In July 1999 a demo party in St Petersburg published its results in two halves. The first half, headed “PC/Amiga”, covered pictures, music and intros for the machines most of the world’s demo scene was using. The second half was for the ZX Spectrum, and it had nearly as many competitions: graphics, AY music, 512-byte and 4K intros, and a demo competition won by Anamnesis from the group Real Masters. The party was Chaos Construction 999, and under the name Chaos Constructions it was still running Spectrum competitions in 2025.
Fast facts
- Where: St Petersburg, Russia.
- Held: most summers since 1999, usually in August; no editions are listed for 2002–2003 or 2022–2023.
- Competitions: a mix of modern and old machines, with separate ZX Spectrum categories from the first party onwards.
- Also on: an exhibition of retro computers, DIY projects and seminars, according to the organisers.
1999: two halves
The first results, “version 3.4”, were compiled by Arty and dated the party 3 to 4 July 1999. Spectrum files were to be fetched from FTP servers of their own, one of them in Latvia, and Amiga and PC files from scene.org. Anamnesis won the Spectrum demo competition with 267 points, ahead of JAM by Digital Reality and 63bit3 by Accept Corp. The PC side had its own demo competition, won by T-Rex’s Paradox ’99 Invitation.
Not every competition worked. Under the heading “FAILED COMPOS” the results list Spectrum competitions for 16K intros, games, digital music and “wild” entries, with every entry left on zero points. Two games had been entered, Xeen and Babylon.
That winter the organisers ran Chaos Constructions 999.999 online, from December 1999 to January 2000: an open vote on the best Spectrum productions of the year. The next party in St Petersburg, in August 2000, cost $2 a day to get in, or $3 for both days.
Later years
Chaos Constructions settled into late August, and Demozoo lists an edition every year from 2004 to 2019. It added a winter party in February 2020 and 2021. The summer party of 2020 was cancelled, the summer party of 2021 went ahead, and the series then paused until 2024.
The 2025 party was held on 23 and 24 August at the DK Kirova, a house of culture on Vasilyevsky Island. The organisers’ website is drawn as a Spectrum keyboard, and the results show why. The oldskool demo competition was won by Corvet, a ZX Spectrum demo by Stardust, and the game competition by Soko Ban 1000, a Spectrum game by ErrorSoft. Alongside them were entries for home computers from the Soviet era: a demo for the Vector-06C, and games for the Okean-240 and the Mikro-80. Nineteen pictures were entered in a “realtime” graphics competition for the Spectrum, drawn at the party itself. The same results also carry competitions for high-end PC demos, AI-generated pictures and music, and pictures drawn live on an Amiga.
Sources
- Chaos Construction 999, official results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): dates, place, compiler, file locations, the PC/Amiga and ZX Spectrum competitions, and the failed competitions. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1999/cc999/results.txt
- Chaos Constructions 2025, results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): the tracked, chiptune, ZX Spectrum graphics, demo, game and live graphics competitions. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/2025/chaosconstructions25/results.txt
- Chaos Constructions, official website (web, secondary): the 2025 dates and venue, and the party’s exhibitions and seminars. https://chaosconstructions.ru/en
- Demozoo, party series for Chaos Constructions and entries for Chaos Constructions 999, 999.999, 2000 and 2025 (web, secondary): dates and places of each edition, the 2020 cancellation, the online vote, the 2000 entrance fee, and the platforms of the 2025 entries. https://demozoo.org/parties/series/85/
- Wikipedia (Russian), “Вектор-06Ц”, “Океан-240” and “Микро-80” (web, secondary): all three are Soviet computers. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Вектор-06Ц