Remembering the 90s demo scene!

[PhenoMenal]

CGI has come so far, so fast ... it's just ridiculous how good graphics are these days, both in pre-rendered and live-rendered form, and not just in computer games but more and more in movies these days also

It's 2013 now... let's rewind to 1993 when a Finnish team called Future Crew came 1st at the Assembly demo party conference with a demo called Second Reality... which I hope many of you remember

If not, here it is now in HQ at youtube ...
Future Crew - "SECOND REALITY"

Anyway, 20 years later, the source code for Second Reality has been released - mostly a mixture of x86 assembly ("only" about 50%), C, C++, and a hint of pascal. The codebase itself is nearly twice as big as the Doom engine.

Here's an intriguing 2013 analysis of the 1993 source code which reveals a few surprises:
http://fabiensanglard.net/second_reality/index.php

If you've ever seen Second Reality I guarantee you'll enjoy this very well made parody of it, it had me laughing through all 9 mins and even Trug from Future Crew loved it ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nefmlQDmW2U
(its funnier if you watch the original first tho, afterall it has been a few years!)

See also on youtube Demoscene - Documentary series (not in English, but you can just click the Captions button to get English subtitles)

Anyone else have any reflections on the 90s demo scene???

 

[purple_man]

dang how time flies by...

blessss

 

[Max Headroom]

i didn't see many PC demos back in the day - but i well remember days and nights spent watching demos and intros on the C64. (technically late '80s, early '90s)

when i first saw the tutankhamun move in this part of the legendary 'pimplesqueezer' series by rawhead, it blew my mind! (not that anyone today would understand why it was so special)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1mVrp_z71w

this one by The Judges, called 'Crazy Sample II' from 1987 is simple, but the music and the 'dancing heads' made an impression. man that tune is sooo grooovy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdbmTNK-y8w

finally, here is an awesome collection of legendary crack-intros. i remember them all!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFqBkSJOYOQ

ah, good times... ;-)

 

[PhenoMenal]

yup, the demo scene was more an Amiga/C64 gig for a while in the early days... it wasnt really until Future Crew came along that things started to move over to the PC

 

[Max Headroom]

watched the doc and enjoyed it. (too bad it's all in finnish)

judging from the lack of replies, we are apparently the only ones here who have followed the demoscene. ;-)

for any newcomers - watch this 2007 production by "Farbrausch" called "Debris" - and then have your mind blown by the fact that the whole executable is only 177 KILOBYTES!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqu_IpkOYBg

 

[PhenoMenal]

there was also MARS.EXE from very early 90s, possibly late 80s, which generated a mars-like mountainous 3D terrain you could traverse in ........ it was just 3121 bytes (almost seems impossible to squeeze so much out of so little!), a DOS executable, pure x86 assembly using VGA at its best ... (there was also a Win32 version which was around 11kbs)
screenshot: