From Intro to Mega, part 3

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Commodore Amiga platform

Disclaimer: This article series doesn’t define the history of the intro/demo/megademo, for neither the Amiga nor any other platform. This is the point of view, I have chosen to write the article series, and in a way I lived it. Your experience may vary.

The Megademo

At some point the “demo” just wasn’t enough to show off all the skills as a programmer group and the inevitable evolutionary step was the megademo/gigademo (?).

A megademo were like a number of regular demos put together. Each section of the megademo was an extensive and thorough review of a particular subject to show, this being a special scroll text, a vector figure or a shit-load of bobs as an example.

Each section of a megademo could easily run for a couple of minutes and each section would have its own music.

Aurora, Fragile Intensity

Beastie Boys, Megademo

Watch demo: @YouTube

Budbrain, Megademo 2

Watch demo: @YouTube

Crionics, Megademo 2

Watch demo: @YouTube

The sections in the megademo were often split with a fade-out and then an image that was subject to some image manipulation or magnification effects, and then a fade-in to the next section of the demo.

Dexion, Megademo 2

Watch demo: @YouTube

Dual Crew, Megademo

Frazion, Revenge

Kefrens, Megademo 6

Watch demo: @YouTube

Details

I believe that one of the most famous mega demos, from my time, was the ‘Budbrain Megademo’. This was far from the best megademo, but there was something about the overall storyline and the individual demos.

I remember us seeing it for the first time, back in the 90’s or whenever. The story about the burglar, with the sample from ‘The Terminator’ was just fabulous, not to mention the ‘Beatbox bird’ – really great stuff.

At first, the megademo were fitted onto only one floppy disk (all 80 tracks) and as the megademo grew and became more extensive and with even more music and graphics, they grew onto two floppy disks.

The first two disk megademo that I saw, was the ‘RSI megademo‘, the one with Jonah Hex/Eddie and the lit matchstick that was animated.

Megaforce, Megademo

Watch demo: @YouTube

North Star, Megademo

Watch demo: @YouTube

Phenomena, Megademo

Watch demo: @YouTube

Pure Metal Coders, Megademo

Scoopex, Megademo

Watch demo: @YouTube

The Work

A megademo was a challenging task to complete, this meaning that it often was the larger groups that would/could do this type of demo. This doesn’t mean that the smaller groups couldn’t or didn’t create a megademo.

Skid Row, Megademo

Static Bytes, Megademo

The Silents, Megademo

Watch demo: @YouTube

Trilogy, Gigademo

Vortex 42, Megademo

Group List

A short list of highly active megademo groups:

Further reading

Next step

While doing the file updates of the three articles (above), I realized that the evolution of demos and didn’t end with the Commodore Amiga (or the other platforms) but this all moved on the the next obvious platform – The Personal Computer (PC).

So, next step will be, a part IV, around the demo scene on the PC – where we will visit, among others – Future Crew.

As it took me 10 years, from the original articles were started to the publishing this weekend, this man take a while, too.

Source of inspiration and material: Kestra BitWorld on ExoticA