At the end of December 1994 the Amiga demo competition at The Party, the Danish scene gathering held between Christmas and New Year, was won by a landslide. Nexus 7, by the Norwegian group Andromeda, scored 1,443 points in the official results. The runner-up, Virtual Dreams’ Psychedelic, scored 710, and Bomb’s Motion came third with 501. Nexus 7 was written for the AGA Amigas, the A1200 and A4000, and within months British public-domain libraries were selling it on floppy disk.
Fast facts
- From: Norway.
- Active: from 1990; still releasing in the 2020s.
- Platforms: Amiga, and the PC from 2007.
- Best known for: Nexus 7, winner of the Amiga demo competition at The Party 1994.
- Other placings: D.O.S., second at The Gathering 1992; Noumenon, second in the PC demo competition at Breakpoint 2007.
On the Norwegian scene
Andromeda began in 1990, and its first releases, listed by the scene database Demozoo, were the usual mix for a young Amiga group: demos, intros, music disks and crack intros. By 1992 it was competing at home. At The Gathering, held in Norway in April 1992, its demo D.O.S. came second to Spaceballs’ Wayfarer, and its second entry, Multica, finished tenth. More demos followed, among them Mind Riot and Surrealism in 1993 and Sequential in 1994, all for the older Amiga chipset.
Nexus 7
Nexus 7 is the first production for the AGA chipset in Andromeda’s Demozoo list. AGA let the A1200 and A4000 show 256 colours at once, chosen from 16.7 million. The Party’s results list it under Dr. Jekyll of Andromeda. Demozoo credits the code to Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde and View, the graphics to Archmage and the music to Interphace.
Its winning margin stands out in the results: 1,443 points to 710 for second place, against twenty-one other demos, including entries from Sanity, Oxyron and Polka Brothers.
British Amiga owners could buy it within a few months. Public-domain libraries listed “Nexus 7 AGA Demo By Andromeda” in Amiga Shopper in March 1995, and one library’s advertisement in Amiga User International that May called it “the latest stunning AGA demo from Andromeda”. Another, advertising in CU Amiga in August 1995, recommended it as “voted 1st at the Party 94! Absolute must”.
Later work
Andromeda’s next productions came thirteen years later, on the PC. Noumenon came second in the PC demo competition at Breakpoint in Germany in April 2007, behind farbrausch’s debris.. The group made further PC demos up to 2009 and went back to the Amiga with new demos in 2021 and 2024.
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
- The Gathering 1992, official results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1992/thegathering92/results.txt
- Breakpoint 2007, official results, PC demo competition (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): https://files.scene.org/get/parties/2007/breakpoint07/results.txt
- Demozoo, group entry for Andromeda and production entry for Nexus 7 (web, secondary): productions list, Nexus 7 release date (29 December 1994) and credits. https://demozoo.org/groups/223/
- Amiga Shopper issue 47, March 1995: public-domain library listing (“Nexus 7 AGA Demo By Andromeda”).
- Amiga User International, May 1995 (volume 9, number 5): public-domain library advertisement.
- CU Amiga, August 1995: public-domain library advertisement (“voted 1st at the Party 94!”).