Spectrum Demos
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    Right, stop laughing at the back. Contrary to popular belief, the
Spectrum did have a 'scene'. Most people automatically link the C64 with
classic 8-bit demos, but the Spectrum had some classics of it's own. From
little intros to 8 part megademos, the Spectrum could demo with the best of
them. In fact, when you see what some of them accomplished you see what an
amazing bunch Spectrum demo coders were.
    Not surpisingly, most of the coders of these demoes came from Poland,
Czechslovakia and Germany. Much like the Amiga scene, the Brits had a
pretty poor showing - mostly music demos. The Spectrum flourished in these
areas as it was relatively cheap in comparison to other platforms.
Spectrums also evolved as well. Strange tales were told of 'turbo'
Spectrums custom disk drive systems and new 3 channel stereo sound in the
the ubiqutous scrolly message, albeit in broken English.

The Players (what I can remember)
~~~~~~~~~~~
Ethanol Soft Incorporated: (Mat, Ziutek, Karen, Maub'dib)

Most famous productions: The Lyra, The Lyra II, Shock!

    These guys and gals (if memory serves) were the kings of coding and
took demo coding to new levels. Their credits include the'Lyra' series and
the truly amazing 'Shock!' mega-demo, which was their swan-song on the
Spectrum. They went on to support the short lived SAM Coupe (BIIGG mistake,
my friends). My favourite effect was in the 'Shock!' mega-demo. As any
Speccy fan knows, the Speccy can only display 2 colours in an 8*8 pixel
grid. In this part, each horizontal line was an individual colour! It was
the most colours I'd ever seen it do! I thought the Speccy was going to
blow up from the strain. THIS is demo coding at it's best: doing the
impossible.

Mad Guys: (X-Terminator, Talisman, Vision)

Most famous productions: Madhouse, Unlimited Spirits.

    These were looked upon by some as the poor cousins of the demo scene
and I'd tend to agree. They could code, but it was not on a level that
could compare with the 'big guns'. They hailed from Germany and had a
typically zany style. However, for a group of European coders they had an
unusually good grasp of English, which after seeing some demos was pretty
rare (even the English ones!). Their demos had good scroll-texts and
usually consisted of 3 mini-parts. Their best effect was a headache
inducing, flashing screen with a large 'TEKNO' logo, which bounced up and
down.


Busysoft: (some blokes from Czechslovakia)

Most famous productions: Interlace.

    I only had one of their demos but it was still good. It was called
'Interlace' and yup, you guessed, it recreated the interlace screen-mode on
the humble Speccy. The first screen gave instructions on how to butcher
your Spectrum's sound chips to get some dodgy stero effect. After this, you
could select various true-colour patterns. The major drawback was that
interlace was more flickery on the Spectrum than it was on the Amiga.

Dynamite Dynastie: (Mez, Deel)

Most famous productions: 'No More Intelligence' series.

    These guys were credited as the best coders in Germany by other members
in the scene and I would agree with this statement. I only had 'NMI 2', but
I understand that the series carried on to 'NMI 4'. Although only short,
this demo had smooth sine wave graphics, 20 scrollers at the same time and
an eyeball wateringly colourful finale, on a par with that effect from the
'Shock!' demo. To make you more jealous of their skills, Mez could also do
C64 machine code as well! (Am I missing something here? Do they teach
assembly langauge at nursery in Europe or somehting?!)


Other 'scene' related stuff:
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    Most of these demos had 3-channel music, thanks to the 128k's AY sound
chip. These were created by the Spectrum's very own sound-tracker program.
Instead of using samples, you created wave forms which were then used in
the same way as you would samples in a normal tracker (However, I have a
demo which uses 4-bit samples in the Speccy. Just be glad they used
waveforms).
    There was also a 'The Player' like utility which could shrink
songs down and combine them with a playback routine. There were also
various crunch routines utilised by the demo coders, usually to compress
the gigantic lists of greets (somethings never change eh?). However they
gained little compared to today's routines, probably due to memory and
processor restraints.

Demos on the emulator:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    In a word, forget it. I use ZXAM on a 1200 with 4Mb Fast Ram and an
additional 020 processor and even the 'fast' version still lumbers around
when running the demos. Although games run fine, these demos take the
Spectrum to it`s limit which really strains the emualtor. The 128k music
runs OK as AY emulation is easier to do, but even this slows down when the
emulator is doing heavy duty code execution. A lot of the effects also
'break' on the emulator as they never get the desired speed they require
(this is especially true with effects that use the border area). The only
way to truly appreciate these demos, is to run them on a real Spectrum.

Text restarts:
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    Obviously, some of these demos look very primitive and crude in
comparison to Amiga productions like 'State of the Art' or 'Full Moon'.
Taken in the context of the limitations though, the demos can hold their
heads high amongst their 6510, 680x0 and 8x86 brothers (let's face it, the
Spectrum demos would make a PC owner feel inadequate!)
    If you haven't seen a Speccy demo then try sourcing some of the later
Your Sinclair cover tapes (Magnificent 7 / Beaut Box) as these had demos on
them (Interlace, Shock! etc.). You may have to lower yourself to the
Sincalir User tapes as these had demos on them as well!

- Adam Hodson