Jeff Minter is an English video game designer and programmer who often goes by the name Yak. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and has created dozens of games during his career, which began in 1981 with games for the ZX80. Minter's games are shoot 'em ups which contain titular or in-game references demonstrating his fondness of ruminants. Many of his programs also feature something of a psychedelic element, as in some of the earliest "light synthesizer" programs including Trip-a-Tron.
Amiga demos are demos created for the Amiga home computer.
Andreas Jochen Hippel is a musician from Kirchheimbolanden in southwest Germany. He played one of the most prominent roles in computer music during the 16-bit microcomputer era, composing hundreds of tunes for games and demos. He was also an experienced Amiga programmer and ported many of Thalion Software's Atari ST titles. He no longer composes music for a living and in 2006 he was working in logistics.
Castor Cracking Group (CCG) was a demo group from Sweden, and were active on the ZX Spectrum during 1986–1988. They were one of the first groups for the ZX Spectrum with their release of Castor Intro early in 1986.
Hellhammer was a Swiss extreme metal band from Nürensdorf, active from 1982 to 1984. Although the band's sound and style were heavily criticized and poorly reviewed during their active years, they have been widely praised in retrospect and are often regarded as a key influence on black metal. In June 1984, Hellhammer disbanded but two of its members soon formed the influential extreme metal band Celtic Frost.
Demogroups are teams of demosceners, who make computer based audio-visual works of art known as demos. Demogroups form a subculture collectively known as the demoscene.
The demoscene is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visual art, and musical skills. Demos and other demoscene productions are shared, voted on and released online at festivals known as demoparties.
The Assembly demoparty is an annual demoscene and gaming event in Finland. It is the biggest and the longest standing demoscene party. The Summer event takes place every year at Messukeskus in Helsinki, between late July and early August, and lasts three to four days. The 2020 edition was held online.
OctaMED is a music tracker for the Amiga, written by Teijo Kinnunen. The first version, 1.12, was released in 1989 under the name MED, which stands for Music EDitor. In April 1990, version 2.00 was released with MIDI support as the main improvement. In 1991 the first version with the name OctaMED was released, so-called as it could replay eight independent channels on the Amiga's four-channel sound chip. This was also the first commercial version of the software. The publisher had previously been RBF Software of Southampton, UK which was run by Ray Burt-Frost. The current publisher is A-EON Technology Ltd.
Second Reality is an IBM PC compatible demo created by the Finnish demogroup Future Crew. It debuted at the Assembly 1993 demoparty on July 30, 1993, where it was entered into the PC demo competition, and finished in first place with its demonstration of 2D and 3D computer graphics rendering. The demo was released to the public in October 1993. It is considered to be one of the best demos created during the early 1990s on the PC; in 1999 Slashdot voted it one of the "Top 10 Hacks of All Time". Its source code was released in a GitHub repository as public domain software using the Unlicense on the 20th anniversary of the release on 1 August 2013.
Adventure Vision is a cartridge-based video game console released by Entex Industries in either August or October 1982. The launch price of the system was $79.95. The monitor, game controls, and computer hardware are all contained within a single portable unit. The LED monitor can only display red pixels. Four games were released, all of which are arcade ports. Approximately 10,000 were produced.
Tristar and Red Sector Incorporated (TRSI) is a demogroup which formed in 1990. It came about from the longest-running cooperation in scene history. RSI existed from 1985, before being joined by the "T" later on. Evolving from the Commodore 64 to the Amiga and later to PC and various game console platforms - like the PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo - and set-ups like Arduino, Android or Blu-ray, TRSI released a number of digital productions, dedicated to experimenting in phreaking or network alteration. Its members were spread around the world and still contribute to computer scene art and code after more than 27 years of history.
Homebrew, when applied to video games, refers to software produced by hobbyists for proprietary video game consoles which are not intended to be user-programmable. The official documentation is often only available to licensed developers, and these systems may use storage formats that make distribution difficult, such as ROM cartridges or encrypted CD-ROMs. Many consoles have hardware restrictions to prevent unauthorized development.
A Trace Vector Decoder (TVD) is computer software that uses the trace facility of its underlying microprocessor to decode encrypted instruction opcodes just-in-time prior to execution and possibly re-encode them afterwards. It can be used to hinder reverse engineering when attempting to prevent software cracking as part of an overall copy protection strategy.
Cybermorph is a shooter video game developed by Attention to Detail (ATD) and published by Atari Corporation as the pack-in game for the Atari Jaguar in North America on November 23, 1993, and Europe in June 1994. It was also distributed in Japan by Mumin Corporation as a stand-alone release. Taking place in a galactic war, the player pilots the morphing attack fighter TransmoGriffon to battle against the Pernitia empire, who have conquered planets on multiple sectors and whose regenerative robotic technology become entrenched into the planets. The player is tasked with recapturing critical pods, while facing against enemies and bosses, across five sectors in order to defeat the empire.
The Judges was a Dutch Commodore 64 group from Roosendaal known for being one of the earliest dedicated demogroups. The Judges released several demos for the Commodore 64 home computer between the years 1986 - 1988. Groups such as The Judges are regarded as early pioneers of what came to be known as the demoscene.
Protracker is a music tracker for the Amiga platform. A free software tool that required no additional equipment, it became popular in the early 1990s with both amateurs and professionals, allowing for sample-based music in the MOD file format.
NEOchrome is an early color bitmap graphics editor for the Atari ST. It was written by Dave Staugas, a programmer at Atari Corporation and co-author of the ST's operating system. NEOchrome supports hardware-supported color cycling to give the impression of animation. A color cycling waterfall, created with NEOchrome, was one of the iconic images of the early Atari ST.
Razor 1911 (RZR) is a warez and demogroup founded in Norway, 1985. It was the first ever such group to be initially founded exclusively as a demogroup, before moving into warez in 1987. According to the US Justice Department, Razor 1911 is the oldest software cracking group that is still active on the internet. Razor 1911 ran the diskmag 'Propaganda' until 1995.
Dragonflight is a 1990 role-playing video game developed and published by Thalion Software for the Amiga, Atari ST, and MS-DOS. The game started development in January 1987 by two German programmers Udo Fischer and Erik Simon.