Commodore 64 demos

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Game Music IV on the Commodore 64 by Charles Deenen (also known as "The Mercenary Cracker" (TMC) was perhaps one of the very first demos ever produced. Though TMC dated all his productions to 1991, this demo is known to have been produced in 1985.
Game Music IV on the Commodore 64 by Charles Deenen (also known as "The Mercenary Cracker" (TMC) was perhaps one of the very first demos ever produced. Though TMC dated all his productions to 1991, this demo is known to have been produced in 1985.
Borders - screen short of the intro to the "Bobby Border" part of the "Camel Park" demo. Notice the borders in black.
Borders - screen short of the intro to the "Bobby Border" part of the "Camel Park" demo. Notice the borders in black.
All borders removed - screen shot of one of the main effects in the "Bobby Border" part of "Camel Park". Notice how the sprites move into the borders. Also an example of the DXYCP effect.
All borders removed - screen shot of one of the main effects in the "Bobby Border" part of "Camel Park". Notice how the sprites move into the borders. Also an example of the DXYCP effect.

The Commodore 64 demos for the Commodore 64 (C64) were, as far as is known, the first real demos produced on any home computer.

Simple demo-like music collections were put together on the C64 in 1985 by Charles Deenen, inspired by crack intros, using music taken from games and adding some homemade color graphics. In the following year the movement we now know as the demoscene was born. The Dutch groups 1001 Crew and The Judges, both Commodore 64-based, are often mentioned as the earliest demo groups, both producing pure demos with original graphics and music involving more than just casual work and extensive hardware trickery whilst competing with each other in 1986. At the same time demos from different individuals such as Antony Crowther (Ratt) had started circulating on Compunet in the United Kingdom.

The first demos on the C64 were not called demos but rather letter, message, supermessage, et cetera. They were initially produced by the same people who cracked software protection, e.g. The 1001 Crew. The label "demo" appeared later.

Among the earliest demos are:

  • Game Music 1-9 by The Mercenary Cracker (Charles Deenen, 1985)
  • Borderletter from The 1001 Crew (1986)
  • Think Twice I-V by The Judges
  • Rock This by C64CG (1987)

These demos would later evolve into a subculture of their own, resulting in massive parties where demo coders would compete. For the C64, the peak point in time for this culture was the year 1989 in northern Europe. Here, hundreds of Dutch, French, Belgian, German, Danish, Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian groups would meet, for example at Venlo in The Netherlands.

Perhaps the best way of defining what a C64 demo is, would be to say that it exploited a talent. Demos sought to show off the talents of their authors. These talents may have been audio, visual or through programming. It was not unusual to find demos that displayed a single picture, only music tracks or a programming skill.

As the demo scene evolved, programmers would seek to push the limit of the C64. Groups were formed that consisted of members who were skilled in composing music, drawing graphics and programming. Together these members would produce demos that pushed the limits.

Effects thought impossible were achieved in demos, mostly due to undocumented side-effects pertaining to the MOS Technology VIC-II chip:

  • Sprite scrollers were placed in the side-border. This was probably due to an undocumented leftover from the MOS Technology VIC. By tricking the hardware not to draw the border around the screen, sprites could be moved into this area and displayed.
  • Sprites were multiplexed across vertical raster lines (over 8 sprites, sometimes up to 120 sprites). No more than 8 sprites could appear at one raster line, but assigning new Y coordinated to it made it reappear further down the screen.
  • FLD (flexible line distance) moved bitmap or character rows and arbitrary number of vertical raster lines apart, making it possible to arbitrarily move any 8 pixel high graphic block smoothly up and down across the screen. Adding sine curves to this positioning gave it nice wavy looks.
  • DYCP (different Y Character position) allowed scrolls to take on a different Y position, making them scroll along in a sine wave.
  • The number of colours displayable in a single 8x8 pixel block in a bitmap were expanded beyond the advertised 4 to all 16 through use of the Flexible Line Integration (FLI) mode.

Followers of the C64 would see the growth of the demo scene. Gone were the single file demos with one scrolling text and no music. Full disk demos were produced, some of which would play music as the next file loaded, without any delay in the sound.

Hidden parts were included as was the occasional game implemented into a demo.

When the Commodore Amiga appeared, many former C64 demo programmers switched platforms and continued to make demos, but for the Amiga (see Amiga demos). The Atari demos were also heavily influenced by C64 demos. In Britain, the main alternative demo scene was the one of ZX Spectrum demos.

The C64 was in a time when local BBSes were popular and used to communicate with other people. Software trading via mail was also common. Some C64 enthusiasts lament the loss of the social interaction that locally centered computer activities provided.

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