The demoscene is a bunch of teenagers making audiovisual computer productions. Since the mid 1980’s it’s been an international network of modem-linked people, sharing their work for free. Here you can find many roots to creative low-tech programming, free sharing of music and so forth. It’s always been surprisingly underground, although today alot of demosceners can be seen in the fields of music releases, multimedia, art, vj:ing, webdesign, etc. The wikipedia entry gives you an idea to the modern demoscene, but the oldschool demoscenes are really what gets me going anyway. The thing is that it’s not about animations. Everything is generated in real-time by the computer, through clever programming skills that makes the computer do things it’s not supposed to be doing.
Anyway, I’ve now updated this blog with info and downloads of most demoscene releases I’ve been doing 1993-2006. So feel free to check it out. Now, it’s really not that complicated to view these things with emulators (though sometimes things look, sound and feel really shitty in emulators). If you’re interested in gaining insight into one of the most interesting underground computer movements, you need to check this. Let me help you.
Commodore 64: Go here, scroll down and download the VICE binary distributions for your operating system. Install it. In a the options pull-down menu, set it to True Drive Emulation, and then you can just download demos and drag and drop them into the emulator. Some suggestions: Hello:Friend, Goa Brudbilder, Megademo 3…
Gameboy: Go here and download KiGB. Download some Gameboy-demo – Demotronic is the best one – and run the KiGB program and load the file. Voila!
Amiga: use UAE but you have to wait for the hot Up Rough hack for it so it becomes easy to use. It’s horrible at the moment.
Okay, now get some proper hardware and do this for real. Some C64-demoscene stuff you need to search CSDB for in your quest for the best: Kjell Nordbo, Panoramic Designs, Wrath Designs, Plush, Booze Design. I’ll be back about this….