some demos: MAJIC
12,VALHALLA, LEGEND DESIGN, SONIC PC, LOGIC DESIGN,
ULTRAFORCE, THE CODE BLASTERS, CAPACALLA, VALHALLA,
INFINY, GRIF, BYTERAPERS ( New group from C64. I have seen it's C64 demos
but I haven't seen any PC demos from them!!! They are also the first group in the
DOOSE CHART this time I write these, so it must be very cool guys!) and many
others...
• Don't forget some other good groups which made funny text mode demos like
MOTORRI with it's PALIKKA demo and another group which made a very cool and
funny text mode demo but I don't remember it's name. You must see these!
Web resources

Where will the newbies in the scene find all these? I will write some links to help you in the
marvelous world of demoscene!

• THE HORNET ARCHIVE www.hornet.org (This is the only site you need. Forget
all the others!You can download whatever you wan't from demos, graphix, musax,
code, tutorials to diskmags, infos, party results, reports, invitations, links, great search
engine. Generally the biggest directory with demoscene ever in www!!! And all these
from 1987 to 1998. All classified with marks from 0,5 to 5 stars, so you know which
demos are the best to download! I have to tell you that HORNET is closed now (This
doesn't mean that you can't download old files. It just doesn't update with new stuff.).
Fortunately the TREBEL ARCHIVE is making the work that HORNET did in the
past days...)
• THE TREBEL ARCHIVE www.trebel.org (The succesor of HORNET! If you want
to find new demos from 1999 and then, then TREBEL whatever you need. Well this
time is in BETA VERSION or something. Of course it will have also the older demo
stuff from HORNET. It is the site which will update with new files something that
HORNET stopped to make. Until then you can download some older demos from
HORNET.)
• PC DEMOS EXPLAINED www.oldskool.org/demos/explained (This page was
made by Trixter, a member of Hornet. Here you can learn many things about the
demoscene, the newbies can learn what a demo is and what is the worth of the
demoscene. And then a scene newbie can go to Trixter's MOBYLIST to see the
favorite demos of TRIXTER with some comments, so that he want eat his time buy
searching the most important demos that he must see.
• SCENE NETWORK (Another good page about demoscene and also for 5 machines:
C64,AMIGA,ATARI,ARCHIMEDES,PC! You can choose a machine and find many
links from groups pages to general scene pages and whatever you want!
• PC DEMOS FUN CLUB (Another good club about demoscene. You can see here
some new good demos to download with some comments. Especially now that
HORNET stopped and TREBEL hasn't started yet and so you don't know which demo
to download from the FTP's.
• HUGI diskmag (The page of the most famous diskmags in the PC scene, which has
made the 14 issue and is preparing now the 15.
• DOOSE CHARTS (Charts for the best groups, demos, intros, coders, graphicians,
musicians, e.t.c.)
• ZEN OF TRACKING (A page especially for the music scene.)
• GFXZONE (A page for the gfx scene. Lately I can not go to their page. It seems that
the adress has changed or the page has stopped? Dunno, but I put it here, because
maybe it is permanent...)
• EUROPEAN DEMOSCENE SERVER (A page for the EUROPEAN SCENE but
these pages are obselette as it says. I don't know now why I put these pages here...)
• TWO HEADED SQUIRREL (This pages are whatever you need, especially now
beacuse it has reviews from new good PC-DEMOS and TREBEL hasn't opened yet.
About the greek scene.

From the time I met hornet and I was going often on the internet, I started searching if
there existed a Greek scene. Of course it existed. I was shocked and I wanted to
download some greek demos. The first page about greek demoscene I found, was
DEMO-GR. As I have found it that time, it is the same as today. Obselette! There exists
only one link to download a demo, and it doesn't even work! I learned that we make a
greek party in Patra, THE GARDENING 95 until 98. I don't know if they will make
GARDENING 99. Ei demo-gr I have learned that it is happening a greek party for
AMIGA, the AMIGATHERING, and it happened once at Thessaloniki, at Athens and
once at Patra (The kids are more logical :).
I would say here that even in Hornet exists only file from GARDENING 96 and 97. And
not all the files! In 97 for example exists only 4 files, and 1 or 2 of them must be the
results or the invitation as I remember. So shit! And I don't know why. Were we bored to
upload our files to hornet archive? I guess so! I think I must connect with a BBS. You
can also find some greek demos which haven't been in the GARDENINGS, if you search
for DEMANIACS for example.

Some good greek demos

• WEIRD by DEMANIACS (The first good greek demo I have ever seen. They
had made even a fractal zooming! And some gouraud shading objects. Vector
balls, plasmas, fire effects, and other with good music. Very good. It was beaten
by THE RYTHM IS ROUGH from DEUS which I haven't found yet.)
• REVOLUTION OF TIME by DEMANIACS (Another very good but slow
demo! Well, ok it has phong shading!!! Although it is cool but I think that you
will need a Pentium. Phong shading for the first time in a Greek demo. Kewl!)
• HOLY EXTRACTS by HELIX (Good but slow demo. I couldn't see it beacuse
it was slow and beacuse it crashed after a while. I liked the music. It seems very
good.
• TOASTY by RED POWER (This also stucks in my computer (Fucking Cfyrix).
A very good rave style music (mr.mortal has even put one MORTAL KOMBAT
sample!). I can't say that it is good demo, but I need to see it until the end without
to crash. Of course when I say crash I mean that my computer has the problem
and not the demo :)
• FIRE TEMPLE by HARKAAL (Another demo which I could download from
HORNET, but it crashes in the beginning. It seems interesting.)
• NEKROPHOBIA by RED POWER (Very funny wild demo. A necric heavy
metal group of zombies! Another zombie which takes it's poison every day and
the third part with Bill Gates who get out of his grave (The story says that he died
while waiting for windows to load!!!). You will see, it's kewl!)
• MACARONA by PEUS and OSFP by ORTHODOX another too funny wild
demos which I downloaded.
• ANODYNE by DEUS (The dentro of DEUS or PEUS. Very good for a dentro
and for it's time.)
• THE REAL DENTRO by RED POWER (The dentro of red power!)
• FRUIT CAKE by DEUS (A very good 64kb intro by DEUS. They send it in
ASSEMBLY 95 in the 64kb compo! 2.5 took from Hornet, but the final edition
took 4/5! Good and very funny.)
• PINK AND SILLY (Another very good 64kb intro and it took again 4/5 from
Hornet! Silly again. With some good jokes! 2nd at the GARDENING 95. Only
GUS...)
• Some demaniacs demos like PANDEMONIUM(Their first demo), INT19h (At
the end it resets the computer as a joke!!!), HERO
• Maybe I have was unfair and didn't included some greek demos, but I haven't find
them yet. THE RYTHM IS ROUGH by DEUS first at GARDENING 96,XSK
by DEUS first at GARDENING 97, and some DEMOS from A.S.D. which I
haven't found...
• Some other demos to see: GAMOTO by DEBRIS, SKATOULA 1 and 2 by
WHO KNOWS?, SLEEPLESS IN SEVILLIA by HELIX an intro with funny
chip musax!

The most famous greek demo groups

• What can I say here? Even if I mention all of them, there is no problem beacuse I
can count them in my fingers.
• DEUS (The most famous and maybe the best. Organizer of GARDENING. I have
seen these two 64kb intros and I found it very good for greek. Unfortunatelly I
haven't seen any big demo by them, like THE RYTHM IS ROUGH, or XSK
which won the first position in GARDENING 96 and 97! I have seen only their
dentro ANODYNE and I found it very good for beginning. They have made also
OVERFLOW, the first greek diskmag! CODERS: EMC, GOTCHA.
MUSICIANS: MOT. GRAPHISTS: FAT MORGAN, NECROTOMIST. The
most members of DEUS are from Patra.)
• DEMANIACS (Another good greek group. I liked very much the WEIRD demo
which came second at GARDENING 96. I have seen also some older demos and I
liked them, like their first try. A very promising greek group.CODERS: NEEK,
CPC. GRAPHISTS: NEEK, CPC. MUSICIANS: THEO, ARIS. At February
1995 NEEK and CPC have founded their group at Xanthi.
• RED POWER (Another very promissing group. I have seen TOASTY and their
very good wild demo, NEKROPHOBIA. And maybe some other demos of them.
CODERS: ORTHODOX. MUSICIANS: ORTHODOX, MR.MORTAL.
GRAPHISTS: MR.MORTAL. RED POWER are making their personal web
page as I read in the readme file. RED POWER. I have tried to go to the page and
it just didn't found it. Maybe they have just changed, cause the readme file is from
1995 or 1996. I see that RED POWER have made also too many music discs.
Watch out, beacuse they have one mortal kombat fan in their group! That's why
they write all their readme files with the K in the position of C!!! I think that you
have understood who the guy is. I am with you too man! Street fighter SUX!!! :)
• HELIX (With their maybe good (Cause I couldn't see it) HOLY EXTRACTS and
other demos which I haven't seen yet, another good greek group.
• WHO KNOWS? (For the name of their demos. SKATOULA and SKATOULA
2!!! I don't say that they are not good. I just haven't seen some good demos by
them.
• DEBRIS (Their GAMOTO(!) demo was good for their first try. I haven't seen
another demo from them yet. They had helped DEUS to organize one of the
GARDENING parties.)
• A.S.D. (I have almost forgot A.S.D.! ANDROMEDA SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT. I just haven't found one demo from them. (Why don't they
upload their demos in Hornet? Maybe they want to be more
UNDERGROUND!!!). One of the oldest greek demo groups ever existed and I
have heard also that they have a very good coder, NAVIS.)
• Other groups: HARKAAL, LIONS IN CAGES, ARKADIA, DESTINY,
ENTROPIA and some other which I have forgot...

Some internet resources for the Greek scene

• As I have told you before I don't know what the hell is happening with our scene!
Only one page and it is obselette! I haven't found some pages of Greek famous
groups to download their demos. I don't have a main page to found it, beacuse
there must exist some group pages but it is difficult to find it from search engines!
Why?
• I have something here.
• The only(?) and obselette greek page about demoscene: DEMO-GR
• DEUS Homepage. You can download here some of their demos, and
OVERFLOW, a Greek diskmag(Sorry, only in Greek!)
• In one ftp you can download some of the demos from demaniacs but nothing else
from the greek scene DEMANIACS DEMOS
• The future page of RED POWER: RED POWER
• The page of MOT, the musician of DEUS. MOT's homepage. I put it here beacuse
you can download from there OVERFLOW, the first Greek diskmag! There is a
link for the page of DEUS but it doesn't work!!! (Aman re paidia!!!) and a
reference to GARDENING 96.
• The page of MORALES, you can find there Yellow intro. MORALES homepage
• At MATRIX USERS you can find amusic, mot, CJDiB and maybe some other
demoscene guys. I haven't searched all the guys there but maybe you can find
some links from there about the Greek scene.
• MEGAVERSE the greek BBS. DEUS WHQ. I don't see that it is a distro from
some other greek groups. +30-61-277089. I tried it and it must be closed or
something now. I don't now, it is hard to find some BBS's to grab finally some
greek productions...
• One article about GARDENING must exists in KYBERNOGRAFOI or another
greek webzine. Go here ALTAVISTA and search with the greek language for
greek scene, gardening, demos, demoscene,e.t.c. and maybe you will find
something, but maybe the same I found. If you know another web page about
greek scene, tell me!
• CYBERDEMOSCENE. The general page about DEMOSCENE. I will put a
section about the greek-scene. I am planning to do a web page about greek
demoscene. I will make a directory with ratings, chronological and stuff. And
with links to the only demos I found in Hornet or somewhere else. So all the
Greek demos will be together, with comments, reviews and marks and links to
download them. You want be searching any more. Beacuse these greek guys are
sleeping...
• I don't know what the heck the greek sceners are doing. Maybe they left the
scene! I haven't contacted with some guys from the scene yet, nor did I logged in
a BBS yet...

CPC SCENE

Another scene I am involved, is the scene of Amstrad CPC an old 8bit machine. Don't
feel strange about that. There exists still people who are still programming in such old
machines. In many PC partys they also make even today, some compos for the scene of
C64 (Another prewar 8bit machine!) which scene is very strong, even today and they
have also made some Pentium effects on the C64 (Well, with less resolution and colours
but very impressive for the machine). The important is that there exists some people who
still love their old machines and are trying to save the scene of these machines by
programming some demos, games or diskmags. Even today!!! I wonder if these scenes
will ever stop in the future and when!
As I have told you I was reading in a greek magazine, USER, an article about CPC
demos, and they said that these demos made miracles in the machine! I met the CPC
scene many years after at 1998. I was watching some CPC demos in the emulators such
as FACE HUGGER or some older at the beginning. I wouldn't beleive in my eyes. These
demos were older than 1998. But I wondered if there still exists a CPC scene, or even a
Greek CPC scene. C64 had a scene, so I thought that maybe CPC had one, even if I
hadn't heard about CPC demo compos in the parties. Yes, there exists a cpc scene! Even
a Greek! I was writting in a CPC mailing list and there I met a greek guy, Antitec, who
got me to the scene and showed me also some greek production, like his demo
Bombastic 98 or the diskmag they did. I have made my mind. I will be involved in the
CPC scene. I put a 3 1/2 drive in my old amstrad so that I can convert the software that I
got from internet and make them run from my CPC, so that I beleive that the things I had
seen in the emulators were really been done on the CPC!!!
This time, I am a member of DIRTY MINDS, one of the 3 known CPC groups on
Greece. I have made some graphics for OVATION 5, our diskmag and I am trying
slowly slowly to learn some CPC assembly to continue as a coder. I am also writting
some articles for OVATION and it is the first time I am a member of a demoscene group
even if it is on CPC.

The scene of CPC still lives on France, England, Grecce and Germany. I can say that
France has the strongest CPC scene but also in Greece it isn't bad. Also the other
countries are good beacuse we see some times some good productions, and the creator of
maybe the best CPC demo ever, is from Germany (he left the scene now, and we don't
know if they do something there, this time.)
In Greece exists 3 groups which are involved in the scene, DIRTY MINDS, CHAOS and
S.O.B. We have found new people who are interested about the greek cpc scene, but they
just didn't knew that a cpc scene even existed on CPC! Until know 30 guys are interested
for the Greek CPC scene!

When did the CPC scene started. It is difficult to answer. At the eighties, this is sure.
And after 1984 beacuse that time the first CPC got in the market, the CPC 464 with 64kb
ram and cassete player!!! Maybe after 1986.

Some good demos for CPC

• FACEHUGGER MEGADEMO (Maybe the best demo ever on CPC. The


SECOND REALITY for CPC. It was a revolution for the scene of CPC. While
all the others made demos with the same and the same scrollers, FACE
HUGGER showed how the demos should be! Too many new and amazing effects
with a very good design, like the Vector balls, filled polygons, too many sprites,
bouncing balls and an amazing video with the running man! And all these in a
disk of 180kb! Maybe the new demos have some more amazing effects but this is
a classic and the most famous CPC demo ever! Think that it was realeased at
1992. From a German guy, nicknamed FACE HUGGER!
• PRODATRON MEGADEMO by BENG (An old good demo which was the
first good CPC demo I saw. Scrollers and so of course, beacuse it was a little old.
At 1992 by BENG. I liked the tune on the very nice menu!)
• VOYAGE 93 by BENG (Amazing demo with many new astonishing effects for
CPC! Some good vector balls in a starfield and some keys to control them!!!
Wired 3d graphics with some objects which could moprh by creating new
vertexes and polygons, to some entirely new objects, again wired 3d graphix by
FACE HUGGER, but this time they left some amazing trails! There must be
some other astonishing effects in this demo. It wanted a CRTC 0 and so I couldn't
run 2 parts. If you have CRTC 1 or greater, in the pixelizer part of FACE
HUGGER(The wired graphix part), just press TAB to stop the music, and so you
want see any spoiled graphix but the whole scene.)
• DIVINE MEGADEMO (A demo from many guys. One of them is ANTOINE,
maybe the best CPC coder who has left the scene. Too many parts with many
new amazing effects as a big writer which leaves a shadow, some plasma style
effects, water particles, amazing vector balls by Antoine, texture mapping in a
small cube with a moving light which cast shades(!!!!!!!!) and many others which
I can't remember. But too many parts with new effects. But something on the
menu sucks. (You will see). If it didn't existed it would be maybe the best demo
ever.At 1998 I think?)
• LESSON by ANTOINE (The last demo by ANTOINE. Image zooming,
rotation, deformation in a picture which must be 40*40 or maybe more pixel, on
the CPC!!! Really fantastic! With this small intro, antoine leaves the scene. At
97!)
• RTS by JACK (A new demo by a new French guy in the scene, named JACK. I
liked it too much beacuse of the cool music and fantastic effects. He wanted to
make a rotating, zooming very large picture (overscan in the y!!!) , the letters
RTS and tiled as I see. As I can also see the letters RTS which zooms, makes a
bluring or something effect!!! (But without transparecies). And then some very
good shade bobs and some dot vectors. I forgot to tell you that it stars with the
best 3d starfield I have ever seen on CPC. What can I say!!!)
• THE DEMO by THE LOGON SYSTEM (A very classic demo by a legendary
old team. Mainly simple scrollers and rasters as I remember. It is just too
clasic!!!)
• SHADOW OF THE BEAST PREVIEW by THE LOGON SYSTEM (Their
last unfinished demo. Well, it is the menu of their unfinished demo! And what a
menu. The shadow of the best hero who is running in a screen with 13 parallax
scrolling which scrolled so fast and perfectly on CPC, so that you thinked that
you saw a very good AMIGA DEMO!!!!!!!!!!!! You have got to see this!)
• S&KOH by THE LOGON SYSTEM (Another very good demo by them.)
The most famous CPC groups

• THE LOGON SYSTEM (The most legendary team on CPC. Created some
classic demos, like THE DEMO, S&KOH and the marvelous SHADOW OF
THE BEAST PREVIEW. From France)
• BENG (Another very good team. Created the very good VOYAGE 93 demo with
some other good productions. One member of the group who is a very good
graphist, is a greek guy nicknamed REX. From Germany.)
• BENEDICTION
• BOLLAWARE (I love this group. They made some demos with cool graphics
(They have an obsession with naked chicks :) and their demos were diferrent and
nice, with some story. They made some very cool games. I love these guys!)
• ARKOS (The creators of the marvelous diskmag, named DEMONIAK. From
France.)
• POW(Germany.)
• MORTEL(This must be France, according to the name.)
• SYMVIOSIS
• ANTOINE PITRU (This is not a group but a French coder. For some, the best
CPC coder ever. I put him here beacuse I don't remember if he joined a group,
but he worked some times alone as I think. Made many effects that seemed
impossible on CPC! He left the CPC scene at 1997. His last production was
LESSON, and it was very fantastic for CPC!!!)
• FACE HUGGER (Another great coder, but from Germany. He left also the
scene. He made the FACE HUGGER MEGADEMO, and all this alone! This
demo is, what the SECOND REALITY for PC is!!! I don't know if he joined a
team but he made his MEGADEMO alone.)

Some links to download demos and emulators for amstrad CPC

• CPC demos ftp The ftp to download demos! You will find there also many
emulators. I suggest for demos:
o CAPRICE32 Finally the best to emulate the demos! The newer version
emulates demostuff that wasn't possible to see without the real CPC.
Needs a Pentium and Vesa
o CPE, The best, good speed (It is better to have a fast 486 or a Pentium to
get full frame rate especially in demos) the best emulating on demos
(Generally the most demos have huge problems in emulators and you
need a real CPC machine :)
The C64 Scene

I am only involved in the PC and the CPC scene now. I know many things about the PC-
scene beacuse it was the first scene I have ever met (then I learned what a scene is). I
also know some things about the CPC scene beacuse now I realised that a CPC scene
exists, I met a Greek CPC freak who got me into the scene and I am now in the greek
CPC group called DIRTY MINDS. Of course I involved too much in this scene beacuse
I was an old CPC-user.
But now I have been intersted to learn the scenes of other machines, with the help of the
emulators. Since now, I have seen many good demos in C64 emulators but not from
other machines yet, as AMIGA or ATARI or SPECTRUM e.t.c.

The C64 is still very strong. Very impressive for an 8bit machines to have it's own
compos in many Demoscene partys even today! It is beacuse C64 is now cult. And it is
also beacuse the coders have made fantastic effects some of them we see them only in
32bit machines, even if it does it with some strange very low resolutions! (Textmode,
4x4 pixels, 8x8 pixel blocks which is called FLI, e.t.c.) I have seen many effects from
simple 386 effects to Bump mapping, Gouraud shading, some Phong, textures, tunnels,
doom engines, flare effects, transparent flat polygons and some times in the not so low
textmode resolution but in the normal resolutions they have! But they are sometimes
extremelly optimized beacuse I have seen very cool effects in some not so low
resolutions!
While in the CPC the most demos have the scroller logic (A screen with some raster
effects and some messages, ok sometimes a neat effect but you just press ESC and it
goes to the menu...), in C64 we have seen many demos with PC demos logic, or fast
demos like trackmos. No more simple scrollers! They have special design and very
special ideas! C64 scene is a very cool demoscene and you should see it, even if you
don't like the low resolution graphics. (Here on CPC we lack from many software effects
and we have no good design - the demo is a menu and you choose to see parts.... no
transmission even no new effects!)

The best demos for C64

I have found one site with the best, most stunning or most classic demos of all times.
This helped me to see the most important C64 demos without searching a lot. Some of
them I liked too much are:

• WORLD OF CODE 1,2,3 by BYTERAPERS


• FOLLOW THE SIGN by BYTERAPERS
• EXTREMES by BYTERAPERS
• SECOND REALITY 128 by SMASH DESIGNS (Second Reality remake for
C64!!!)
• ALTERED STATES 50% by TABOO
• COMODORE ZONE DEMOPACK
• DAWNFALL by OXYRON (I remember some very neat effects here)
• ECSTATIC CODE by COSMOS DESIGNS (It is an old onescreener but with
some cool effects!)
• KRESTOLOGY by CREST
• KRESTYRON by CREST and OXYRON
• MATHEMATICA REFLEX (Fantastic! And a cool wolfenstein engine!!!)
• ONEDER by OXYRON (A stunning 64kb demo! At the end you can play with
a wolfenstein engine!)
• OUR DARKNESS by SMASH DESIGNS
• OUTBREAK by SMASH DESIGNS
• RADIO NAPALM by REFLEX
• VOID by COMA and RESOURCE
• ATTACK OF STUBIDOS PART 3 by BEYOUND FORCE (A very neat
mandelbrot zoomer)
• COMAJOB by OXYRON and CREST (Unbelievable for C64 image
zooming!)
• COURTESY OF SOVIET by ED, JOE AND OTHERS (I remember some
stunning effects here!)
• DEFLORATION by FRACTION (Watch out the gel vector!)
• DIGITAL WORLD by SAMAR (What can I say about this! I remember some
brilliant effects here.)
• ORANGI by EXTEND (Amazing! Some very neat full screen, no text style
resolution tunnels!!!)
• PARTS by OXYRON (Some of the most amazing effects I saw on the C64! A
very very neat spherical mapping and an unbeleivable image distortion!!!)

The best C64 groups

Even if I don't remember many groups, there where some which I liked from their
demos.

• BYTERAPERS (Very famous group, and I liked their demos too much)
• OXYRON (I think that this group made the neatest technically demos I have
ever seen on C64!)
• SMASH DESIGNS (Especially for the Second Reality conversion.)
• REFLEX (Neat demos also!)
• CREST (I think it is consider as a legendary group?)

Internet resources

• [http://jez.c64.org/demos.htm] - Here is where I found the best of the best C64


demos.
• [ftp://demo.cat.hu] - An ftp about PC and some other machines scenes like C64.
• [ftp://ftp.scene.org] - Another ftp about the general scene from PC to C64.
• [http://www.byterapers.scene.org] - To download some BYTERAPERS
productions.
• [http://ccs64.fatal-design.com/software.html] CCS64 maybe the best C64
emulator. What you will need to see the demos.

Some last words about C64 scene

I saw amazing things in C64 demos. Manytimes they use some text mode resolutions to
create many amazing effects we see in 32bit computers but I have seen also the same
amazing effects on some more normal C64 resolutions which are trully optimized or
maybe somehow precalculated and fake. I am not sure if an 8bit machine can do gouraud
shading or even these mandelbrot zoomers, landscapes, wolfenstein engines I saw here.
But I think that the C64 coders have written the most optimized code I have ever seen for
the machine!

Some neat effects I have seen are:

• Of course all the 2d effects like scrollers, sinus scrollers, rasters, parallax
scrolling too many sprites and other simple 2d stuff
• many flat filled objects sometimes with too many polygons and transparent
polygons!!! We are too back on the CPC...
• Some gouraud or also phong shaded vectors but only in textlike (FLI,etc) !!!!!!!!
• Too many fast rotating and zooming pictures sometimes even in non text mode
resolutions!
• bump mapping even in non text mode!
• Many tunnel effects even some neat non text (See ORANGI)
• WOLFENSTEIN ENGINES - Usually in text mode. I have seen one in normal
resolutions but in smaller window. ONEDER from OXYRON leaves you to
move through a wolfenstein maze!!!
• Too many plasmas
• Great Sphere Mapping in PARTS.
• Other PC effects like Rays, Flare effects in a Phong Duck, Rotozoomers, vector
city and neat design!

FINAL WORDS

How did I met the wonderful world of demoscene

I was an old CPC freak. I was buying the old greek computer magazine PIXEL beacuse I
liked games and I was looking at games pictures. I have heard about demos in this
magazine in some PD(Public domains) reviews where it had some amiga demo reviews.
(And not the PANIC or CRONOLOGIA demos, argghhhhh....)
The bad thing is that this magazine didn't mentioned the demoscene (Freaks meet freaks
in parties and demo competition and stuff...) just only the demos. I have somehow
understood that demos are programms which you run and you see graphics and sound in
your computer. But I hadn't seen any demo in my computer that time.
There was another greak magazine USER where there was writting Harris Kladis (CPC
freax should know him, he is REX and he is working as a graphist). He was writting
"The 8bit never dies" where he was talking about CPC-DEMOS. It was the first time I
realised that these thingies do things in the CPC that not so often we see in games or in
software. They do miracle things for the machine they suppose to run. Then, I hadn't
understood why in his demo reviews he had a special mark "PROGRAMMING". I didn't
had an idea, what did the word "scene" meaned.I didn't even knew that something that is
called scene excisted!!!I had already a PC. These were at 1993(I have lost the golden
years!)
After that PIXEL had stoped to have articles about PC's. I was starting buying PC-
MASTER (Another greek magazine of course). I was still reading game reviews. He had
another magazine inside, the "PC-GAMES". So I was reading PC-GAMES and I was
throwing PC-MASTER in the corner! But after a while when I started to learn also
what's going on my computer I decided to read some articles from the old PC-MASTER
issues. I saw many things which were important at the PC-MASTER and which I hadn't
read before, like very nice articles about programming, letters from readers, articles
against microsoft and requirments and computer news!
I had descovered "METAXI MAS" ("������ ���" in greek - you should see
this if you change the character encoding to greek). It was very cool.

No,no it was not a monthly article about demoscene. Here is where I want to say
something. There wasn't even a greek magazine which had even one article about
demoscene, not even about demos (only some demos in the CD for our good luck(As we
say in greek - I have problems with the translations :( ). They were snobbing the
demoscene!!! The most readers doesn't even know what demoscene excists. I know good
computer freaks who have just seen some demos but they don't know/care about the
whole organization with freax meeting and stuff. I think that we are beelonging to
underground computing...

I never learned them from articles (except Harris Kladis, where I learned which demos I
should download for CPC :)
So what is with this "METAXI MAS"? Well "METAXI MAS" was a guy who was
talking about computer stuff (what else :) and he was complaining against microsoft and
high requirments. I remember that he had a 386 in the epoch of 486's and Pentium (Now
he has a Pentium at 120 Mhz, now lame!). He wrote too funny articles.

Did he mentioned the scene?

Nnnoooooooooooooo!!!!

He just made me thinking crazy about the requirments thema. I was taking a game and I
was analyzing it about if it want's a Pentium or if the graphics and the techniques can run
even in a 386 for example. I started thinking like you should think when you see some
demos.Code thinking. (For example at the beginning we saw MYST and we said:"Wow,
it has rendered graphics! And it only want's a 386". Mistake... Graphics that wanted a
Silicon graphics computer to render a frame in one minute for example!!! They were just
bitmaps in our computers, precalculated as we say in the demos. I understood it later. I
understood that RIVEN was too lame to want a Pentium (Even SPECTRUM can saw in
the screen a picture (Ok they were with 640*480*24bit color and some videos but still
lame!!!))

And this made me to start analyzing deep the requirments that a game wanted. Here is
the important: This made me to understand later the real sense of demos. If I wasn't
crazy with requirments I am afraid(I can't think about it....) that maybe I wouldn't
understood the demos or maybe a video introduction from a game would make me to
snob the demos!
Ok did I learned the demoscene then?
No, and I would never wait to learn it from them!

I learned the demoscene at the end of 1997(too old...)


The good is that I still have a 486 and so I had started with the old classic demos like
SECOND REALITY, PANIC, CRONOLOGIA...

There was a reader in the magazine who was talking about the lame thema of
requirments and how bad the PC's have gone now with Microsoft and Intel(favorite
themes of PC-MASTER :).
And he was talking about the old days. The software was cooler and faster. Games that
made the Amiga guys to cry!!! The old legendary DOS.His next phrase was so
characteristic:

...and legendary demos like SECOND REALITY of FUTURE CREW at Assembly


Partys 9x that made all the people to dazzle, and made the old 386's and 486's to
make things on the screen that neither Microsoft nor any other company will ever
succeed, even in a 786!!!

I was totally obsessed! I was already mad with requirments. Which was that SECOND
REALITY which I haven't even heared about and about which is this guy talking with so
much obsession about it's miracles on the 386's and 486's??? I wanted so much to see it
(and to analyze it!!!)

At the beginning of 1998 I was searching a greek CD-ROM from another old magazine
from 1995 (Multimedia and Cd-rom). It had a directory demos. I got into the directory
beacuse I wanted to search some game demos to play!
But it had some of the other demos! And the most important was that it had this demo
which the reader had told about! It had SECOND REALITY, UNREAL,
CRONOLOGIA and others. SECOND REALITY was crashing at the beginning(my
computer had the problem), UNREAL was crashing generally.
The first demo which I saw was Ballmania! I liked the tune. And I saw the first
scroller!!! Coders were leaving messages each other through the demos.
CRONOLOGIA was the first good demo, which I succeded to see whole.(Beacuse the
others had problem...)
I can't remember my first feelings when I saw SECOND REALITY. (The only feeling
was that I was angry beacuse my fucking Cyrix was crashing all the time and is still
crashing - actually only 4+ times I succeeded to run the whole demo without a crash
from the hundreds of times I tried to run it!!!)
I remember some feelings with cronologia or ballmania! Yea, I understood also the
effects. You felt the logic! These scrollers with the dots, the effects and so on, had some
coding logic which you wouldn't see too often in games.

And they were too beautiful! Not only the code, but also the graphics and the sound.
There was something else also. When my computer was dead with the fucking
requirments, suddenly it wake up, it transformed to the best dream. It was the most
beautiful software I had ever put in my computer!

And then I had learned that freaks make parties! They meet new freaks, they make
competition, they are talking from internet (or through their demos :), and sometimes
they form an underground computer society!
Demos made me crazy also to start with programming (actually to continue from where I
had stopped with basic on CPC). I am still programming in Qbasic (but I know to
programming and at this helped me the demos!). We have learned some PASCAL but I
am thinking to procceed to assembly. And I am preparing a demo for QBASIC the
"PROJECT INFOFREAK".

Now Internet have helped me a lot to download demos and learn about the demoscene. It
had even put me in the CPC SCENE and have given me the oportuninty to analyze the
SCENE from other machines except the PC and talk with demofreaks arround the world.
And I am still learning some new important things about the sense of demoscene which I
had never thinked before!

If I didn't knew the scene, what would I do? I thinked that this reader's letter saved me.
(Well, ok I would learn some things from the internet one day later!!!)

And something other: Scene is too important. A spectrum seems like a crap. But if you
put the word "scene" in front of it, it gets marvelous. Scene means also that there excist
real freaks who knows programming and who are still having fun in this machine. The
best freaks are the scene freaks.That's why!

The real worth of demoscene

Some of you will say:"And what the fuck is the reason to watch or make demos? Making
money? Finding a girlfriend? Buying a new car? Exaterrestrial communication?(!)"

No, we make it just for fun!!! Actually there are many reasons for which I really care
about demoscene. The first motivation to engage with demoscene was the wonderfull
and impossible things that demos made in my computer. I always liked optimized
software, programming challenges or crazy, impossible projects like too many
transparencies and great 3d effects in software mode, a doom engine on C64 or a Web
browser on CPC, or even much crazier unbeleivable coding achievments!!!
Then I met the other things for which I should be interested about demoscene. The scene
was underground (Main motivation was fun and computer knowledge and not the
money), freaks like me wanted to show off their programming abilities. Just for fun. And
you could also meet new obsessed freaks in the scene. Demos were also a motivation to
start learning real programming.

So, the great things that make the scene so worthly are:
• Optimized code, unbeleivable things for the machine the demo was running,
programming challenges and impossible coding achievments. Basically the main
purpose of the demos was to make impossible things for the machine. The coder
wanted to push the machine to the limits with very optimized code always in pure
assembly in older times. "Look at this, I made the IMPOSSIBLE","How many
Bobs can you put on the screen?","Is this a real wolfenstein engine on
C64?","Look out how many parallax scrollers can I do on this baby!". And at the
older times the demos were much more years front in technology than games,
and in not so state of the art machines! (Even today, I haven't seen yet a game
with bump mapping while I see it in demos from 1995! But now I don't see many
things in demos which are better than our 3d games...). That spirit of the scene
has been somehow lost on the PC (Although I see some cool 4k and 64k demos,
optimized in size, in my PC). Were are all these days where you wanted a 386 to
play an adventure with lame animations but you could see in a 386, great 2d and
3d realtime effects in the old demos? Although I can have this feeling in demos
from other machines like AMIGA, C64, my CPC or whatever else exists! That's
why I am also interested for another scene than the PC scene. Remember:
Scene=optimized, realtime, coding challenge and stuff...

• Programming motivation. When I saw all these things and I learned that they
were using pure assembly I was too obsessed and I tried to imitate some simple
2d effects I was seeing in demos, in QBASIC! Many freaks who show some
demos, wanted to learn assembly to make their own demos! The most computer
users are simple users who knows Windows 9x, Word, Excell and they think that
they know everything. Only few users are creative with their computer. The
scene is a hope that there will always exist some real freaks in the future.

• Gives a life to old machines and proves that software is the power and not
hardware. With optimized code the user of an older machine see's things that he
wouldn't have the oportunity to see them in companies software so easilly. There
are still user who enjoy their 8bit machine and the motivation is the demoscene!
Without the demoscene I wouldn't use my CPC and I would only play some old
games from a CPC emulator. But with the CPC scene the things have changed!
And I see many things which proves that software is the power and not hardware.

• The scene is Underground! This means that the main reason of the scene is not
money but programming knowledge and fun! Just for fun. Freaks wanted to show
off their programming abilities, to show that they can make faster that effect than
other freaks and they always made it because they enjoyed it. Demos are of
course freeware, money is not the motivation. The real spirit of the scene.
• Meet new freaks. And what freaks! Real freaks!!! Freaks who knows their
computer, knows real programming, works in assembly and stuff. There are
many guys who have a computer. They like games, internet, applications, mp3,
emulators, some of them are newbies while other knows also some programming.
There are some who are really obsessed while other are making only some
serious work on their machine and then they say: "Get a life". At the beginning I
can't find if a computer freak is a real freak as I say it. But when I hear that a
freak loves or knows demoscene, I understand that it must be a real freak. He
may knows a lot of programming, or he will understand that Microsoft and the
other companies make lame productions, he maybe user who want's to learn
everything about computers or he can be a very obsessed freak. Not that the non
demoscene guys want make all these things or that a demofreak makes all these
things for sure, but the demoscene is the best way to find such freaks. And you
can meet in the parties many cool freaks! It is the place where only freaks go.
(Because the possibilities to find a computer freak are not so large in the real life,
and the possibility the freak you found to be real demofreak and not newbie is
much more smaller!!!)

• Creativity with your computer. So cool unbeleivable graphics, music and code in
the demos. The freaks make it for fun so they will make it with their will. They
will work so much and with obsession with their latest production and they will
produce great results! It goes also with "Programming motivation" but I separate
it here.

• There must be some others which I don't remember. Although I wrote the most
important I know.

The positive things that come out from demoscene are so many and so important for our
computer world. I can't say words about this wonderfull world of Demoscene. It is so
great, so marvelous, so divine that I would prefer to exist forever even if 1 million
"Lamer Netbus Hackers" (LNH) had conquered the world (What the hell I am talking
about now???)(Right this time I felt an Earthquake!)

DEMOSCENE is the most important thing ever discovered by a freak

(Internet is the second one :)


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