Best of the Best.

[Clyde]

A simple topic, and one I thought you'd be interested in.

Over the span of the demo scene, from the 80's to present day. I wondered what's your favourites / the bestest demos you ever seen on the many different platforms were. And maybe you have a reason for it, perhaps it was one of your own.

On C64, I loved WonderLand 9 by Censor Design, Dutch Breeze By BlackMail. I've recently got hooked by Smash Design amazing trackmos.
On Amiga an all time classic, Red Sector Inc / TCC designs "MegaDemo" - this was the demo that got me even more interested into Public Domain gfx Demos.

Perhaps, also there was a DiskMag / Demo Tool you enjoyed. I did dabble with RSI DemoMaker. And FastTracker and Octamed were neat to play those cool demo vibes with.

I also really like Scoopex's Mental Hangover. And Kefrens are pretty cool too. The few Melon demos I've seen I find can be a bit on the far out side, nice mind.

And on PC, I adore Squish By AND, as well as all of Conspiracy's demos most especially "Project Genesis". There's a few Farbrausch demos I like, Poem To A Horse - Final, and The Popular Demo. There's a few others too, which I can't remember the names of, when I get home I'll have a butchers for them.

Do any of you have any favourites?

Cheers and all the best,
Clyde.

[Shockwave]

Favourite Amiga cractro;
Skid Row cracktro by Dan of Anarchy, 3D stars, seminal music and a 2 pixel sine scroll. A real achievment for the ECS amiga.

Favourite Amiga demo;
Hardwired by the Silents.

Favourite PC Demo;
Winnerdemo by Metalvotze. Pure cheese.

Favourite Blitz demo;
No 3D By Parabellum.

Favourite Freebasic demo;
Keftedes by Optimus.

[Roly]

C64:
A demo from c64 Comics Group (i don't know the name) with musix from Ace II, The last Ninja and nice copper effects (1987)
Deus ex machina from Crest (2000)

Amiga:
Cracktro - Copperbars from Vision Factory (coded by the silents (1990))

Demos - Easy ruling and HipHop from Silents/Northstar (1989), all D.O.C. Demos (1987-1989), Filled Vector from IT (1989) and of course Seven Sins, Mental Hangover and Xenomorphs by Scoopex (1989), but there are many other great demos on this machine. 

Megademo - RSI (1989), Northstar MD II (1988)

Musicdisk - The D-Mob Sounddisks(1989/1990) and the first Prophets Musicdisk by TAR (1989)

PC:
The Popular Demo and Breakpoint 2004 invitation by Farbrausch

[Shockwave]

I remember the Xenomorphs demo with graphics by Joe Best Bob demo ever that one!

[Clyde]

I really need to buy myself an Amiga. As I have and use C64 right upto the very end. and on Emu nowadays. whilst others had Amiga, there's so many I need to see.

My main collection of Amiga Demos consisted of a few Anarchy prods, and mostly all the Crusaders prods which were mostly Music Disks.

The thing I remember very clearly even today, is the Animated bob objects in RSI MegaDemo "The Juggler" and the Helicopter with the reflection; and that tune is just classic.

[Shockwave]

Romeo Knight rulez

[Clyde]

Just to clarify something ive always been pondering over, is Bit Arts the very same and famous Romero Knight? Or are they 2 completly different musicians?

[TinDragon]

While I wasn't into the 8bit scene, didnt even know about demos back then, I did get into it a little in the Amiga days. Demos by RSI and a few others that came my way via friends. Wasn't until a couple years back I went looking for PC demos and only then after looking at old amiga and st demos via emulation. Of all the demos I have seen the one that sticks in my head most as being really impressive is Heaven7, a true pixel pushing masterpiece.

 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=5 for anyone that hasn't seen Heaven7

It's a shame the demo scene moved away from software engines as much as they have but thats the price of progress I guess.

[zparticle]

Okay, so I just watched Heaven7 and I have to say, I'm not impressed. Unless this is using only custom hand coded routines it look like a simple set of 3D sences you could put together in any language using OGL or D3D. Maybe I'm missing something but I'm far more impressed with thing like the tunnel FX done by folks here with 2D commands.

[TinDragon]

yep you are missing the fact that it "is" a software engine, not D3D or OGL hardware. It might look like some of the modern hardware demos but it's all cpu and pixel pushing power doing realtime raytracing and was from 2000

[EDIT] Faq on the demo here http://www.demoscene.hu/~picard/h7/faq.html

[zparticle]

Ah that makes more since. Thanks for the info. Now I am impressed. 

[TinDragon]

No problem, it is that good you do think it's hardware based, I have other software engine demos but this is the one that truely shines. If I can find my cd's with them on I will add a few more software ones that still run under winxp on to here for others to be inspired by

[Shockwave]

Heaven 7 is a fantastic demo.
I'm racking my brains to think of another demo that does the same sort of thing but I can't.
Raytracing with textures and effects is really difficult. Really, really difficult.

[Clyde]

There are a few, Thygrions the man to talk to about those; its what inspired his and BA's Raycasters.
There's an amazing crew called Smash Designs on C64, which make fantastic Trackmo's, mindboggling.

[Shockwave]

The other example I can think of is Stonemonkeys raytracing demo, but as far as I know it wasn't ever intended to be released. It's very impressive though and the render quality is as good as H7.

[Clyde]

The others I believe are by Kolor, freshnal and freshnal 2. Just found them on my HD.

[TinDragon]

yes stonemonkeys is a very impressive bit of work, was it coded in FB ? If so it's a showcase for what can be done in a free language
There is another realtime raytrace demo thats pretty good but I cant think of the name. There are also a few software engine demos that use TinyPTC which are conversions of older DOS demos, it is aparently easy to convert them to use it since most DOS demos worked on a frame buffer system.

[Stonemonkey]

Hmmm, I'm not really sure what you're meaning. The realtime raytracing i've worked on hasn't been particularly high quality and the stuff that has produced better images is nowhere near realtime. I have been looking into the subject from time to time and have some ideas but yet to put anything into practice.