What is your favourite demo?

[Tim Janssen]

I must confess I have not watched many demos on the Amiga but somehow I have managed to create a Top 5:

1 Jesus on E's, 1992: A 2-disc music demo featuring the best house music that was common back in 1992. It features some black 'n' white footage of a '2 Unlimited' video.

2 Hardwired by Crionics, 1991: Another 2 discs with some amazing graphics and animations. It starts off with a spacestation which gets infected by bugs. Other interesting sections are a raytraced toilet pot, vektor animations and a light source -objects animation.

3 State of the Art by Spaceballs, 1992: The title says it all, does it? It is a video clip with women silhouettes dancing. When I first saw this demo I thought I was watching MTV! :D

4 Odyssey by Alcatraz?, 1992: This demo tells a sort of epic space adventure. It has a vektor spaceship travelling along pre-drawn landscapes. The music is sooo atmospheric, it sends shivers down my spine.

5 Arte, 1994: A neat little demo with some astonishing images and funky music by an artist called Moby. I especially like the section where some plasma wobbles all over the screen. Arte is a demo with an unique style.

What are your favourite demos?

[RCK]

Arg, actually, my favourite old-school demo is on the PC demo scene (don't kill me for this :D)
It is of course Second Reality from Future Crew (1993)

[Tim Janssen]

Hmm, never heard of Second Reality before. But then again, I was never interested in demos on the pc. What is that demo like?

Last year I downloaded a 128Kb pc demo from Back to the roots. When I played it on my Pentium 90 it was like a slide show with its s-l-o-w moving animations. -Stupid pc's. I want those days back when people pushed a machine to its limit. :mad

[RCK]

Second Reality work perfectly on a 486dx2 with gravis ultrasound (or sound blaster) card. (real mode dos of course)

So you won't have speed problem with it :)

I'm sure that majority of all the demoscene guys heard about this demo.

More on it later ... :agree

[Bobic]

Favourite demos? Here we go (even if I'm a little bit late):


A500:
1) Arte / Sanity
2) 9 Fingers / Spaceballs
3) Sequential / Andromeda
4) Desert Dream / Kefrens
5) Extension / Pygmy Projects
6) Interference / Sanity
7) Technological Death / Mad Elks
8) World of Commodore / Sanity
9) Hardwired / Cryonics-Silents
10) Flower Power / Anarchy


Music Disks:
1) Memorial Songs / Alcatraz
2) Memorial Songs 2 / Razor 1911
3) Dizzy Tunes 2 / Spaceballs
4) Jesterday / Sanity
5) Extravaganja / Nerve Axis


Slideshows:
1) 5977 / Scoopex
2) Sun / T.R.S.I.
3) Seven Seas / Andromeda
4) Artcore / Scoopex
5) Forgotten / Mirage


AGA Demos (too much for a top 5, because all are brilliant)::
Real / Complex
Nexus 7 / Andromeda
Full Moon / Virtual Dreams - Fairlight
Love / Virtual Dreams - Fairlight
Faktory / Virtual Dreams - Fairlight
Friday at eight / Polka Brothers
My Kingdom / Haujobb
Mnemonics / Haujobb
Relic / Nerve Axis
Alien 2 / Scoopex
Rain / The Black Lotus
Perfect Circle / The Black Lotus
Amsterdam Blessings / Mawi
I want to be machine / Appendix
Closer / CNCD
Adam Malysz / Ephidrena
Concrete / Ephidrena
J / Ephidrena
Substral / Ephidrena
Vision / Oxygene
Control / Oxygene
Origin / Complex
Motion / Bomb
Shaft 7 / Bomb
Klone / Dual Crew-Shining
When we ride on our enemies / Skarla
...and many more.


AGA Intros:
1) Superautodrome 2 / Scoopex
2) 1000% / Scoopex
3) Electricity / Appendix
4) Electra / Darkage
5) Gush / Potion


PC Demos (too much for a top 5, because all are brilliant):
Inside / CNCD
Stars / Noon
Contrast / Oxygene
State of Mind / Bomb
Vip 2 / Poxy Team
Kasparov / Elitegroup
Fall equals winter / Replay
Two watermelons and one indoor ape /Replay
Mikrostrange / Haujobb
Mosaic / Haujobb
Toys / Gods
Moral Hard Candy / Blasphemy
No Exit / Nomad
Shad 2 / Cocoon-Syndrome
Tesla / Sunflower
Wonder / Sunflower
Zilog / Sunflower
Black 2000 / Farbrausch
... and many more.


PC Intros:
1) Heaven Seven / Exceed
2) Fr-08: The Product / Farbrausch
3) Stash / The Black Lotus
4) Tac-2 / Tazadum
5) Fukwit Daddy / Haujobb


Downloads? Check the link below. 90% of the mentioned stuff is online there ;)

[Bobic]

@ Tim:

Did you know that "State of the Art" WAS shown several times on MTV? Believe me! "Yes"/Orange Juice even took his Amiga to some of his favourite clubs and they always played/shown the demo there.

Unfortunately it's not one of my favourite demos. Excellent style, but I don't like techno music. I can't watch the demo without turning off the sound... The music in the sequel 9 Fingers was far better (in my opinion).

[Mangar]

I liked the budbrain demos.. not as spectacular technically but I liked the music and humour..

[RCK]

favourite oldschool one: (ordered) Second Reality / Future Crew (zic: Skaven & Purple motion)
HeartQuake / Iguana (zic: Ryan Cramer)
Juice / Psychic Link (zic: Skywalker)
Crystal Dream II / Triton prod (zic: Lizardking)
Dx project / Realtech (zic: MindFuck)
favourite newschool one: (no order) Plastik / Purple (zic: der mystical)
State Of Mind / Bomb
Liquid A / Omnicolour
Experimental / Wipe
Square / Pulse (zic: Shad)
Sexadelix / Byterapers Inc (zic: Legend)
73 million seconds / Pulse
Moaï / Nomad (zic: Djamm)
Robotnik / Rage (zic: fajser)
Little Simple Demo / knights (zic: Logic Dream)
Tribes / melon design, pulse
favourite 64k one: (ordered) heaven 7 / exceed
Drift / WILD LIGHT (zic: Nobody)
favourite 3D accelerated one: (ordered) VIP2 / PoPsY TeAm
fr-08 / the product (zic: KB)
T o Y S / Gods (zic: Soni & Liszt)

[Khephren]

I'm looking for a PC demos with Skull as a Coder. He was the bloke behind Full Moon and Love demos for Virtual Dreams/Fairlight.

With PC demos being so piss poor, I'd like to see what he can do.

[Bobic]

@Kephren:

I've never seen a PC demo from Dr. Skull, the same for other people from FLT/VD. Some of them are still active, but they're writing JAVA stuff now. Check out http://www.sumea.com for more info. I don't know if Dr. Skull is with them, but for sure Alien is one of the guys behind this project.


@RCK:
Seems you're such a big scene music freak as I am. Mystical's tune for Plastic is excellent, the same for the music from the first great PC 64k intro I've ever seen: Drift! I forgot to mention it, too.

And shame on me - how could I forgot Statix best demo ever: Square! It's really sad to see that he's out of the scene now, because he is one of the demoscene gods. Ok, probably he's too busy now with fixing all those bugs in Black+White :)

Lizardking is probably the best Amiga musician ever. Better than Hülsbeck :). Have you heard his fabulous (but sad) song "Desta", yet (http://www.starbreeze.com/music/Desta.mp3) or the spiritual sounding http://www.starbreeze.com/music/SriOfGovandhara.mp3 ?

Also his trailer music for the game "Enclave" sounds excellent. Enclave is looking and sounding so good, that I think I'll buy a X-Box just for being able to play this game :)

[Khephren]

I always preferred Jogeir Liljedahl as the best musician on the Amiga with Gustaf Grefburg (LK) a close second and the much underrated Olaf Gustafsson (Blaizer) behind him.

Think myself and RCK have had this discussion before.

State of the Art was a good demo in the sense that I believe it was the first time in a demo that what can only be described as motion capture was used.

The tune was excellent by Travolta, and I don't particularly like that kind of music either.

Bobic,

The last I heard was he was under the nick of Skull and in a PC group, whose name I have forgotten.

[RCK]

Have you heard his fabulous (but sad) song "Desta"

Of course !, LK is my all-time favorite musician, I have 99% off all his song and CDs :) I also have one 30min video report on Starbreeze studio, where we can see exclusive picture of the now dead "Sorcery" (and we can listen to exclusive sorcery songs in it !) yes, more than the 3 songs you can always download from Starbreeze website ;)

About LK recent songs, have you heard the two last songs he have done for The Merregnon Project ? wonderfull. In the same spirit like sorcery.
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?threadid=306


and about Xbox, just see our little discussion about E3 to understand that I won't buy it.
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?threadid=327

[Bobic]

Of course I know the Merregnon Soundtrack (review at BTTR :). The producer Thomas Böcker is a very good friend of me. Hope we'll be able to hear the next musical masterpiece at the end of the next year.

Lizardking's tunes for the Merregnon CD are excellent, but "Burning Lascest" from Olof is my favourite song, followed by Purple Motion's "Welcome to Merregnon" and Markus Holler's "Refreshing Bath".


P.S.: I'm not sure if you know Mawi's Mekka+Symposium 2001 demo "Amsterdam Blessings". If not, give it a try. Excellent production with a brilliant endpart tune. Trust me - I think we both like the same kind of music. The demo is working in a perfect speed with WinUAE 0816.
Download: http://www.back2roots.org/Demos/Files/Amsterdam

If you prefer to watch the demo as a DivX encoded video, go to:
http://omr.planet-d.net/amidemos/amster.zip

[RCK]

Excellent end music, very advanced gfx during all the demonstration...
thanks bobic !
if someone could grab the mod file of the end-tune, it would be perfect :) (btw, mod or mp3 ?)

I'm also awaiting for the next music cd from the scene ;)

[Tim Janssen]

Hi Bobic,

Some posts ago you wrote:
Did you know that "State of the Art" WAS shown several times on MTV?
No, I did not know that. This demo was created in 1993 and I am not surprised if it made an apperance on MTV. Pity I have missed it. Two years earlier a group called Urban Shakedown produced a song called Some Justice with their Amiga. I have seen their video sometimes on MTV. It made me proud owning an Amiga.

I am a big fan of house-music demos featuring motion-captured people. State of the Art is best but Nine Fingers and Fairlight's Elfmania/ 242 demo come second.

I have not seen many PC demos in my life. Well, only one to be precise: Fukwit Daddy. This demo moved much too slow on my Pentium 90. -And I always thought the main purpose of a demo is to get the most out of a machine. Damn, how I hate PC's.:mad

[Bobic]

Tim: Fukwit Daddy is a masterpiece. The design is awesome. The effects are not the best, but design means a lot (not even for me).

The scene on the PC has changed a lot, compared to the Amiga scene. Today computer games are always looking better than demos, because a team of about 20-50 (or more) people is working on it for a couple of years. Companies are spending millions of dollars into a project.
Hobby programmers like most of the demoscene coders can't work on a demo with such a big team for two years. They have to finish it in their spare time. Therefore no 3D engine of a PC demo can be compared with e.g. the Quake 3 engine.

Many PC groups are making excellent looking PC demos with cool 3D scenes (e.g. Mikrostrange/Haujobb, Vip 2/Popsy Team and others).
But there are also people who want to use simple effects. They're trying to create a special style, a special atmosphere with simpler effects and atmospheric music which is perfectly synced with the effects. "Fukwit Daddy" is one of those demos.

Those "design demos" are often much better than demos which show boring 3d scenes all the time. I want to watch something which can be described as "scene art and design" and not a so called scene demo, which reminds me more on a game.

Of course "Fukwit Daddy" doesn't work well on a P90. You should have a PII and a fast accelerator card or better :). For most of todays demos you should have a PIII (or better) with Geforce 2.


Viewing tip: "Heaven Seven". For me, this PC 64k intro is the best scene production which I've seen, yet. The effects are impressive, the design is simply brilliant and the music is the best piece of scene music which I've ever heard (this says someone, who don't like house music :)). It won't work 100% smooth in the slowest resolution on a P90, but give it a try. No accelerator card needed. Just realtime raytraycing in perfection. Grab it from:
ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/parties/2000/mekkasymposium00/in64/h7-final.zip


Btw - Nobody shall misunderstand me. I don't want to say that PC demos are better than Amiga demos. I like both. This year at the Mekka+Symposium 2001 scene party (Germany's biggest scene event) the Amiga demos have easily beaten all PC productions (RCK: Amsterdam Blessings was one of these demos :)). Guess how impressed I was when seeing it on the bigscreen. And after hearing the endpart music for the first time I had bubbles in my stomach :) Many peoples from Paris where there, too - including Yes+Chandra from Orange Juice).

[Akira]

Nice discussion here :) I just got back from a local digital arts/demoscene party. They showed a lot of demos for the PC, and there was, of course , a local competition. I got the 1st place at Flash demos, 2nd at Hires art and I about 6th at MP3 music. Of course, I took my Amiga with me. Everybody says "WOW" when they see it :) I couldnt use it because I had to remove the vidcap card from my PC.. I was planning to do an oldschool module with protracker. Maybe next time :)

I agree with Bobic here, about State of the Art. The music is ARSE but the rest is great. 9 fingers is a better dwemo, if only for the music.

Anyway, fave demos/intros:

Amiga ECS:
- 9 Fingers / Spaceballs
- Desert Dreams / Kephrens
- Technoogical Death / Mad Elks
- Extension / Pygmy
- Tetris / Melon Dezign
- Millenium / Scoopex

PC:
- State of Mind / Bomb
- Stash / TBL
- Kkowboys / Pulse?
- Heaven 7 / exceed
- Fuckwitt Daddy / Haujobb

...and others i saw this weekend and i forgot :P

THere are soem really cool ones for teh PC. Oh, accelerated ones, I love the ones done by a lcoal scener named Panoramix. He made a WICKED demo last year, and this year he did a better one. Worth a check. I'll try to nab the whole party archive, we never publish it in intl. scene sites, and we should!

Bobic: Nice to se you around! This is a great board. BTW, you could contact Codetapper thru here. His email is at his info.

[Bobic]

Akira: Thanks. I thought you're talking about Codetapper after I read throught some messages here ;).

[Akira]

Codetapper is a great guy. He will be happy to help you, methinks. I am now looking for a copy of Putty Squad for him. I think I saw that ellusive bastard somewhere around here!

[Tim Janssen]

I come back to the discussion about Amiga demos on TV. Last weekend (23-06-2001) I watched some trance/ambient videos late night in the program "Chillout Zone" on MTV Europe. To my surprise I saw a video featuring exactly the same effects which I also have seen on an Amiga Music demo called "Bass". It had a whirring path which was stretched horizontally every few seconds.
If I am correct that video was called 3Lux.

Does anyone know this video and whether Amigas were used? I think the video is produced somewhere in 1993.

[Sniper5*]

First Demo's I ever saw...

Wild Copper & an AT-AT from Star Wars shooting some helicopter in New York.

Couldn't believe my eye's!! :eek

[MrDig]

Bit late but anyway... Favourite demos:

1. Tint (The Black Lotus)
2. 9 Fingers
3. The Prey
4. Alien (Scoopex)
5. Storm
6. Psyschedelic
7. Budbrain series

They are not all that spectacular, but mostly due to nostalgia I enjoy these demos the most...

[Fred the Fop]

I like any demo with little elves dancing and prancing with reindeer antlers shoved up their.....

[Tim Janssen]

Hi Fred,
Overall I prefer other 'special FX' in demos than the one you mentioned.;)
Now I come to think of it, there is a demo on Amiga called Elfmania 242. It was written by Fairlight in 1993. It has some bloke walking down the streets followed by a camera. It is very arty and makes me wonder how they have managed to cram all data onto one disc. Pity no naughty elves can be found in this demo.

[Fred the Fop]

LOL..good to see someone with a sense of humor here:)
Tim, my fave demo is listed and posted below. I have not seen many, and only recently have been looking at them, as well as those on Atari St....fun to see people pushing limits:)

[Khephren]

In my opinion, 242 ranks alongside other great innovations in demos.

If Dr Skull had a superb graphic compression routine. The end animation of the Love Demo is another superb example.

If you look in memory after resetting the demo, the images are small and just zoomed up.

[Akira]

I like Fairlight's 242 as well. One excellent demo, it is.

[Fred the Fop]

If you have the ADF or the location where I may get it, would you please, Akira?:)

[Akira]

Hmmm could it be the Aminet? I forgot, really.

If it wasn´t the Aminet, it was MAlc´s ALE

[turk182]

hmm...
I liked a lot of the demos already mentioned (I wont mention them again ..well maybe Desert dreams.. )so heres a few not metioned I think..
1.Scoopex Mental Hangover..Bril tune & one of the first textures 3d.
2.was it COMA ,with the cream of the earth track?
3. REBELS (Subway train demo) ,It was orginal
hmm all the above were single loaders...
Redsector megademo (remember the guy with the match)
Kefrens megademo 8 for the varied types of demos...
vision 4 for the cool music.
old skool mahoney kaktus stuff on Northstar +fairlight...(boing -bing boom cha!!!):)
4.Phenomena enigma
any mega demo with jespyer kyd music tracks on them...(ICE ,global trash?)
I also like the design by lemon (nice jamirquoi sounding music) ,was melon a parody ?cos there stuff looked cool & similar too...
I cant remember the name ,but that bloke playing the bagpipes on a hill demo ,using the most overused samples of a flute ever...
I think In the kitchen was nice by anarchy they had some other nice stuff too.
thats all i can think off for now..

[CHiEF]

hehe nice discussion here, oh we love our demos.... as far as i'm concerned the best amiga demo was either fairlight/virtual dreams - "love" , or rebels - "switchback"...

as far as peecee goes, anything by "orion" is normally pretty cool,, although peecee stuff requires so much more power than the tiny amiga boxes ;] hehe

[Time Bandit]

I watch demos since 1989 ...now for 12 years and it is fun reading this thread!

My fac amiga demos are

some Phenomena Stuff by Mr. Gurk ( i really do not know the name, but it was very early stuff )

SUBSTANCE by Alliance Design / Quartex
Arte by Sanity
Full Moon by CNCD
Flower Power by Anarchy


good peecee demos are:

CRYSTAL DREAMS 2 by Triton
Stash by TBL
Robotnik by RAGE
???? by Free Electric Band / Amiga Oldskool Freaks
( forgot the name but the soundtrak is awesome )

[Bobic]

Originally posted by Time Bandit
???? by Free Electric Band / Amiga Oldskool Freaks
( forgot the name but the soundtrak is awesome )


yes, you're right. the demo is called "alto knallo". it features great effects (for 1995), but the design is poor. The music is in my opinion the best trance song ever made. Excellent work from Ronny (music can be downloaded from http://www.back2roots.org/Music/Files/Ronny)

The demo was made by Chaos, Fiver, Mr. Pet and other famous ex-Amiga sceners. After making that demo these people started to work for VCC Entertainemtn (www.vcc.de) and are still producing games (the best one so far is called Killer Loop). They're still active in the demoscene. First they made demos as "Elitegroup", now their group is called "Farbrausch".

[gary]

I became interested in the demo scene from the days when I used a Commodore 64. I bought an Amiga500 in 1990 and the first Amiga demo I saw was:

Mental Hangover (Scoopex)

Other favourites are:

Arte / Sanity (best ECS demo I've seen)
State of the Art / Spaceballs (best for showing to non-demo people)
Nine Fingers / Spaceballs
Budbrain Megademo 1 (good fun)
In the kitchen / Anarchy
Enigma / Phenomena
Wicked Sensation / TRSI
Sound Vision / Reflex
Sequential / Andromeda
C.A.T / Silents (for the music)

Then of course there were the animations:
Eric swartz, Simpsons, Itchy & Scratchy, etc. etc.

My interest in demos dried up when they started making demos that required extra RAM/Disk/faster CPU..etc.. It started to become like the PC demo scene :(

Demos were an art form on the Amiga. It's sad that these days the hardware in the Sony/Nintendo game boxes isn't used like that.

[Djay]

i was re-directed to this thread by Bobic, thx for pointing out my mistake...

my fav demos are

State of the Art - Spaceballs
9 Fingers - Spaceballs
Fairlight 242 - Virtual Dreams/Fairlight
Enigma - Phenomena
Technological Death - Mad Elks
Hardwired - Crionics
Switchback AGA - Rebels

and loads of them that i can't remember the name of right now