In October 1992 ZZAP!64’s public-domain pages reviewed a Swedish demo called Wonderland 9. “Censor Design are one of the older groups in the scene,” the reviewer wrote, “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, and this latest one’s no exception.” The group was then three years old. The next part of the series won the C64 demo competition at one of the biggest parties Sweden had seen. Twenty-two years later two of the group’s founders were among the coders of Comaland, made with Oxyron, which won the C64 demo competition at X’2014.
Fast facts
- From: Sweden.
- Founded: 28 June 1989, according to the scene database CSDb, by eleven members including Bob, CRT, Swallow, Dragon and Psycho.
- Platform: Commodore 64, with a disk magazine for the Super Nintendo in 1993.
- Best known for: the Wonderland demos, from 1989 to 2023, and Comaland (2014).
- Disk magazines: Fatal News and Shock.
- Competition winners: Wonderland V (Phenomena & Censor Party, 1990), Wonderland X (The Computer Crossroads, 1993), Wonderland XII (BFP 2013), Comaland (X’2014), The Star Wars Demo (X’2018), The Violators (Mysdata 2025) and Viva Las Vegas (Mysdata 2026).
Cracks, magazines and parties
CSDb credits the group’s founding to eleven people, and lists early members as crackers, swappers and bulletin-board sysops as well as coders and artists. Its first releases in 1989 were cracks of imported games alongside demos, and its later cracks include Rick Dangerous II and Last Ninja 3. According to CSDb, the name came from “Censor”, a song by the Canadian electronic band Skinny Puppy.
The group also made disk magazines. Fatal News ran from 1989 to 1992. Shock began as a paper magazine. When the group behind it split, the staff who joined Censor Design brought out a disk version, and ZZAP!64’s successor Commodore Force reported in May 1993 that twelve issues came out under Censor before both editors left and the group Legend took the magazine over. In 1993 Censor Design also produced Console Shock, a disk magazine for the Super Nintendo.
In January 1990 Censor Design and the Amiga group Phenomena held a party together in Arboga, and Wonderland V won its C64 demo competition. Censor held its own Halloween party later that year.
Wonderland
The Wonderland demos were Censor Design’s main line of work. CSDb records Wonderland II winning the Datormagazin competition in 1989 and Wonderland III winning at the Shape and TRC party the same year. By August 1992 Commodore Format’s A to Z of demo groups gave Censor Design one line: “the Wonderland series in particular”.
ZZAP!64’s review of Wonderland 9 gives a picture of what one was like. It opened with a “movie-like text-flasher, complete with rotating and transforming logos”, then a picture of a girl by Mirage, “one of the best graphicers in the scene”, with music by Danko. Most of the rest was digitised music: one part with “very bad 4-bit samples” and two “good ones”, whose sample quality the reviewer thought the best he had heard on the C64. Bob had coded “some remarkably strange colour animation in the shape of a planet”, and the demo closed with a picture of Iron Maiden’s mascot Eddie by Dragon. The verdict: “very professionally executed”, though the reviewer “found it missed that bit extra which made the other Wonderland demos so special”. Mirage was not happy with it either. In January 1993 Commodore Force reported that, “not satisfied” with Wonderland 9, he had left Censor for Legend.
The next one was a success. At The Computer Crossroads in Gothenburg, held from 29 to 31 May 1993 and attended by an estimated 1,700 people, Wonderland X won the C64 demo competition ahead of Booze Design’s Totally Stoned II. The Hungarian magazine 576 KByte thought it a deserved winner because it contained things never seen before on the C64. Oxyron’s Coma Light 10, it added, fell well short of expectations and did not place. At The Party in Denmark that December, Censor’s Spasmolytic came second in the C64 demo competition.
The coder HCL of Booze Design was also a member from 1993 to 1995. After that the releases thinned out: CSDb lists a few pieces of music and some tools between 1997 and 2002, then nothing until 2011.
The return
Censor Design came back in the 2010s, with several of its founders still in the group. Wonderland XI came fifth at X’2012, and Wonderland XII won the C64 demo competition at BFP in 2013. In October 2014 Comaland, made with Oxyron, won at X’2014 by 0.025 points ahead of Booze Design. Bob and Swallow, both members since 1989, were among its coders. The demo’s own entry tells its story.
The group went on winning. Wonderland XIII came third at X’2016, and The Star Wars Demo, coded by Bob and Edhellon, won at X’2018. In 2019 Censor was one of five groups behind Rivalry, which CSDb records as first in its competition at Revision in Germany. Wonderland XIV came third at X’2023. Since 2022 Censor Design has been one of the organising groups, with Fairlight and Genesis Project, of Mysdata, a party in Karlskrona, Sweden. Bob, a founder in 1989, was still coding for the group in 2025 and 2026, when its demos The Violators and Viva Las Vegas won Mysdata’s C64 demo competition.
Sources
- ZZAP!64 issue 89, October 1992, p. 32, public domain column: Wonderland 9 review.
- “A–Z of demo groups”, Commodore Format issue 23, August 1992.
- “PD File”, Commodore Force issue 1, January 1993: artist profiles, Mirage.
- “PD File”, Commodore Force issue 5, May 1993: Shock disk magazine.
- 576 KByte (Hungary) issue 37, September 1993: report on TCC ’93, “The Computer Crossroad”, Gothenburg, 29–31 May 1993: attendance, C64 demo results, Wonderland X, Coma Light 10; Censor Design’s SNES version of Shock.
- Retro Gamer issue 22, p. 98: Censor Design’s 1993 SNES disk magazine Console Shock.
- X2014, official results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): demo competition. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/2014/x14/results.txt
- CSDb, group entry for Censor Design and its release and event entries (web, secondary): founding and founders, members and their dates, the name, releases and competition placings from 1989 to 2026, the Phenomena & Censor Party and Censor Halloween Party 1990; release entries for The Star Wars Demo, Rivalry, The Violators and Viva Las Vegas; event entry for Mysdata 2022 (dates, place, organisers). https://csdb.dk/group/?id=2310
- CSDb, release entry for Comaland (web, secondary): credits. https://csdb.dk/release/?id=133940