Top 10 Showcase

[Harrison]

I've had an idea for the Demo Section of the main site that I hope you will all think is interesting. To create a showcase featuring 10 of the best demos ever released on the Amiga. This article would feature each demo, going into detail about it's background, the background of the group who produced it and what makes it so special.

I will obviously need the help of the staff knowledgeable in the demo scene to write this, but in addition we first will need to decide on which 10 demos will be the perfect selection to feature in this showcase. For this reason could everyone please list the productions that they believe should be included in this showcase, and why you think they should be included?

We can then discuss them all in this thread and hopefully come up with a final showcase list of the 10 productions we will feature.

[Demon Cleaner]

I think that's a good idea, but I pass, I have to let the demo specialists the privilege.

[Teho]

Since I never owned an AGA machine I don't know that much about those later AGA demos. I mostly paid attention to the demoscene during it's ECS era. So someone else would have to suggest which AGA prods should be included. There is of course Nexus 7 by Andromeda though, can't pass that up. It simply floored the entire scene for over a year. After it came out it seems everyone was just taken aback, seemed like nobody could be bothered to try to make a decent prod after that. The year after Nexus 7 was the slowest year in demoscene history, hardly anything significant was released and many thought the demoscene had or was about to die. Fortunately that wasn't the case, but it does show just what kind of impact Nexus 7 had on the scene.

As for ECS demos, there's no going around Desert Dream by Kefrens of course. Not the first demo to show some proper design, but definitely the first one to put design on the demoscene map. Before Desert Dream, demos were just random effects one after the other with a random soundtrack. After Desert Dream, proper design finally became a big factor. Here was a demo that had somewhat of a storyline, nice transitions between scenes and a soundtrack composed specifically to suit what was going on on the screen. Everything was just a nice package that flowed smoothly from start to finish, something that hadn't been achieved properly before.

Another milestone ECS demo is Mental Hangover by Scoopex. It was the first trackmo. Meaning the first demo that had no loading parts, it loaded the next effect while the current one was showing making it one long show instead of a package comprised of many small ones. Before that there were only megademos, which consisted of several small parts, with a separate loading part showing between each of the main demo parts. You probably remember seeing these "loading - decrunching" screens with a typical loading tune playing, and having to click the mousebutton to quit each main part and start loading the next one. Well, Mental Hangover changed that.

There should be a Sanity prod in there too, seeing as their prods were among the finest released. I suggest Arte, it being a very well designed demo and somewhat of an achievement. It presents two separate main parts and a third endpart, the latter being a vectorworld. The two main parts consisting of a good number of effects, many of them quite clever. Also there a number of decent images in there, and three different good quality tunes for the three different parts. All on a single floppy disk. Pretty impressive, and a trademark of sorts that they would continue when they formed the PC group Farbrausch later on. (has anyone else seen their latest production fr-041 Debris, by the way? It won Breakpoint which was held during easter. A simply amazing production both design and coding-wise, which many thinks are going to top their previous fr025 the.popular.demo as their best ever. Check it out, this is one you really shouldn't miss.)

[Harrison]

Farbrausch has been my favorite group for quite a long time now, and including the Amiga group that would later lead to Farbrausch seems fitting. Their PC productions have always been special, as was their procedural texture based first person shooter. I haven't seen Debris yet so will definitely be looking at that tonight.

[Demon Cleaner]

There should be a Sanity prod in there too, seeing as their prods were among the finest released. I suggest Arte

I suggest Elysium, but have to watch Arte first, as I haven't seen it yet.

[Demon Cleaner]

Have watched Arte, very good but I prefer Elysium as it's more old school, which I still prefer. But the demo stops after a while (think at the end of the 1st disk) and gives me an error.

On the main site, there's only the link for the 1st disk, someone should add the link to the 2nd disk.

[Puni/Void]

Having a top ten showcase would be a great addition to the demo section. We should really get this thing Online before Christmas.

I think you guys have made many good suggestions. Desert Dream, Mental Hangover, Nexus 7, Arte.. all great productions. Although, I think we should put in a few more modern demos as well.

One demo I definitely think belongs in the top ten is Tint by The Black Lotus. This demo won The Gathering 1996 in Norway and has been popular ever since. I that it was even shown on Norwegian television!

Another one I really like is Pulse by Nerve Axis, the winner demo from Assembly 1997. Can't get enough of the fast effects that are perfectly synced with the music. If you haven't watched it, then you really should.

Will see if I can come up with some more suggestions one of the coming days.

[Harrison]

Great to see this thread revived. I agree that we should try to get this up on the site before the end of the year. Much sooner if we possibly can.

We could explore and expand the article detailing more about each demo, the people behind it, and what else they have produced in the scene over the years. This would work well to link between a lot of productions already included on the site and give visitors a great starting point to start exploring from.