Code Like It's 198x

Wonderland

Censor Design's C64 demo series, 1989 to 2023

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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.

The first Wonderland was not a Censor Design demo at all. It came out on 28 June 1989 under the name of the Swedish group Triad, with code by Psycho, on the day the scene database CSDb gives for the founding of Censor Design. Bob, one of the new group’s founders, explained years later that releasing it as Triad was “something Psycho was very keen to do, as a farewell thing”, even though Bob had tried to talk him into putting the Censor label on it. Censor Design took the name with it. It released nine more Wonderland demos in four years, declared the series finished, and then brought it back two decades later.

Fast facts

  • Group: Censor Design, Sweden; the first part was released under Triad.
  • Platform: Commodore 64.
  • Parts: Wonderland (1989) to Wonderland X (1993), then Wonderland XI (2012) to Wonderland XIV (2023).
  • Competition winners: Wonderland II (DatorMagazin Competition, 1989), Wonderland III (Shape and TRC party, 1989), Wonderland V (Phenomena & Censor Party, 1990), Wonderland X (The Computer Crossroads, 1993) and Wonderland XII (BFP, 2013).
  • Regulars: Bob, a founder of Censor Design, is credited with code on every Censor part from Wonderland II to Wonderland XIV except IV; Swallow, another founder, on most of them.

1989 to 1993

The series came quickly at first. CSDb dates Wonderland II to July 1989, III to October and IV to November, and Wonderland V to 7 January 1990, when it won the C64 demo competition at the party Censor Design held with the Amiga group Phenomena. Wonderland VI, 1 Year in Wonderland and Wonderland VII followed in 1990, then VIII in May 1991. The early parts were group efforts, with guests from other groups: CSDb credits code on Wonderland III to six people and its music to seven, among them JCH of Vibrants.

Wonderland IX came second at the Brutal and Hurricane summer party in June 1992. In October ZZAP!64’s public-domain column reviewed it. “Censor Design are one of the older groups in the scene,” it said, “and consequently they’ve released a huge number of demos, including the Wonderland series. These demos have always featured great design and several new inventions.” It liked the intro best, a “movie-like text-flasher, complete with rotating and transforming logos”, and noted Bob’s “remarkably strange colour animation in the shape of a planet”. Most of the demo was sampled music, and two parts had, the reviewer thought, the best sample quality he had heard on the C64. His verdict: “very professionally executed”, though it “missed that bit extra which made the other Wonderland demos so special. Besides that it’s brilliant!”

Wonderland X made up for it. At The Computer Crossroads in Gothenburg, from 29 to 31 May 1993, it won the C64 demo competition ahead of Booze Design’s Totally Stoned II. The Hungarian magazine 576 KByte reported that it deserved to win because it contained things never seen before on the C64. At the same party Oxyron’s Coma Light 10 did not place.

“The last in the series”

Censor Design’s next party demo, Spasmolytic, came second at The Party in Denmark in December 1993. 576 KByte’s scene column expected readers to wonder why it did not carry the usual Wonderland name. The answer, it reported, came from the group’s own programmer at the party: Wonderland X had been the last in the series, and from then on the line would carry on as Spasmolytic. The column still found the Wonderland hallmarks in it, top-class design and flawless code, with 8-bit sampled music. After that the group’s releases thinned out, and the next Wonderland came nineteen years after the tenth.

The return

Wonderland XI appeared on 28 October 2012 at X’2012 in the Netherlands, where it came fifth; Oxyron’s Coma Light 13, another old series revived, won. Its coders included Bob, CRT and Swallow, all three founders of Censor Design in 1989. Wonderland XII won the C64 demo competition at BFP in August 2013, and its credits show the two groups drawing closer: Oxyron’s coder Axis and artist Yazoo both worked on it. The next year the two groups made Comaland together and won X’2014.

Wonderland XIII came third at X in 2016, and Wonderland XIV came third at X in June 2023, with nine coders credited, Bob and Swallow among them. In September 2026 CSDb users’ chart of C64 demos placed Wonderland XIV 24th.

No published source explains how the Wonderland demos’ routines work; the period reviews describe what viewers saw and heard. The SID entry explains how the C64 plays sampled sound.

Sources

See also

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