Razor 1911 entered Voyage in the demo competition at the first Party, held in Aars, Denmark, just after Christmas 1991. It came third, behind Alcatraz’s Odyssey and Hardwired by Crionics and The Silents. Razor 1911 was a Norwegian group, founded in 1985, that cracked games as well as making demos. Within a few months Voyage was on sale from British public-domain libraries, and in April 1992 The One described what buyers got: “a few 3D polygon spacecraft and robots, some neat variations on the parallax/rotational starfield effect, a cute, superbly-animated block-man, and plenty of music.”
Fast facts
- Group: Razor 1911.
- Released: at The Party 1991, Aars, Denmark, in December 1991.
- Result: third in the demo competition.
- Platform: Amiga with 1 MB of memory.
- Credits: code by Sim; music by Codex, Tip and Mantronix; graphics by Drake and Murdock.
What it shows
The One reviewed Voyage in its public-domain pages in April 1992, as disk 1604 from the Wakefield library 17-Bit Software, “a contribution from Razor 1911 to a demos competition in Aars, Denmark”. Besides the polygon spacecraft, robots and starfields, the magazine picked out the block-man and the soundtrack: “you also get a lengthy musical track and a cute animated block-man.” Library adverts described it in the same terms. One in Amiga Format in August 1992 called it “Very good fx and music”, and a list that ran in CU Amiga in 1994 called it a “Brilliant demo” with “lot of fill vector”, meaning solid, filled 3D shapes rather than wireframes.
No period source describes texture mapping in Voyage, and no public source describes how its code worked. The Amiga’s blitter could draw a shape’s outline in line mode and then fill it with a single colour, which is the kind of flat-shaded 3D object the magazines describe.
Selling the demo
Most Amiga owners saw Voyage on a disk bought by post. In the summer of 1992 Amiga Format printed 17-Bit Software’s ten best-selling demos, and “Voyager (Razor 911)”, disk 1604, was sixth. Hardwired was first and Odyssey second. Libraries listed it as needing 1 MB of memory, and many sold it next to the other two demos from the top of The Party’s results, Odyssey and Hardwired, into 1995.
Sources
- The Party 1991, results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): place, date and the demo competition. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1991/theparty91/results.txt
- The One, issue 43, April 1992, p. 67: public-domain demos, Voyage on 17-Bit disk 1604.
- Amiga Format, issue 37, August 1992, p. 186: “Top ten demos of the month”, 17-Bit Software. The same chart appears in issue 38, September 1992.
- Public-domain library advertisements: CU Amiga, May 1992, “The Voyage Megademo 1Meg”; Amiga Format issue 37, August 1992, “Very good fx and music”; CU Amiga, November 1994, “Brilliant demo lot of fill vector”.
- Wikipedia, “Razor 1911” (web, secondary): founded in Norway in 1985, a warez and demo group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_1911
- Demozoo, production entry for Voyage (web, secondary): release date and credits. https://demozoo.org/productions/1914/