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Phenomena

The Swedish group behind Enigma

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A Swedish Amiga demo group founded around 1987. Between 1989 and 1991 it won demo competitions in Sweden and Denmark, ending with Enigma at Easter 1991, which British public-domain reviewers rated among the best demos available. Its members also wrote the module packer NoisePacker and helped run Swedish demo parties.

In August 1991 Amiga Shopper ended its monthly round-up of public-domain disks with a demo from Sweden. “And finally, top of the heap is Phenomena’s Enigma demo,” it wrote, and gave it 10 out of 10: “a fun packed and alarmingly clever demo, which bodes well for the future of this excellent team.” Enigma had won the Amiga demo competition at a Swedish Easter party that March. It was Phenomena’s third party win in five months, after Vectormania in Sweden and Animotion in Denmark. The group had been making demos since 1988. Its members also wrote tools other Amiga musicians used, among them the module packer NoisePacker, and they helped run some of Sweden’s early demo parties.

Fast facts

  • From: Sweden.
  • Active: founded around 1987; Amiga productions from 1988 to 1992, with a few PC releases in the mid-1990s.
  • Platform: Amiga, with three Commodore 64 demos dated to the Arboga party in January 1990 and some PC work later.
  • Best known for: Enigma (1991), first at the Anarchy Easter Party 1991.
  • Other competition winners: Megademo (1989), Vectormania (1990) and Animotion (1990).
  • Members included: Avalon and Silmarillion (founders), Azatoth, Celebrandil, Firefox, Tip, Uno, Twins, Mr. Gurk, The Big A and Megaman.

Arvika and a restart

According to a history of the group written in the late 1990s by one of its members, Phenomena was founded in about 1987 by two people calling themselves Avalon and Silmarillion. Their demo Flight of Dreams was released at a party in Arvika, Sweden, in May 1988, but did not win. After a few more demos the group went quiet and broke up, and its members moved to other groups.

In 1989 Phenomena was put back together with the old members and some from the group Vortex 42. The musicians Twins and Firefox joined soon after. So did several members of Triangle, a Swedish group formed from three others, among them the coder Megaman. The group’s own history, In Medias Res, names him as Andreas Tadic, who later wrote games for Team17. The new line-up’s first big release was a megademo in the spring of 1989. Results compiled from party packs and disk magazines put Phenomena first in the Amiga demo competition at the Equinox and Horizon party in Eskilstuna in May 1989, with an entry listed as “200 Bobs” or the megademo; the member’s history says parts of the megademo won the group’s first competition. It adds that the megademo included one of the first filled-vector routines, “very slow”, and that it was shown on the Swedish television programme Bit för bit. Members more interested in cracking games left to start a group of their own, and Phenomena became a demo group only.

Parties and prizes

In January 1990 Phenomena held a party in Arboga with the Commodore 64 group Censor Design. The member’s history puts the turnout at 250 people. The Amiga votes were counted by Mr. Gurk of Phenomena under a scheme that scored each demo separately for code, design, graphics and music. A demo by a Fairlight coder, Celebrandil, won the Amiga competition, and Phenomena later released the entries as a two-disk party pack.

The run of wins began that autumn. At the Amiga Halloween Conference in Motala, Sweden, in November 1990, Vectormania, coded by Azatoth with graphics by Uno and music by Firefox, won the demo competition, and Firefox also won the music competition. Seven weeks later, at the Dexion X-Mas Conference in Odense, Denmark, Phenomena’s Animotion won the Amiga demo competition. Its coder was Celebrandil, who had moved from Fairlight to Phenomena and released the demo under his new group’s name. The Dexion organisers had offered US $1,000 for first place in the Amiga competition.

Azatoth’s next demo was Enigma, with music by Firefox and Tip. It won the Amiga demo competition at the Anarchy Easter Party, held from 29 to 31 March 1991, ahead of Shining’s Vector Exterminator. The prize was 6,000 Swedish kronor. The demo’s own entry tells its story.

Tools and music

Phenomena’s members wrote software as well as demos. NoisePacker, credited to Twins, compressed the song files of Amiga trackers, known as modules, so they took less disk space. Versions ran from 1990 to 1991, and the format stayed in use long enough that in September 1995 Amiga Shopper listed “NoisePacker 3.x, Creator: The Twins of Phenomena” among the formats the module player EaglePlayer could play. The group also released music disks, Music Dream and Crystal Symphonies, in 1991 and 1992.

Later years

The Amiga output ended in 1992, with Crystal Symphonies 2 and an invitation to an Easter party. In May 1993 Phenomena was one of the groups that organised The Computer Crossroads in Gothenburg, alongside The Silents and several Commodore 64, PC and Atari groups. The compiled results record 1,600 visitors, the biggest Swedish party up to that time, with reports on the major Swedish television channels. A few PC productions carried the name later, including the 64K intro Murel in 1995. The public databases list nothing from the group after 1997.

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See also

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