Retroporting on the demoscene

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:
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=8G_aUxbbqWU[/youtube]

… and the c64 remake bu Smash Designs:
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=zVPW40ygds4[/youtube]

The classic Amiga demo “Desert Dream” by Kefrens:
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=GH2GyQQIBNo]

… and the c64 remake by Chorus & Resource [youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=g9TT55hrz90]

c64dtv demo’s

A while ago I bought a c64dtv. That’s a commodore 64 re-designed to fit into a joystick. It comes with about 30 games and plugs directly into your tv set.

Lots of people are hacking this little toy, connecting old commodore diskdrives and keyboards to it, using it as a pimped commodore 64.

I say “pimped” because the c64dtv seems to be capable of bigger and better things than the old breadbox was, and it seems the demoscene has discovered the joystick as a platform. Check out this video from YouTube

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ESzkETdtuQ[/youtube]