UCM25
.tHE .sIRIUS .cYBERNETICS .cORPORATION
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1o years Falcon Demoscene 1993 - 2oo3
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1o years already?! Oh gosh, how fast the time passed by, sometimes it seems to
me as it was just a few years ago that we were sitting at the Dresden Coding
Convention, back in 1993, as I saw the first Falcon demo of my life, "Warum", on
the big screen, as well as the days I was at Lot's home and I searched for more
demostuff on his Falcon's HD... A new era was dawning at this time, the Atari
scene changed in a way it didn't made in its existence since the ST was born and
the ST demo scene arised in somewhat around 1987...
Seen from today those old demos have lost their most impressive moments they had
on our Falconless minds in 1993. But we have to face the fact that without those
beginners, a big part of our todays scene wouldn't exist. And in fact, those
first Falcon demo makers had hard to fight to squeeze something out of their
machines, problems you stumble over in nearly every of the early demos. Nobody
had a good painting tool for the Falcon and the fewest had connections to PC or
Amiga Graficians, so the first Falcon demos often featured just grafix, painted
on the ST and often it was a fact that just one or two members of a group had a
Falcon at all. Even though the most programmers started quite fast with the
development of painting tools and so on, it took quite a while until the first
reasonable results could be seen in the demos.
And so it was on all edges, on nearly every territory the Falcon demo scene had
to start from scratch and for this point, the demos looked very amazing, even if
it took quite a while too untill the Falcon coders matched it to leave the Atari
oldschool problem, you remember all those black backgrounds and screens that
following each other without stylish transitions...
Ok, I wont talk too much blabla here but want to write down my views on some of
the old demos, also seen from today. I try to write those small reviews in best
possible chronological order... So here we go...
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"Cebit '93" by The Respectables
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released ... March 1993
In fact, I wonder why I count that demo here :) In fact it was just a laugh, as
it looked somehow like a single ST screen and showed off that The Respectables
were the most overrated chaps around on the german scene. Ok, just joking here..
The demo brings some nice grafix, a starfield (woah) in 32 greyscales, scrolling
and such stuff... so not much to say about, except that it featured a nice sound
track on limited 25 KHz (usually on STE)...
I have to admit that this demo belongs to the most seldom loaded demos of my
past... even today I have to say, it was just boring and I wonder where the hype
around Duke and Tyrem was coming from...
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"Fever Week" by Aura
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released ... April 1993
This small dentro was the first Aura demo on the Falcon and at first not planned
to be a public release. Aura was already some years around but got their real
breakthrough on the ST quite late in 1992 with the demos "Mathematica" and over
all "Hifidreams". Esp. Chris of Aura did a lot of documentations for Falcon
coding but after all more or less only BDC was the one, who coded demos on that
machine.
So what shows this little thingie? We get a multidirectional softscrolling
background, showing a faked TCB logo and loads of german text to read. Mainly
craptalk stuff. Between the in and outscrolling textpages we get several vector
objects of quite big dimensions while a nice module is played in the background.
Seen from today this small demo gathers just very low attention, it doesn't
shows off the real abilities on Falcon, in fact there is nothing to see the STE
for example wasn't able to show as well. Therefore it was one of the very first
demos on the Falcon at all. At this moment I'm not sure if it wasn't maybe the
first Falcon demo at all.
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"Warum" by Lazer
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release ... August 1993
Without any doubt Lazers' "Warum" demo belongs to the real Falcon classics. It
was along with Sanitys' "Terminal Fuckup" one of the few Falcon demos in 1993
that used the higher colour palettes of the Falcon for some quite colourfull
effects.
Furthermore this demo installed a little hype around the band Lazer that never
matched it to step out of the shadow of the big ST groups before. It was the
first of three demos in a row that matched it to deplace other competition demos
and got the first place. This one has won the 68oXo convention.
The demo features an original and for those times very stunning soundtrack and
while it lacked more or less pixeled grafix completely, it impressed the
watchers with fx like RGB vector balls, a blurred/delayed filled vector ball,
filled vectors with hicolour plasmas on their surfaces, transforming big line
vector objects, multicoloured dots splines, multidelayed flat vector logos, RGB
interference circles and several other stuff.
I still remember me sitting at Lots' home watching this demo over and over again
in autumn 1993, we just can't get enough of it... even though the demo was a bit
de-conjured a few months later, as Lucky of ST did a demo with his old group,
The Friendship Cooperation, called "Spaceballs", that brought some of the shown
effects to the ST.
Seen from today watching "Warum" is like digging out "Ooh Crickey" on the ST, it
is just a classic on the Falcon, even though the effects don't knock your chair
away anymore, but "Warum" is a demo every Falcon user should have seen and over
all should have in his collection, as this demo founded somehow the competition
between the young Falcon scene groups even though Lazer was never deplaced as
band in a competition.
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"When Dreams Become Reality" by New Trend
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release ... August 1993
New Trend was also a band that never matched its breakthrough on the ST scene
even if they were since quite a while around. In fact the band profited much
from the joining of Lig Lury, formerly known as Mr.Pee of The Cyclemasters, who
was more or less responsible for the short rise of New Trend in the Falcon demo
scene.
This demo was also released at the 68oXo convention but had no chance against
Lazers' demo. While Lazer avoided it to build in too much pixelstuff to make a
break to ST demos, New Trend presenting a lot of grafix, all in 16 colours and
done on the ST. And except two effects this demo looked like a ST demo then.
Ok, we get a quite hard rocking soundtrack, but the presented effects didn't
matched it to come close to Lazers' demo.
We get a realtime raytracing ball, 4 plane keftales together with shadebobs (in
those years a standard ST effect), a very slow multicoloured texture cube, then
magnetic linevectors and a starfield. So nothing much revolutionary, just the
texture cube shows a glimpse of the abilities of the Falcon as it uses the hi
colour mode.
Seen from today I have to admit that this demo just wanders around in my archive
but I didn't loaded it since years anymore, just for this article again, as it
lost the few bits of its impressions after shortest time.
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"Plastic Dreams" by New Power Generation
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release ... August 1993
Another ST group comes up, NPG was well known in the scene since they released a
bunch of nice demo compact disx, as well as a megademo (known as the demo with
the thousand names) and some very cool dentros (maybe you remember "World Of
Wonders" that was also released in 1993).
They stopped their works on ST as the Falcon came up and belonged to the first
Falcon demo groups and to the best bands the german Falcon scene had to offer
at this time, even though they never matched it to win a competition.
This demo is the first of the -only- two big demo releases they did on the Falcy
at all, somehow they started a huge game project at the same year, I saw the 1st
previews already in autumn 1993, "Incubator", and this not only sucked off all
energy the group had to offer, no, it was also the last lifesign of the band
itself... Some demostuff they were working on in 1996 never saw the light of day
in the end...
This demo starts with a raytraced NPG logo, followed by a pixeled title logo
that offers some kind of main menu (not interactive). All future actions start
from here then. The music is some heavy technoing tune we know from Tyan already
and stomps around quite monotone...
The show itself offers one after another many effects we know from the ST, such
as filled vector cubes, a dots tunnel with 4ooo dots, some complex vector stuff,
the demo furthermore takes the mouth very full as it announced to bring a better
rotozoomer than "Terminal Fuckup" by Sanity and this one features a raytraced
picture. We go on with plasma stuff, a dots volcano and fractales...
Seen from today this demo is already overtopped by several todays ST releases.
The steady use of ST artwork by Carnera, that isn't bad at all, improves that
feeling a lot. So the demo belongs to the more mediocre releases and I have to
admit that I didn't watched it very often, even in the past.
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"Crime" by DNT Crew
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release ... September 1993
Also the DNT Crew was known from the ST but apart from the unregular released
DNT Paper diskmags they weren't that much known for demostuff. Therefore they
belonged to the first french bands that released stuff on the Falcon and with
"Crime" they released one of the first multipart demos on this machine.
"Crime" comes along with a short looped heavy metal sample (that goes onto your
nerves very fast if you don't like such music) and several effects known from
the ST but blown up a little bit now, so you get 8plane shadebobs, several fast
dots objects, a big lightsourced dnt vector logo, several mandelbrot screens and
two gelee balls as well as an end scroller.
The effects can't deny their origin and the style of the demo seems to be quite
inspired by older ST demos, the usual black backgrounds and no liquid design and
after all, in 1993 the ST demo scene made some big technical steps that leaved
this demo far behind.
Seen from today "Crime" belongs to the demos you wont load that often again,
"Warum" was long time not topped (in fact 1994 better demos were released) and
this demo doesn't made an exception. It doesn't offers any special effects in
the end and misses the special feeling "Warum" was able to create.
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WHAT ELSE?
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Apart from those major releases a lot of other demos popped up in 1993 but those
were mostly just one screen demos. To the first releases we can count SANITY's
genious "Terminal Fuckup" that was some kind of crossconversion of an Amiga demo
and I liked it very much. More stuff to mention? LIGHT's "68oxo" demo for
example and with autumn 1993 the slow dripping flow of Falcon demos turned more
and more into a little flood, we saw the first screens by BLACK SCORPION, EKO or
even MJJ PROD with their "Place To Be" dentro that appeared in reworked form as
"Mostly Harmless" one year later again.
Ok, after those small reviews let me take some view onto the new born Falcon
demo scene at last. Very interesting to know is the fact that the Falcon demo
scene somehow has it's roots in the german speaking region again, as it was with
the start of the ST demo scene, where german bands took over the same role in
the very first beginning.
And so the majority of the first releases were done by german freaks and we
could see bands like Aura, NPG, Light, The Respectables or New Trend moving
forwards. The reason is still quite strange for me but it could be that the
quite big german Atari community was the jumping point at this. In fact the
german ST scene had left its golden years behind and a wave of underdogs and
newcomers flooded the scene, while old bands still had a big reputation and over
all had their noses quite high in the sky.
Names like ACF or Delta Force still ruled the scene even if their best days
already passed by but all newbies were measured on their level and so the new
machine opened some new territories where all had to start from scratch and in
fact nobody was able to take a break on his old laurels. In fact none of the old
"scene gods" matched it to jump really onto the Falcon train... even though some
guys, just like The Respectables took their mouth damn full, as they announced a
new label called TWID, that consisted of Delta Force, The Exceptions and others,
really it was a laugh, as nobody showed up again...
Therefore the bands on the second range took over the show and many underdogs
did the same and nobody was speaking of the old ST heroes anymore, the rules
have changed and left the oldies behind. Though, unfortunately only the fewest
of the new rising teams were able to keep the fire burning over longer time, the
most of them vanished after 2 or 3 productions... The fewest bands stood longer
than 2 or 3 years active, this was a quite strange thing as the newcomers, the
waybuilders already have left this new scene before it was really grown up. But
they left footsteps for the followers... footsteps we still use today...
So peeps, 1o years after, the Falcon scene is still alive, conquered very new
territories and it is a fact that it turned into motor of a whole community.
Some times back I really thought we have seen all, as the Falcon scene was layin
in stagnation, and I was kind of bored with the new releases, but the last 5
years showed us that the machine still rocks, or better, the coders still know
how to torture it very well, to release demos and effects nobody has thought it
would be possible to do with the Falcy...
So what? Let's go for another 1o years then!
_______________________________________________________________moondog_o1/2k4___
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