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 Intro
With the “all in one” abilities in the Commodore Amiga, it quickly became popular to supply an intro, cracktro (crack intro), loader or even trainer – all for now called intro – when spreading a game or program. The intro is like a small “tag” or signature, created by one or more members of the team, that’s doing the spread.
The intro often was composed of an image or a group logo, a scroll text, lots of copper tubes and a piece of music.
The intro was always simple and short, I believe at a maximum of 5 minutes roundtrip. This doesn’t necessary mean that an intro was boring. Just check out the Spreadpoint intro – a lot of stuff is going on in that intro!
A intro was very often reused, only replacing text (scroller) and sometimes the music.
On rare occasions an intro displayed new effects or routines of code that haven’t been seen before. It often revolved around the scroll text, the amount of bobs on the screen at the same time or a simple figure made completely in vector graphics.
Below is a list of groups that were masters in the art of making intro‘s. They also did a fair amount of spreading of games and programs:
- 7Up Crew
- Bamiga Sector One
- DefJam
- Delta Force
- Fairlight
- Hotline
- North Star
- Quartex
- Razor 1911
- Rebels
- Spreadpoint
- Thrust
- Trilogy
- Tristar
- Paradox
Just to name a few …
Further reading
- Prelude to the Intro
- From Intro to Mega, part 1 (this page)
- From Intro to Mega, part 2 (Demo)
- From Intro to Mega, part 3 (Megademo)
- From Intro to Mega, part 4 (Groups)
Source of inspiration and material: Kestra BitWorld on ExoticA