Volume 1 Demoscene the Amiga years 1984 1993

Say “Boing” and fans of the Amiga think of the first demo, written in 1984 by Dale Luck and RJ Mical for a prototype displayed at CES, that used the machine’s unique hardware capabilities to create smooth animated 3D graphics with stereo sound. It was hugely important to the machine’s success, and captured people’s imagination – and a generation used the Amiga to express their creativity and ingenuity.

The Amiga demoscene thrived and evolved, and this book chronicles many of the scene’s favourites from multiple groups through interviews with their creators: coders, producers, artists, musicians from many countries are included. 450 full colour gloss pages in a quality hardback binding.

Demoscene the Amiga years reflects the making of the best demos as well as the history of the most emblematic and best known groups of the demoscene. Discover numerous pictures of demos through more than 450 pages as well as contributions of “sceners”. This book is the first volume covering the years 1984 to 1993 with about 90 demos amongst the most famous and popular ones.

Volume 2 Demoscene the AGA years 1994 1996

The Amiga Demoscene, from its inception, has always evolved with the times, and reinvented itself, always pushing the limits of Commodore’s flagship machine. From the Megademo, at the end of the 80s, to trackmos in the 90s, 1994 was the beginning of a new development for the Demoscene, with many demos released that used all the power of the Amiga 1200.

The Amiga 1200 was released in October 1992, and was the third generation of Amiga for the home market. Like its Amiga 500 brother, it was designed to be a single box solution, incorporating the keyboard, processor, chipset, floppy disk drive, expansion ports internal and external, and support for an internal hard disk. The 68020 processor running at 14MHz was supported by 2MB of memory, AmigaOS 3, and the new Amiga Advanced Graphics Architecture – AGA.

Demoscene the AGA Years is the second volume of our series dedicated to the Amiga demoscene. In 1992 the arrival of the Amiga 1200 piqued the interest of several demo groups and many coders, graphic designers and musicians. Some abandoned the Amiga 500 entirely to focus exclusively on the Amiga 1200. The arrival of this new model was a notable improvement, with the overall power of the machine being quadrupled thanks to a stronger processor operating at a faster speed and higher speed RAM. The color palette of the AGA chipset increases to 16,777,216 – or 24-bit – colour too, giving the demomakers a new playground in which to create.

Volume 3 Demoscene the Amiga renaissance 1997 2024

Commodore filed for bankruptcy in 1994. One year later ESCOM, a PC manufacturer and chain of computer stores, bought what was left of the company. The elegance and efficiency of the Amiga architecture had finally been beaten by Moore’s law, and the PC: x86 processors, with supporting graphics and sound cards, were able to do way more than even the most powerful Amiga simply by having more transistors in their components, higher clock speeds, cheaper storage and better communication options. Sceners, gamers, and the public in general, were migrating to PCs. In the demoscene, Amiga 4 channel modules gave way to full scores composed and mixed on PC, taking way more space than the Amiga floppy could provide. Hand drawn low resolution graphics with indexed colour were stomped by 24 bit artwork created with Photoshop, or full 3D worlds with texture mapping, coupled with effects made possible by raw power that the Amiga simply could not conceive.

Those who remained faithful to the Amiga often tried to create similar 3D graphical spectaculars, requiring more and more hardware until the most powerful (and expensive) processor in Motorola’s 68k family was a requirement, along with lots of disk space to play back the fully sampled soundtrack… Were these Amiga demos?

In 1991, 2266 Amiga demos were released making up nearly 50% of all releases. By 2001, that figure was 170 – just under 10% of releases that year. Naturally demographics had a strong influence too, as the once-young sceners had to prioritise jobs, family and other commitments instead of slaving away to create their unique blend of art and science. For a decade, the Amiga – and indeed the overall demoscene – was moribund. The 53 Amiga releases in 2010 made up less than 5% of the total demoscene output. Computers had become just a business tool, and creating demos earned you nothing other than recognition from a subculture,

It seems all of Gaul the scene is entirely occupied by Romans PCs. Well, not entirely… One small village community of indomitable Gauls Amigans still holds out against the invaders.

Details about demoscene books collection

A lot of demos and demogroups

Read about groups such as Crionics, Sanity, Melon dezign, Anarchy, Andromeda, Fairlight, The Silents, Alcatraz, Kefrens, Lemon, Rebels, Spaceball, Razor 1911…. as well as many other groups.

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