The first line of the program says what it is: “SHOCK MEGADEMO ESI’92 CODING BY KAZ MUSIC BY ZIUTEK”, followed by a contact address in Toruń, Poland. Shock was a megademo in the old sense, a set of separate parts loaded one after another, and on the Spectrum in 1992 that meant loading them from cassette. Before each part, a caption in the middle of the screen told the viewer what was coming: “MAY A LITTLE CHALLENGE…”, “WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD. QUEEN (?)”, “IF YOU STAY BETTER SEAT DOWN, THE CYCLON IS COMING…”, “DO YOU PLAY CHESS?” and finally “THE END IS NEAR”.
Fast facts
- Group: ESI (Ethanol Software Inc), from Poland.
- Credits: code by Kaz; music by Ziutek; a guest part coded by Mat, with graphics by Ziutek (credits from the title line and Demozoo).
- Platform: 48K ZX Spectrum, on tape.
- Released: 1992.
- Form: a megademo in eight parts, loaded one at a time.
Eight parts on one tape
The tape holds a short BASIC loader, a small block of shared code and eight numbered parts, from about 7.5 KB to 19 KB each. The loader works through the parts in turn, starting with an intro. For each one it prints a caption, loads the part from tape and runs it. The part plays until the viewer presses a key, and then the loader moves on to the next. The captions name the intro, a part of greetings to other groups and “MAT GUEST SCREEN”, the part Demozoo credits to Mat. Public sources do not describe how the individual effects were programmed.
A megademo like this asked for patience. The parts load through the Spectrum ROM’s own tape routine, at the standard speed, so the largest, at almost 19 KB, takes around two minutes to arrive. The group also released Shock Remix the same year.
ESI
ESI made The Lyra II for the Spectrum in 1991, according to Demozoo, and Shock followed in 1992. By 1993 the group’s releases were for the SAM Coupé, a Z80 computer from Miles Gordon Technology that could emulate a 48K Spectrum; they included a diskmag and The Lyra 3. The group still releases occasional productions: Demozoo lists The Lyra 3.1 for custom hardware in December 2020 and a Spectrum code-challenge entry in December 2024.
Sources
- Shock Megademo, ZX Spectrum tape (1992): the title line, credits and contact town; the loader’s structure, the eight parts and their sizes, and the captions. https://files.zxdemo.org/files/Shock.zip
- Demozoo, production entry for Shock by Ethanol Software Inc (web, secondary): 1992, credits for Kaz, Mat and Ziutek. https://demozoo.org/productions/13714/
- Demozoo, production entry for Shock Remix (web, secondary): 1992. https://demozoo.org/productions/13715/
- Demozoo, group entry for Ethanol Software Inc (ESI) (web, secondary): members and productions, including The Lyra 2 (August 1991), the SAM Coupé releases of 1992–1993, The Lyra 3.1 (2020) and VCCC Gift (2024). https://demozoo.org/groups/9038/
- “SAM Coupé” preview, CRASH issue 61, February 1989: Miles Gordon Technology’s Z80 machine and its Spectrum emulation.