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Demos

26 articles

Demo scene productions and digital art showcases.

All demos.

26 articles

9 Fingers

Spaceballs' dancers, a year on

About this article

A two-disk Amiga demo by the Norwegian group Spaceballs, their follow-up to State of the Art, again built around dancers taken from video. It came fourth in the Amiga demo competition at The Party 1993 in Denmark, then topped British public-domain libraries' demo charts in the spring of 1994.

Arte

Sanity's surrealist demo from The Party 1993

About this article

An Amiga demo by the German group Sanity, named after the French-German television channel. It came third at The Party 1993 in Denmark, ran on the original Amiga chipset, and was sold through British public-domain libraries, where CU Amiga gave it 90%.

Coma Light 13

Oxyron's return to its old series, and the winner at X'2012

About this article

A two-sided Commodore 64 demo by the German group Oxyron, released on 28 October 2012 at the X'2012 party in the Netherlands, where it won the C64 demo competition. It came eighteen years after Coma Light 12.

Comaland

Censor Design and Oxyron's X'2014 winner

About this article

A four-disk-side Commodore 64 demo by the Swedish group Censor Design and the German group Oxyron. It won the C64 demo competition at X'2014 in the Netherlands in October 2014 by 0.025 points, and won two Meteoriks awards the following spring. A finished version, Comaland 100%, followed in June 2015.

Crystal Dream

Triton's first PC demo, and its sequel

About this article

Triton's PC demo came second to Future Crew's Unreal at Assembly '92. It ran in 16 colours on a 286 and played its music through a Sound Blaster or a home-made converter on the printer port. Its sequel, Crystal Dream 2, won the PC demo competition at The Computer Crossroads in Gothenburg in 1993.

Desert Dream

Kefrens' pyramids, spaceships and watermelons

About this article

A two-disk Amiga demo by the Danish group Kefrens that won the Amiga demo competition at The Gathering in Norway in April 1993. It opens with a vector cartoon of a spaceship visiting the pyramids, and British public-domain libraries were selling it within months.

Deus Ex Machina

Crest and Oxyron's Mekka & Symposium 2000 winner

About this article

A two-sided Commodore 64 demo by the German groups Crest and Oxyron, coded by Crossbow and Graham, with most of its music by Jeff. It won the C64 demo competition at Mekka & Symposium 2000 in Fallingbostel with 362 points to 284 for Plush's +H2K.

Edge of Disgrace

Booze Design's X'2008 winner

About this article

A Commodore 64 demo by the Swedish group Booze Design, made by HCL, Dane and Jailbird. It won the C64 demo competition at X'2008 in the Netherlands in October 2008 and the Scene.org Award for the best demo of 2008 on an oldschool platform.

Elevated

A mountain flight in 4,096 bytes

About this article

A 4K intro by Rgba and TBC that flies a camera over procedurally generated mountains, with music, from a Windows program of no more than 4,096 bytes. It won the PC 4K intro competition at Breakpoint 2009 and the Scene.org Award for best 4K intro of 2009. Its source code was published in 2016.

Enigma

Phenomena's Easter 1991 winner

About this article

An Amiga demo by the Swedish group Phenomena, coded by Azatoth with music by Firefox and Tip. It won the Amiga demo competition at the Anarchy Easter Party in Sweden in March 1991, and British public-domain libraries were still selling it four years later.

fr-041: debris.

farbrausch's 177K city that tears itself apart

About this article

A Windows demo by the German group farbrausch that won the PC demo competition at Breakpoint 2007 with 1,474 points, ahead of Andromeda's Noumenon on 815. Its city, bridges and swarms of cubes are generated by the program as it starts, from an executable of 177 kilobytes.

fr-08: .the .product

farbrausch's 64K intro that stored no pictures

About this article

A 64K intro for Windows by the German group farbrausch, winner of the PC 64K intro competition at The Party 2000 in Denmark. Its party version was exactly 65,536 bytes. Every texture and model is generated when it starts, and the music comes from a software synthesiser that cannot play samples.

Hardwired

Crionics and The Silents at The Party 1991

About this article

A two-disk Amiga demo by the Danish group Crionics and members of The Silents, shown at The Party in Aars, Denmark, in December 1991, where it came second to Alcatraz's Odyssey. It sold widely through public-domain libraries and is still named among the best Amiga demos.

Jesus on E's

LSD's half-hour Amiga rave demo

About this article

A two-disk Amiga demo by the English group LSD, first shown at the Digital Symposium party in Rotherham in October 1992. It plays nearly half an hour of hardcore rave music by Echo, with strobing graphics and digitised animation synchronised to the beat. British magazines called it the best music demo on the Amiga, and in 1996 it was converted to the ZX Spectrum.

Jesus on E's (Spectrum)

LSD's Amiga rave demo, digitised for the 48K

About this article

A 1996 ZX Spectrum conversion of LSD's Amiga demo Jesus on E's, by Reb of Technium 220. He captured pictures from the Amiga original with a VideoFace video digitiser and played them back as a looping silent animation on the 48K Spectrum.

Mental Hangover

Scoopex's Easter 1990 winner, remembered as the first trackmo

About this article

An Amiga demo by the Finnish and Swedish members of Scoopex, coded by Slayer with graphics by Reward and music by Uncle Tom. It won the demo competition at the Swedish Elite Easter Conference in Gothenburg in April 1990. Instead of a menu of separate parts it played as one continuous show loaded from the disk, and Scoopex remembers it as the first trackmo.

Nexus 7

Andromeda's landslide at The Party 1994

About this article

An AGA Amiga demo by the Norwegian group Andromeda that won the Amiga demo competition at The Party 1994 in Denmark with 1,443 points, more than twice the runner-up's 710. Amiga Format called it "a stonker of a demo".

Ocean Machine

The Black Lotus at Breakpoint 2005

About this article

An AGA Amiga demo by The Black Lotus, finished in a hotel room in Bingen and shown at Breakpoint 2005, where it won the Amiga demo competition with 1,021 points. It needs a 68060 and 32 MB of fast memory, and it won the Scene.org Awards for best graphics and best soundtrack of 2005.

Second Reality

Future Crew's winning demo at Assembly '93

About this article

Future Crew's PC demo won the demo competition at Assembly '93 in Kerava, Finland, in the summer of 1993. It spread through bulletin boards and public-domain libraries, and in 2013 the group published its complete source code.

Shock Megademo

ESI's eight-part tape megademo from Poland

About this article

A 1992 ZX Spectrum megademo by the Polish group ESI (Ethanol Software Inc), coded by Kaz with music by Ziutek and a guest part by Mat. It came on tape in eight parts, each loaded in turn when the viewer pressed a key.

Signal Part 3

Mikropol's 1991 Spectrum demo from Poland

About this article

A ZX Spectrum demo released in April 1991 by Mikropol, a coder from Bydgoszcz in Poland, with graphics by Ewa and music by The Spy. It was the third in his Signal series, which began in 1989, and he went on to write Amiga music.

Starstruck

The Amiga demo that won Assembly 2006

About this article

An AGA Amiga demo by The Black Lotus that won the main demo competition at Assembly 2006 in Helsinki with 10,891 points, ahead of Fairlight's Windows demo track one. It needs a 68060 processor and about 50 MB of fast memory, and its final Amiga version came out twelve years later, in 2018.

State of the Art

Spaceballs' dancing silhouettes

About this article

An Amiga demo by the Norwegian group Spaceballs that won the Amiga demo competition at The Party in Denmark in December 1992. Its dancers were traced from videotape and replayed as vector shapes in time to a rave track. Public-domain libraries sold it widely, while some sceners complained that nothing in it was calculated in real time.

The Lyra II

A Polish Spectrum megademo on a British covertape

About this article

A 1991 ZX Spectrum megademo by ESI (Ethanol Software Inc) of Toruń, Poland, coded by Kaz and Mat with music by Ziutek. Sinclair User put it on its December 1991 covertape, and by 1992 it had been converted to disk as far away as Ukraine.

Voyage

Razor 1911 at The Party 1991

About this article

A 1 MB Amiga demo by Razor 1911 that came third in the demo competition at the first Party in Aars, Denmark, in December 1991, behind Alcatraz's Odyssey and Hardwired. Magazines described its 3D polygon spacecraft and robots, starfields and an animated block-man, and British public-domain libraries sold it through 1992 and beyond.

Wonderland

Censor Design's C64 demo series, 1989 to 2023

About this article

A series of Commodore 64 demos by the Swedish group Censor Design. The first appeared in June 1989 and the tenth won the C64 demo competition at The Computer Crossroads in Gothenburg in 1993, after which the group said the series was over. It came back in 2012, and Wonderland XIV came third at X in 2023.