Crionics lasted about three years, and the Danish group’s last demo is the one people remember. Hardwired, made with The Silents, came second at The Party in December 1991, and more than twenty years later The Amiga Book called it “a seminal work that practically defined the demo scene for years to come”. Before that, British public-domain reviewers already knew the name. “The Crionics team is one of my all-time favourites,” Phil South wrote in Amiga Shopper in October 1991.
Fast facts
- From: Denmark.
- Active: early 1989 to early 1992.
- Platform: Amiga.
- Best known for: Hardwired (1991), with The Silents; Neverwhere and Total Destruction (1990).
- Members included: the coders The Spy, Deftronic, Murphy, Saxs and Guzzler, the graphic artists Zycho and Madonna Freak, and the musicians T.U.S.C. and S.L.L.
From music disks to demos
According to the scene database Demozoo, Crionics was an all-Danish group formed in early 1989. Its first listed release is a music disk, Music Driller 3, from January 1989. Amiga Shopper noticed the change that followed: in October 1991 Phil South wrote that the “music only” teams had “found graphics and coding people and branched out into fully-fledged demo teams”, and named Crionics as “a prime example”.
The group took some of its people from Kefrens. Demozoo records that the coders Gizwiz and Murphy and the artist and musician Merlin joined from Kefrens in June 1990. Crionics’ first Megademo came second at a party held by Kefrens and Dexion in February 1990, and Neverwhere won the demo competition at the Bounty Party that September.
Their demos reached British owners through public-domain libraries, which sold demos by post for the price of a disk. In December 1990 CU Amiga printed a hand-drawn picture by Madonna Freak from “the new Crionics demo”, available from 17-Bit Software. Total Destruction, coded by The Spy and Deftronic with graphics by Zycho and music by T.U.S.C., came third at the Dexion X-Mas Conference at the end of 1990. Phil South thought it “one of the most exciting demos for a long time. Lots of original copper effects, followed by some very well-done strobe cycle effects.” The copper is the Amiga’s display coprocessor, which changes colours and other chip registers as the screen is drawn. In the same column he wrote that “a Crionics demo is always going to be worth looking at”.
Hardwired and after
Hardwired was the group’s last big demo. The Spy, Deftronic, Murphy, Saxs and Guzzler wrote the code, Zycho drew some of the graphics alongside The Silents’ Mikael Balle and Sionic, and The Silents’ Jesper Kyd wrote the music. The organisers’ results from The Party 1991 credit the demo to The Silents alone, while at least one British public-domain library listed it as “Hardwired by Crionics”. The story of the demo is told in its own entry.
Crionics broke up early in 1992, and The Spy, Murphy and Deftronic joined The Silents, Demozoo records. A smaller demo, Cat, came out under both names that year. Deftronic kept one Crionics product going: Trash’m-One, an assembler for writing Amiga machine code which Demozoo describes as based on Asm-One. New versions carried the Crionics name until January 1993.
Several of the people behind Hardwired went on to make games. Demozoo lists The Spy, Deftronic, Murphy, Guzzler, Sionic and Jesper Kyd as later members of Zyrinx, a Copenhagen developer. Kyd told Wireframe in 2019 that he met the future founders of IO Interactive in the demo scene and founded Zyrinx with them. Zyrinx’s first game was the Mega Drive shoot ’em up Sub-Terrania, which Edge reviewed in May 1994 as the work of “little-known programming team Zyrinx”.
Sources
- Phil South, public-domain column, Amiga Shopper issue 6, October 1991, pp. 127–131: Crionics among the “music only” teams that became demo teams; review of Total Destruction; “a Crionics demo is always going to be worth looking at”.
- CU Amiga, December 1990, public-domain demos feature: caption on Madonna Freak’s picture in a new Crionics demo from 17-Bit Software.
- Public-domain library advertisements, Amiga Shopper issue 14, June 1992 (“Hardwired Crionics”), and issue 18, October 1992 (“Hardwired by Crionics”, two disks, 1 MB).
- The Amiga Book, revised edition (Imagine Publishing, 2015), p. 134: “Top 5 Amiga Demos”, on Hardwired.
- The Party 1991, results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): Hardwired second, credited to The Silents. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1991/theparty91/results.txt
- Demozoo, group entry for Crionics and its production entries (web, secondary): founding, members joining from Kefrens, the break-up, release dates, credits and party placings of Megademo, Neverwhere, Total Destruction, Hardwired and Cat, and Trash’m-One. https://demozoo.org/groups/567/
- Demozoo, scener entries for The Spy, Deftronic, Murphy, Guzzler, Sionic and Jesper Kyd (web, secondary): later membership of Zyrinx.
- Matthias Sundström, interview with Jesper Kyd, Wireframe issue 23, September 2019, pp. 18–20: meeting the founders of IO Interactive in the demo scene and founding Zyrinx.
- Edge issue 8, May 1994: review of Sub-Terrania, developer Zyrinx.