Wildfire joined Future Crew in the autumn of 1992, just after the group’s Unreal had won at the first Assembly party. He came from the Atari ST scene, and within months he was the coder putting Future Crew’s next demo, Panic, together. A year later he was one of the three coders of Second Reality. He was 18.
Fast facts
- Real name: Arto Vuori, aged 18 in October 1993.
- Before Future Crew: Atari ST coder; the database Demozoo lists him in the ST group Extream.
- Group: Future Crew, from autumn 1992.
- Demos: The Party 1992 invitation intro, Panic (1992), Second Reality (1993).
The name
Future Crew listed its members in the READ.ME file that came with Second Reality and in its information file of 7 October 1993: “Wildfire, Arto Vuori, 18, Coder”. Wikipedia’s article on the group gives the same name.
From the ST to the PC
The group’s history describes him as “our new coder who joined us in autumn 1992. He had before been active on the Atari ST scene.” His first work for Future Crew was the invitation intro for The Party 1992 in Denmark, “mostly coded by Psi and WildFire”. Then came Panic: “Wildfire was the one to assemble the demo together, but lots of code was also done by Psi and Trug.” Panic came second in the PC demo competition at The Party that December. When he greeted his friends in Second Reality’s end scroller the next year, Extream was on his list.
Second Reality
Second Reality’s credit screens name the coder of each part. Wildfire has five of them, including the first and the last screens in the sequence: two parts with Marvel’s graphics and Skaven’s music, two with Purple Motion’s music, and one with Pixel’s graphics and Purple Motion’s music. Psi has ten and Trug three.
After Second Reality
Future Crew made no big demo after 1993. In January 1995 Wildfire and Marvel began Finland’s compulsory military service, which the group’s history blames for its quiet year. By 1997, it said, “all of the coders are involved in the Pyramid project”, the 3D graphics chip designed by Bitboys, the company Trug had started. Little has been published about Wildfire’s work since.
Sources
- Future Crew, Second Reality READ.ME and “The Future Crew Information Package” version 1.0 (FCINFO10.TXT), 7 October 1993, both included in the demo’s source release: member list with real names and ages. https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality
- Future Crew, Second Reality (1993), credits part (
CREDITS/MAIN.C) and end-scroller text (ENDSCROL.TXT) in the source release: credit screens; Wildfire’s greetings. https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality - “The History of the Future Crew”, the group’s own history, written by Gore with later additions, republished by apollo-X Demo Resources, December 1999 (web, secondary): Wildfire joining in autumn 1992 from the Atari ST scene; The Party 1992 invitation; Panic; military service in 1995; the 1997 Pyramid project. https://wayback.defacto2.net/apollo-x-demo-resources-1999-december-17/fc.htm
- The Party 1992, official results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): Panic second in the PC demo competition. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1992/theparty92/results.txt
- Wikipedia, “Future Crew” (web, secondary): Wildfire as Arto Vuori. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Crew
- Demozoo, scener entry for Wildfire (web, secondary): membership of Extream; Atari ST productions. https://demozoo.org/sceners/672/