At The Party 1994, the Danish scene gathering held between Christmas and New Year, twenty-one other Amiga demos lost to Nexus 7, and none came close. The official results gave it 1,443 points. The runner-up, Virtual Dreams’ Psychedelic, scored 710, and Bomb’s Motion came third with 501. Nexus 7 was made by Andromeda, a group from Norway, for the AGA Amigas, the A1200 and A4000. Three months later Amiga Format told its readers that it was “worth more than a look, it’s worth a purchase and a study”.
Fast facts
- Group: Andromeda, from Norway.
- Platform: Amiga with the AGA chipset (A1200 and A4000).
- Released: at The Party 1994, Denmark, December 1994.
- Placing: first in the Amiga demo competition, 1,443 points to 710.
- Credits: code by Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde and View; graphics by Archmage; music by Interphace.
Made for AGA
AGA, the chipset in the A1200 and A4000, put 256 colours on screen instead of 32, from a palette of 16.7 million. Nexus 7 was Andromeda’s first production for the new machines; the group’s earlier demos, such as D.O.S., were written for the older chipset. The Party’s results list it under Dr. Jekyll of Andromeda, and Demozoo credits the code to Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde and View, the graphics to Archmage and the music to Interphace. The field it beat included demos from Sanity, Oxyron and Polka Brothers.
What Amiga Format saw
Steve McGill and Jason Holborn’s PD Select column in Amiga Format reviewed Nexus 7 in March 1995, from the Freestyle PD library. The review found “loads of top techie trickery”, presented “in a slick, professional manner (admittedly more for the sake of impressiveness than entertainment)”, and picked out four routines:
- Gouraud Pulse: irregular shapes, one like a Möbius strip, pulsing with shading “that resembles a hot coal changing heat from cherry red to furnace white hot”.
- Motion Blur: a rotating, blurring picture of a tortured face. Scaled and rotated texture-mapped images were “a bit of a cliché in demos these days”, but this one was “Digital high art indeed”.
- Texture-Mapped Bouncy Ball: a ball whose transparency showed the background through it as it passed. “So much for the Sony PlayStation and its feature-laden hardware.”
- Plasma Zoom: which carried the message “Use your perception to penetrate the void of your mind”, and which the reviewer suggested viewing like a stereogram.
The verdict: “I think Nexus 7 is a stonker of a demo.”
British public-domain libraries kept it on their lists through 1995. One advertised it in Amiga Format as “A must for AGA Amiga!” and another in CU Amiga as “voted 1st at the Party 94! Absolute must”. The Andromeda entry has more on those listings and on the group’s later work.
Sources
- The Party 1994, official competition results, Amiga demo competition (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1994/theparty94/results.txt
- Amiga Format issue 69, March 1995, p. 77: PD Select, Steve McGill and Jason Holborn, review of Nexus 7 (Freestyle PD).
- Amiga Format issue 72, June 1995: public-domain library advertisement (“Andromeda: Nexus 7 (AGA) – A must for AGA Amiga!”).
- CU Amiga, August 1995: public-domain library advertisement (“voted 1st at the Party 94!”).
- Demozoo, group entry for Andromeda and production entry for Nexus 7 (web, secondary): release date (29 December 1994), credits, and the group’s production list. https://demozoo.org/groups/223/