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                        15 YEARS OF DEMO SCENE ON ATARI ST
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                                   1987 - 2oo2
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                            a few thoughts by moondog

In the last days, as I was  hard working to finish this  damn issue of UCM and I
browsed on the search for news through several pages, it hitted me like a club..

Damn! This year the ST scene exists since about 15 years already! And even if we
are faded and shrinked like  hell, we're still alive! That is a reason that must
be celebrated in some way! Don't you think?!

Yes, the ST scene has  survived and it wasn't easy, since you have to think that
the golden years for the ST already ended 1o years ago, as the Falcon arrived on
the horizon  and over years  the ST scene  was drifted  away in  the underground
completely but it didn't died at  all. Yes, it even matched it to make some kind
of revival, that was short  living but shows that the machine is still alive and
far from being kicked to its very end and limits.

Who would have thought in 1992, as New Mode of Delta Force claimed the scene was
dead, that somewhen  people are trying  to create stuffs  like textured tunnels,
floors, bumpmaps, environment mappers and so on on this tiny 8Mhz machine?

Ok, the ST scene is a bit  late in this, since  several 8bit machines matched it
to bring  this  years before, but  after all  the ST scene  didn't  lost all the
connections and after there  were some  damn quiet  years, another generation of
high end coders appeared, not  as many as in the golden years, but they are able
to do things nobody expected, and they're following the old scene spirit, to try
out what is possible on that machines...

Our, the  ST scene's, big old  rival didn't  survived btw... nobody speaks about
the Amiga 5oo anymore, even if it was a great  demo machine, but somehow it died
and there is no specialized scene back there. They went almost completely to the
Amiga AGA scene, a thing that never happened on the Atari since there were still
guys left on the ST and I remember very well a sentence by "our old coder" Kyne,
who announced in 1994 in the intro of Undercover # 3, that it isn't time for the
ST to die and that we will go on supporting it and releasing stuff on it...

After all the ST scene rised several years later like a phoenix from the flames,
even though  it was never completely faded  away, the UCM is still around, still
based on the ST... only Kyne  disappeared. And so did a  lot others as well, not
only the big  coders on the scene, nope, also  a lot of friends  vanished nearly
completely. I have to admit that I  have lost almost  all of them, of the freaks
that have guided me into this scene... but I'm proud to stand here, still.

I'm since 199o on the ST now, was only (as the most others) some gambler at 1st,
but then I  discovered something  that was called demo scene and I was addicted!
I'm following the scene  since 1o years now, being  an active member for 9 years
as well and I must say, some years back I wouldn't have thought that my way will
last as long since I  saw the scene dying in the middle of the nineties. I liked
the Falcon scene much, having my second Falcon nowadays, but after all I have my
roots on the ST, still using it and following any move of the last survivors.

And so I'm happy that there are still coders around that will support this great
computer. Furthermore  I'm happy to see  the scene revival on the Internet, that
brings us back all the stuff of long lost and  forgotten times. I have about 8oo
disx with demos  and stuff laying  in boxes in  my cellars, and I don't know how
many of them are still  ok after so many  years (I still have some that are from
my beginning times!)...

And those disx containing stuff like the "B.I.G. DEMO" or "LCD DEMO" by TEX that
were created in 1987, who were  more or the less the  founders of a new culture,
the demo scene on  the Atari ST. I don't know if those disx are still running or
are destroyed, but I know that they're spread over the whole Internet, laying on
so many ftp sites and download  sites, dedicated to the ST scene, that they will
maybe never vanish anymore.

A lot of years back, Kyne or Seboz, one of my old bands' (.tnb.) coders left the
scene since he thought  it would be senseless  to code, since he thought that it
will not  last very long untill nobody remembers his efforts to create something
anymore. In some points he was right, since the most  people today can't imagine
the hard works the first freaks did in near hardware programming, in opening the
borders on ST, in displaying  all colours  at once and so on, in doing things no
one has ever  thought that  it would be possible... And if the Internet wouldn't
have taken  over the  job  to save all  that works for  the future, maybe nobody
would even remember to that times and that releases anymore.

But the Internet saved  our formerly disk  based scene before it vanished and so
the Internet helped us to survive... And this has infected  again and again more
people, old  and new  ones, with the  old Atari scene  virus. Nobody  would have
thought about  digging out every  single bit  released on Atari in the middle of
the nineties. Today there  are nearly masses of  addicted people on the hunt for
all the  old releases. And sometimes there  are people  that are  going one step
beyond, joining the still active tribe... maybe not for long, but long enough to
give the active scene more  diversity, more colours, to make it  more attractive
to other people, to make it move!

 And so it moves, far from being dead... 15 years we matched, another 15 to go!

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                  JOIN THE TRIBE - STAY ACTIVE - STAY ATARI
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.tSCc.                                                          moondog . o4/2k2
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