Code Like It's 198x

Red Sector Inc

The Megademo, the Demomaker and TRSI

GroupsSource-checked

A cracking and demo group that began on the Commodore 64 in 1985 and moved its base to West Germany. On the Amiga it made the 1989 Megademo, which British public-domain libraries were still selling years later, and the Red Sector Demomaker, a kit for building demos without writing code. In June 1990 it joined with the German group Tristar to form Tristar & Red Sector Inc., TRSI, which was still active in 2026.

In December 1989 Amiga Format opened its “Demos Corner” with a two-disk set from a public-domain library: the Red Sector Mega Demo. The reviewer met a cartoon worm that slithered to the middle of the screen, made “a rather rude and loud noise” and left, and then a mass of balls that swarmed into the shapes of animals, helicopters and people. “If only the people that code the demos could get together with some games designers,” he wrote, “there would be some truly spectacular games on the shelves.” Libraries sold the Megademo for years afterwards; one still called it “an all time great” at the end of 1991. Red Sector Inc. also gave away the means to make such things. Its Demomaker let Amiga owners build their own demos without writing code, and the group went on to become half of TRSI, which was still releasing work in 2026.

Fast facts

  • Active: from 1985; joined with Tristar as TRSI on 29 June 1990.
  • Base: founded by three Canadians, and run from West Germany once Irata took charge.
  • Platforms: Commodore 64, then the Amiga; as TRSI, also PC and later machines.
  • Known for: the Megademo (1989), the Red Sector Demomaker, the CeBit 90 demo; as TRSI, Rise (1998) and 10 Orbyte (2014).

From Canada to Germany

The scene databases trace Red Sector Inc. (RSI) to 1985 and the Commodore 64. CSDb and the scene history Recollection both name three Canadian founders, Billy Best, Greg and Kangol Kid. The group soon took in Irata and Mr Zero Page, and Recollection says Irata “quickly took over command of the group establishing the homebase in Germany”. RSI released C64 cracks in the mid-1980s and belonged to The Light Circle, an alliance of cracking groups. The West German fanzine Illegal was greeting “MZP from Red Sector” in its issues of late 1987 and early 1988.

The Megademo

By 1988 RSI was working on the Amiga, with cracks, crack intros, music disks and small demos. Its Megademo is dated 9 September 1989. A megademo was a collection of separate demo parts on one or more disks, each with its own effects and music, and RSI’s filled two disks. Demozoo credits the code to Dr. Beat and Delta, the graphics to Dark, Dr. C, Scum, Eddie and Delta, and the music to Bit Arts, SCS, Mark II and Romeo Knight. The demo database Pouët records it winning the Amiga demo competition at a party held by Tristar in 1989.

It reached British readers through the public-domain libraries, which copied demos for the price of a disk. Amiga Format’s review came from 17 Bit Software, which sold the two disks as numbers 503 and 504. In February 1991 one library in the same magazine listed the “RSI MEGADEMO” as “One of the best ever demo disks”; another in June 1992 described it as having “Still stood the test of time”. RSI’s next big demo, CeBit 90, named after the Hanover computer fair, was in the same lists, and one library called it “Suuberb!”.

The Demomaker

The Red Sector Demomaker put the megademo within reach of people who could not program. British libraries were selling it by early 1991, when one listed it in Amiga Format as a “Great utility!”. It came with editors for “bobs” (blitter objects, the Amiga’s hardware-drawn moving shapes), fonts and 3D vector objects, and one library sold the whole “Red Sector Demo Maker Pack” as five disks in 1992. Users supplied their own music. Professional Amiga User explained in December 1991 that SoundTracker modules were “one of the few types of music files which the Red Sector DemoMaker recognises”, and advised anyone writing tunes for it to use SoundTracker or ProTracker, because MED often failed to save its songs in SoundTracker format. Libraries sold extras disks of fonts, vector objects, star fields and music, “music modules for use with the RSI Demo Maker”, and disks to “help you use the Red Sector Demo Creator”. It was still in the catalogues in 1995.

Tristar & Red Sector

Tristar was a German group founded in July 1987; CSDb places its headquarters in a bistro in Wuppertal from 1988 to the summer of 1990. According to TRSI’s own account, the two groups joined on 29 June 1990, at a summer conference in Denmark that Red Sector held with The Silents, and became Tristar & Red Sector Inc. CSDb dates the merger to around 1990 and places it on the Amiga and PC; by then RSI had stopped on the C64.

TRSI was prominent in the German scene. In March 1994 the German magazine Amiga Joker reported on the seventh Radwar party, the “Rainbow Party”, held in a discotheque in Heinsberg on 15 January, and listed Tristar & Red Sector among the organising groups with Radwar Enterprises, Spreadpoint and Fairlight. About 300 people came. They included, the magazine noted, the anti-piracy lawyer Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth, who played in the afternoon football match and was whistled at every time he touched the ball.

The name also came back on the C64. On 25 August 1992 former members of the Hanover group Hysteric and members of TRSI’s Amiga and PC side restarted Red Sector Inc. there. Recollection describes it as the leading group for first releases of new games in 1993, and CSDb records that it closed on 31 December 1993.

TRSI’s demos

TRSI’s Amiga demos came third at The Party in Denmark in 1992 with TrackDemo, behind Spaceballs’ State of the Art, and first at The Gathering in Norway in 1998 with Rise, which scored 1,000 points to the runner-up’s 565. In February 1995 a British library described TRSI’s Artifice as “From the veteran coders, TRSI. Surprisingly their first AGA demo”, meaning the first made for the newer AGA chipset of the Amiga 1200 and 4000. The musician Jester passed briefly through the group on his way to Sanity.

TRSI kept going after the Amiga years. At Revision in 2014 its 10 Orbyte, a Commodore 64 production that the group says was sent to and run on a tiny satellite, won the “Wild” competition for unusual productions. The group’s website still posts news of new work and party visits in 2026.

Sources

  • “Demos Corner”, Amiga Format issue 5, December 1989: review of the Red Sector Mega Demo, 17 Bit Software disks 503 and 504.
  • Amiga Format issue 19, February 1991: public-domain library advertisements, “RSI MEGADEMO. One of the best ever demo disks (2 DISKS)” and “Red sector demomaker: Great utility!”.
  • Amiga Format issue 29, December 1991: public-domain library advertisements, “RSI MEGADEMO (2 DISKS) An al[l] time great” and the Red Sector Inc demo creator.
  • Amiga Shopper issue 11, March 1992: library advertisements, “Red Sector Cebit Demo - Suuberb!” and the Red Sector Demo Maker Pack.
  • Amiga Format issue 35, June 1992: library advertisements, “RED SECTOR MEGADEMO (2) Still stood the test of time”, “music modules for use with the RS[I] Demo Maker” and disks to “help you use the Red Sector Demo Creator”.
  • Amiga Shopper issue 9, January 1992: library advertisement for the Red Sector Demo Creator and extras disks of fonts, vector objects, star fields and music.
  • Amiga Shopper issue 14, June 1992: library advertisement, the “RED SECTOR DEMO MAKER PACK (Bob, Font & Vector Editors, Program & Utils disks) 5 disks”.
  • Amiga Shopper issue 46, February 1995: library advertisement listing the Red Sector Demo Maker.
  • Professional Amiga User vol. 2 no. 5, December 1991: comparison of SoundTracker, ProTracker and MED, and the Red Sector DemoMaker’s music formats.
  • Amiga Joker (Germany), March 1994, and April 1994: report on the seventh Radwar party (“Rainbow Party”), Heinsberg, 15 January 1994, its organisers and guests.
  • Amiga Format issue 68, February 1995: library advertisement for Artifice by TRSI.
  • Illegal issues 23 (December 1987) and 25 (February 1988), as transcribed from paper by King Fisher of Triad (web, secondary): greetings to MZP of Red Sector. https://www.exploit-db.com/ezines/kr5hou2zh4qtebqk.onion/ILEGAL/ILEGAL25.TXT
  • CSDb, the Commodore 64 Scene Database, group entries for Red Sector Inc. and Tristar (web, secondary): founders, The Light Circle, the co-operation with Tristar, the 1992 rebuild and 1993 end; Tristar’s founding in July 1987 and its Wuppertal headquarters. https://csdb.dk/group/?id=602 and https://csdb.dk/group/?id=618
  • Recollection (Atlantis), “Cracker’s Map: Germany” (web, secondary): the Canadian founders, Irata and the move to Germany, the 1992 rebuild from Hysteric, 1993. https://www.atlantis-prophecy.org/recollection/?load=crackers_map&country=germany
  • Tristar & Red Sector, “About”, group website (web, secondary): the joining on 29 June 1990, the Demomaker, 10 Orbyte. https://www.trsi.org/about/
  • Demozoo, group entry and production entries for Red Sector Inc. (web, secondary): the Megademo, 9 September 1989, and its credits; CeBit 90. https://demozoo.org/groups/4737/
  • Pouët, Megademo by Red Sector Inc. (web, secondary): first in the Amiga demo competition at the Tristar party, 1989. https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=3119
  • The Party 1992, results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): Amiga demo competition. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1992/theparty92/results.txt
  • The Gathering 1998, results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): Amiga demo competition. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1998/thegathering98/results.txt
  • Demozoo, 10 Orbyte (web, secondary): first in the Wild competition at Revision 2014, Saarbrücken. https://demozoo.org/productions/109180/

See also

Checked. Verified against primary sources and signed off by a person.