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Crest

The German C64 group that kept inventing graphics modes

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A German Commodore 64 demo and cracking group founded in July 1988 by Crossbow and Goldrush. Crossbow and the artist DeeKay are credited with a run of new C64 picture modes, from UFLI in 1996 to NUFLI in 2009, and Crest released editors for them. With Oxyron, Crest made Deus Ex Machina, which won the C64 demo competition at Mekka & Symposium 2000.

In 1990 the German group Crest released a demo laid out like a fast-food menu. Commodore Force described it later: McDonald’s Restaurant asked you to type in your group’s name, gave you an amount of money depending on which group you were in, and charged for each part. “If you wanted to see Cheeseburger you had to pay 95p, so when you were out of money you had to load the demo again.” Crest liked tricks like that, but it was also one of the C64 scene’s most technical groups. Its founder Crossbow and its artist DeeKay kept devising new ways to get more colours and detail out of the VIC-II chip, and gave other artists the editors to use them.

Fast facts

  • From: Germany; founded in July 1988 by Crossbow and Goldrush.
  • Platform: Commodore 64.
  • Known for: new graphics modes such as UFLI and NUFLI, with editors to draw in them; the sprite-count record in Krestage (1997); Deus Ex Machina (2000), made with Oxyron.
  • Still active: Crest was releasing in 2026.

Cracking and demos

Crest started as both a cracking and a demo group. Its early releases in the CSDb database mix cracked games, among them Turrican and R-Type, with crack intros, joke demos and packing tools. One Year Crest won the demo competition at a copy party in 1989. Crossbow chose his handle, CSDb records, because it had eight letters: “8 sprites!”

By 1992 the group had a reputation in the British press. ZZAP!64’s public domain column in November 1992 reported that “everybody is eagerly awaiting Crest’s Late Night Show from Crest (of course!), a group which has pushed the C64 to its ultimate limits”. In January 1993 Commodore Force called Crest “one of the leading demo groups” when the artist Bizzmo joined it from Genesis Project.

That April Commodore Force reviewed 4 Years Crest, made from parts and routines that Crossbow had found “in one of his many disk boxes”. As soon as it ran, the demo rewrote the disk’s directory, changing the label, the file names and the demo’s own title. Fifty of the group’s friends got a registered version; the reviewer found himself listed as user 50. He thought the code and graphics “very average” by Crest’s standards and praised the music by MSK, Drax, Deek and Xayne, and noted that Crossbow “was recently voted best programmer on the scene”.

New graphics modes

The C64’s own multicolour mode allows only four colours in each 4×8-pixel cell. Crest’s best-known technical work was in the modes that get around this. Most build on FLI, which forces the VIC-II to fetch new colour information on every raster line, and some add a layer of sprites under or over the bitmap for extra colour and detail.

The scene’s own lists of “world firsts”, compiled long afterwards and open to correction, credit Crossbow with the first FPP effect, in April 1989, which places any line of a character-based picture at any height on screen. With DeeKay he is credited with a series of picture modes. UFLI, SHFLI and SHIFLI are dated 7 April 1996, the day Crest’s Krestology was released at the X party, where CSDb records it as winner of the C64 demo competition. UIFLI followed in 1997, MUFLI in 2006, and NUFLI, MUIFLI and NUIFLI on 18 July 2009. The list defines UFLI as an FLI bitmap “with one single-coloured layer of x-expanded HiRes-sprites underneath the set pixels”, 288 pixels wide. Crest released editors for these modes, from FLI Profi in 1993 to the NUFLI Editor in 2010. DeeKay notes on his CSDb profile that he is “about the only person to actually bother using” some of them: “they were made for me, what do you expect?”

Crossbow also worked on sprites. The same lists credit him with the first sprite crunching used to shrink sprites, and with a record of 144 sprites on screen, both in Krestage in April 1997.

With Oxyron

From 1998 Crest made several productions with Oxyron. The best known is Deus Ex Machina, which won the C64 demo competition at Mekka & Symposium 2000 in Fallingbostel, Germany, with 362 points to 284 for Plush’s +H2K. The organisers’ results list it under Crest. CSDb credits the code to Crossbow and Graham of Oxyron, the music to Jeff, Drax and MSK, and the design to DeeKay. Two years later Jason “Kenz” Mackenzie, who had run the Binary Zone PD library since 1990, picked it for his top ten C64 demos in a revival issue of ZZAP!: “this classy production proved there was still life in the old breadbin yet”.

Crest went on winning into the 2000s, CSDb records: Digital Magic at LCP 2002, and Anyone and Game Over at the two Deadline parties of 2003. In 2010 BluREU, which needs a RAM expansion unit, won the “wild” competition at Breakpoint. The group’s CSDb list runs to Meet Crest, seventh at X in 2026.

Sources

See also

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