Demo’s are – of course – a way to show the 1337 skillz of the creators to show that they are able to stretch the limited hardware to extremes and show you things you thought weren’t possible on your homecomputer.

Sometimes demo’s are like battleraps; they dis other demogroups and their creations by taking an effect from another demo and improving on it, rendering the original effect obsolete or second-rate.

The ultimate blow in these friendly battles comes in the form of retroporting demo’s to a platform that is older and less powerful, for example porting an amiga demo to a c64 version. Take a classic amiga or pc demo – a demo that has stunned people by the way it stretched thecomputer’s capabilities – and simply make a c64 version of it, disregarding the breadbox’s inferiority regarding memory, processor speed and graphic capabilities, and you will be legend. Check out the examples below:

The legendary PC demo “Second Reality” by Future Crew:

… and the c64 remake bu Smash Designs:

The classic Amiga demo “Desert Dream” by Kefrens:

… and the c64 remake by Chorus & Resource

Here’s kaneel showing you how to use the render-to-sample function in renoise to create your own sounds. Renoise is old-skool style music creation software, a so-called “tracker”, with new shiny features.

Welcome to this first post on blinkenlichten – a new web log for all things retro, 8 bit and bleepy. To start of, a video I just found of the legendary PC demo Second Reality by Future Crew. For me this was the first decent demo on the PC I ever saw, and it still seems to be a classic. I must say, even after 13 years I love this demo and its soundtrack. Enjoy