Inspired by the work of Nosah/DCS through the classic paper magazine from the late eighties called Iguana - this segment will focus on the major scene countries' demo groups and their members, how they started, what they did and why they are remembered. Each group will have some detail (at the end of the article), in some cases directly from the people involved, as well as some interesting trivia dug up from the depths of time. Rather than being misled by unreliable information, enjoy the facts about the foundation of demo scene Germany and the times of glory that followed.

Journey through the ages

The eighties. The golden years of the scene, an exciting time of discovery. Explorers of the VIC were sailing across the digital wilderness in search of new effects, supported by illegal op-codes and the competitive nature of unbridled teenage years.

We start our journey way back in 1985 - one of the early German pioneers back then was Flash Cracking Group. During this time, Mikhail Gorbachev had just become the new Soviet leader; and the Live Aid concert had just taken place a few months earlier. But FCG were not watching the news, nor did they care for Mikhail, instead they were focused on delivering something new. And so, in October 1985, they did what nobody else had done before: "Flash XI" opened the upper and lower borders. This well-balanced demonstration set the tone for other pioneers such as 1001 Crew the following year (who incidentally went on to break the side borders).


1986 arrived and the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl explodes, and so does the demo scene with inspiring releases! The majority of demos in those days consisted of ripped music on a more or less static screen with often ripped graphics and maybe a scroller added for good measure, Flash Cracking Group and its sibling Radwar Enterprises tried to break out of that mould visually. "Flash Intro" by Flash himself, using Martin Galway's cover of Vangelis' Chariots of Fire, might just be one of the first to visually cut off a scroller diagonally. Radwar's "The Fantastic Soldiers" by AVH leveraged inspiration from Stoat & Tim to create an animated band of a slightly different kind.

The German demo scene had other groups and individuals, but for the purpose of this article, we want to focus on who shone the brightest guided by our own subjectivity.

Moving to 1987 - The Simpsons' first 'short' was shown to the world. In this year, Radwar Enterprises 1941 (a member of the famous umbrella label 'The Light Circle') heated up the competition with 1001 Crew on producing innovative effects as first to an unsuspecting audience. They released "46 Color Demo" which points at some new palette trickery.

A few months later, Flash Cracking Group and Radwar teamed up to deliver another world first. This time, it was not the borders, but instead the world's first demo to use "Interlace" graphics. According to the coder AVH, the interlace routine was developed much earlier, but was not shown until the first Interlace Painter was finished. AVH also tells us that Flash had some troubles painting the two separate pictures with 'Paint Magic' and stopped any further development. Fate was on our side as AVH rescued the production when he visited Flash that day in Cologne, and together they were able to get it right.

Interlace by FCG & RWE

1987 was also the year when Intro and Demo Makers became prominent. Often created for a particular group and not intended for public release, some still found widespread use. "Intro Editor" by The Paco Crew's The Syndicate (who'd later move on to lead Beastie Boys and Dynamix) with its lack of a specific group logo, its flashy star background and Rob Hubbard's "Zoolook" playing, was used by many groups (and intro linkers) who couldn't afford their own. "Intro Maker 7.2" by Genesis Project's The Nauseating Timelord (aka Antichrist aka OMG of Amok) met a similar fate.

"Demo Designer 3" by United Artists went a slightly different route. Explicitly meant for public consumption, it's perhaps the most polished designer in the scene at the time. Coded by Deejay (aka Joachim Fraeder of X-Ample), it featured some well-thought out design.

The groups were producing more than just intro-makers though. Of note, around the same time, was the GP release of "Kraftwerk-Face", featuring a quite unique 3D spinning face.

While The Paco Crew created "Power Play Recorder V1", a nice picture of a Ghetto Blaster that is animated to the digitised wizardry of The D.J., Warriors of Darkness appealed to the masses with their "Video Generation", featuring the VHS graphical representation of the home setup back then with Neil Brennan's legendary Fist II soundtrack.


After 8 years and 1.5 million dead the Iran Iraq war ends in 1988, this was also the year that the Last Ninja 2 was back with a vengeance. Things warmed up further in scene town with "WOD Demo Maker V1.0" released by Warriors of Darkness in January, designed and code execution by Basti. He continued this with "Intro Designer 2" with his scroll text boasting to "contact Basti to buy your intro now!" With so many lamers discovering the C64, he may well have made some money with his offer after all.

Genesis Project delivered "Ikari Valley", a cool music rip demo containing graphics and sounds from the famous Ikari Warriors. Coded by Alf and Dr. Spike. Music rips were definitely getting better by this stage, compared to the basic text menu that we were once all too familiar with back then. Frankieghost of Genesis Project also gave us the rather tasty "Silent Voice" with parts complimented by the beats of Matt Gray, Adam Gilmore and Demon. The raw raster power in part 2 was memorable, all smacked together by Frankie during his summer holidays. Genesis Project was in cooperation with Fire-Eagle in November. Here, they gave us "Magic Demo", with binary supremacy by Alf, Olle, Dr. Spike and Frankieghost. Rasters and bitmap multi-directional manipulation.

March also gave us some activity from The Wanderer Group. They hit us with their Babylon series. Of note is "Babylon II" from Mr. Cursor. This bits and bytes effort is the sequel to their first one released back in 1987 at the FCS copy party. The demo contains a 'miniature' scroll routine (uncommon back then) and a tune selector to set the mood. The transition of the present lines via FLD, coupled with raster logo and pic display in the second part was also a fresh feel back then. "Babylon III", again from Mr. Cursor, featured some pretty neat joystick controlled scrollers and other tricks. He did not stop there either; with the release of "Init Demo", containing a vertical scroller in the borders and the sweet pixels from German graphic artist Pegasus.

Babylon II by TWG

Level 99 entertained us with "Read N Blast". Joining the scroller wars against other groups and firing off some Uridium inspired design. Seven Eleven (711) via the mighty Ivo 'Mr. Cursor' Herzeg delivered the awesome "Beyond the Zero" which was dedicated to the famous magazine Magic Disk 64.

In '88, Warriors of Time were also remembered for their release "The Surprise", a fresh approach to demo creativity and a wake up reminder to dispel rumours at the time that the group was dead. This production was inspiring with appropriate SID from the likes of JB (Johannes Bjerregaard), Wally Beben and Michael Winterberg.

There were other warriors back in those days. Warriors that not only had membership in Germany, but also in exotic far-away lands such as Australia. Warriors of Time delivered some memorable demos in 1988 such as "Paraphernalia", coded by my old friend The Deviet together with Gazza, featuring cool graphics by Red Wiz as well as text from the king of Australian traders back then; The Buccaneer. This production competed in one of the early Australia events 'Aussie Demo Competition 88'. We can't forget their German division of course, with their release of "Verras", coded by Ske who delivered well-thought out ways to present demo screens with raster.

X-Ample hit us hard with two productions that stood out. "Artists of Time", were placing third in the Radwar Party 2 in Heinsberg. With masterwork performed by The Viking. And before this, the masterpiece "The Spirit of Art" was released with code from Chap Bizarre. What a way to end 1988, go and check these productions out now!


The final year of the eighties had arrived. 1989 witnessed the birth of the 486 series of microprocessors by Intel. In this year, the door had swung well and truly wide open on demo scene creativity from Germany. Crest had just started to take off with "Blow Jobs" arriving in February and "Red Hot Chili Pepper" in December.

Level 99 wanted us to know that they were "Still Ruling", following up in March with "Yolk" released at the famous Venlo Meeting. In April, Level 99 brought us "Cock's Tread", coded by The Mysterious Fighter, Stringfellow and Marching. They also finished the year with the classic "Yeggman".

At the Baboons/Sharks/Vision Party in May, X-Rated conquered the demo competition with "Radio 80" followed a couple of months later by D-Vision's "Climax", released at the July Venlo Meeting.

Masters' Design Group gave us two memorable hits in '89 with "Bring Me Edelgas", an amazing demo for its time with music by Charles Deenen and winner of the Giant's Demo Compo. They also gave us "Vectormania" with code by Energy Master and beats by Markus Schneider. Warriors of Time, also at the Giant's Demo Compo, placed third with their rasta blasta "Myth of Time +".

Bring Me Edelgas by MDG

In August, Digital Excess also made the trip to Venlo with "High Technique" featuring the work of Arndt Heitkamp (Steelrat) and Thomas Koncina (Burn). Acid presented their first mega demo in September called "Around the Planet", followed a few months later with "Technobeat".

Later in the year, X-Ample was on fire with some of their best work to date. A lot of you will remember legendary productions such as "Breeze of Diogenes", "In No Sense" and "Double Density". Modern sceners can discover these productions at ease on YouTube.


1990 witnessed the publishing of a formal proposal for the World Wide Web during November. This proposal outlined a plan for a system that would use hypertext, web pages, browsers, and web servers to share documents across the internet. But the net was still to take off a couple of years later. For now, mail trading and board riding still ruled supreme. During this year, another failed commercial release from Commodore took shape, that being the repackaged C64 in the form of the game console C64GS (selling around 2000 units only). This noise surrounded young sceners, but did nothing to deter the momentum of Gen X.

In February, Crest was kind enough to deliver "McDonald's Restaurant" which included a scroller (Big Mac part) that was $13000 characters long! This scroller gave hint to the hidden part in the demo which was by typing 'clockwork' as your crew name (which gave 99.99 credits in the 'restaurant'). In October, "2 Years Crest" was released to the scene. Crossbow went crazy with multiple FLI effects and gave us another hidden part (hold down 'goldrush' during the decrunch message of the mega DYCP part). Yes, hidden parts were becoming a thing.

2 Years Crest by Crest

In April, Padua gave us "Deluge" at the Horizon Easter Party in Stockholm. Like scroller demos? Then check out the August release from Warriors of Time called "Moonwalk". This one has code from Challenger and Tamtrax, music from Harmony, JCH and Jadawin and graphics by Rooster (now known as Pal/Offence, that awesome fellow from Norway!).

Towards the end of the year, we should remember Spherical Designs' "Prime Time", released on Christmas Eve, when many of you would of had your parents wrapping your first Commodore 64 to go under the tree.


In 1991 both Crest and Genesis Project were on fire with "Trust Your Eyes" coded by FGTH and Vision. Do you like sprite tricks? S.E.S. impressed everyone with "Spritemania".

In April, Crest fired off the true tech giant called "Ice Cream Castle" where Crossbow and Vision totally kicked our heads in to the music of Drax, JCH, Xayne and O'Neill. Also worth mentioning this year, was the scroller demo by Raistlin called "Delirious 10".


In June of 1992 Crest continued with "Crest Light" at the Brutal & Hurricane Summer Party in Denmark. Unlimited bobs, sinus scroller, tech-tech with FPP-logo, indeed the golden age of the press space demo. December was a killer month. Crest really put their name down for all-time with the release of "Crest Avantgarde", AKA: 4 years Crest. Cruzer writes: "Quality demo full of neat little details that aren't explained, but where it's assumed that you know enough about the limits of the machine to appreciate them. A lot of the tricks really annoyed me in the old days, such as the hires scroller in GULB, since I couldn't figure out how they were done, and much less how this god called Crossbow could keep coming up with so many new ideas on how to do things that we all assumed were impossible." Another neat thing was that the directory would change, including the title of the demo depending on what directory you have in the 'FLI part' and the intro. Absolutely fabulous demo!

A new contender to the Demo Map Germany '92 arrived. You know them... please welcome, Oxyron (formerly known as Gloom). In June, they delivered "Fantasia" featuring the mighty work of Axis, Graham, TTS and Slide. The crew also delivered another instalment in their now famous Coma Light series. "Coma Light 8" released in December at The Party in Aars was the winner of the demo competition. What a way for us to close the book on this year.


Things were running hot. 1993 remembers the introduction of the Pentium microprocessor by Intel and the decision for the World Wide Web to be left an open standard for everyone to use at CERN, which continues to have our thanks today. The internet started to influence the scene heavily for the first time in this year. Emails, IRC... things were starting to speed up. In the demo scene, Crest together with Maduplec's Brain Using Demo Section (B.U.D.S) released, "Why I Like Demos". However, whilst this was a great demo, the year belonged to another group...

Oxyron ventured to the Data-Live Conference in Dessau in the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt and released "Coma Light 9", claiming first place in the compo. In May, they travelled to Stockholm to compete at The Computer Crossroad 1993. Whilst Oxyron did not place first with "Coma Light 10", they ranked fifth against stiff competition from the likes of Censor, Booze, Antic and Noice. How did they manage major demos back-to-back? Axis, TTS and Graham were on overtime. No Facebook, no girls, no distractions. "Demo or die".

So, 1993 has been pretty good for Germany so far, but wait... December arrived and Oxyron again delivers, this time "Coma Light 11". This was Oxyron's first trackmo style demo with a more polished design and transitional pieces. I remember this one fondly, particularly due to the amazing 'Cave of Echoes' soundtrack by PRI. This was against very strong competition at The Party '93, such as Tower Power, Spasmolytic and Legoland 3. The party in Herning, what a splendid event.


Sadly, 1994 witnessed Commodore filing for bankruptcy. The king is dead. Long live the king! Demo sceners had stock-piled enough machines to continue for some years yet and emulation was brewing (especially quite early on the Amiga with the likes of Readysoft and A64). Padua impressed the audience at the Rainbow Party with "Torture 3" and later in the year again with "Torture 5". The guys in Oxyron fired off "Coma Light 12" which was loaded with hidden parts as well as inspiring the scene who were going 4x4-mode crazy at the time. Also we should mention the nice release from Oxy in December called "The Masque".

The style changer really came when the guys in Reflex brought us "Access Denied". Hardcore techno joined to exciting epileptic effects. The winning demo of The Party 1994. Quiss and his group Reflex were dominating at this point. In April 1995 their trackmo demo "Radio Napalm" had arrived. This won the X'95 compo with its fast paced style, way ahead of its time. At the end of the year Reflex continued with "Mathematica", the crowd at The Party'95 went wild when this was shown. Code by Quiss, Zorc, kb and Guru. Rocking soundtrack by PVCF and graphics from Felidae and PVT. Packing class and kicking ass.

Access Denied by Reflex

Perhaps the best one-file demo of its time and may be in C64 history, was released in December by Oxyron called "Dawnfall". This was coded by Graham with a killer track by Jeff. Amazing routines all packed in a single file.

Dawnfall by Oxyron

Unlike today, the X party back then was every year. At X'96, Crest won the demo compo with "Krestology". This 90% version was a slow-paced trackmo containing many new graphic modes such as SHF, SHIF, UFLI, first IFLI-full screen-stretcher, multiplexers over IFLI, first IFLI line-cruncher (1.5 screens high), it originally came with an extra tool disk which included the installer for 40 tracks (yes, this was a 40 track demo!), editors for the new gfx modes, a part selector and the 'Li2-SHIF-picture' (I remember the disks arriving in the mail with nice colour labels on them by DeeKay). At the same event, placing second; was Hitmen's "Cucumber Juice", featuring code by Groepaz, Jihad, Peacemaker and Curlin.

In September, Oxyron released "ReLIGHTening" coded by Fuben and featuring an epic line up for the sound track in Drax, PRI, Shogoon, Link and Fanta.

Memorable demos in December included Reflex's "Nine". This was released without the likes of Quiss and PVCF. Despite this, they still managed to have enough power to again win The Party. The crowd screamed with delight when the ski-animation part came on. Also at The Party 1996 and placing second, was Smash Design with their demo "Triage", this was mostly handled by AEG with a PVCF soundtrack.


February 1997 and one of the old groups fires off again. Masters' Design Group released "Megademo 1" with code from Oliver Stiller and THCM, who writes: "The demo was meant to be released at the Light Phenomena Easter party in 1992, but even without sleeping I didn't finish it in time. The last part is still my favourite one and today I would have chosen a completely different flow."

Breaking records and world firsts. The Crest story continued in April with the release of "Krestage". Crossbow indeed went back to the roots with this one. At the end of April and then he continued with "Krestage 2" in April.

In December, we again look to Denmark; the stage was set for The Party to again deliver. Who was to win? Would the demo map in Germany light up once more? Indeed, the guys in Smash Designs ported Future Crew's "Second Reality" to the C64! The code was from AEG and Dcp with brilliant music by kb (oh my Tammo, you really created the atmosphere here that perhaps was the main reason for winning the compo!). In second place, Graham of Oxyron again delivered one of the best one-file demos of all-time, "One-Der" with music by Fanta and graphics by DeeKay. Multi-part madness that was well-laid out and without a doubt, ahead of its time by a long mile.


1998 - The Google Search Engine was founded. A lot of us were still using AltaVista and Lycos to find the latest scene productions or to find some of the first group webpages popping up. Reflex opened up the year with "Breitbandkatze", the 100% version. Again, inspiring music by PVCF (Pro Velochistische Contra Fraction). In April, the Easter Party in Mekka Symposium took place and we have four demos that should be mentioned. Placing fourth was "Splish Splash" by Padua; make sure to search YouTube for the sing-a-long part where the audience got right into it. Coming in at number three was "Krestyron" by the combined forces of Crest and Oxyron. Plasma and vertical rasterbars that got guys quite hard. Whilst a short demo, amazing FX that you would expect with the power-trio: Crossbow, Graham and Axis. Next we have "Reanim8ed" by Hitmen ranking number two with their animated parts to the beat of The Syndrom.

The winner of the demo compo at Mekka Symposium was Smash Designs with "Our Darkness", one of AEG's more polished productions. SD also went on later in the year to win Wired'98 with their one-filed demo "Outbreak", packed with many effects including world firsts. The third party won by AEG's team this year was The Party; they managed this with their release of "Triage 3". What a great year for Smash Designs!

Sometimes demos are found in the wilderness, not really intending to be released. That just happened with "Vectormania II" by Masters' Design Group. This was not an official release but something that was only meant to be spread internally. Despite this, definitely worth mentioning, just a shame it was not finished correctly to impress us even more.


The following year, Mekka Symposium was on again. Whilst Smash Designs won with their demo "Driss" and with their "4K Power", the one that real stands out in the 4K compo was "4k-3" by The Dreams.


No "Y2K bug" on the C64. 2000 had arrived. The winning demo at the Mekka Symposium in Fallingbostel was the brilliant "Deus Ex Machina" from the guys in Crest and Oxyron. With a killer soundtrack and awesome graphics, this is simply impossible to ignore. Number two at the same event was Plush with their demo "+H2K". This demo has to be considered in the top 10 demos of all time, fast flow with fabulous effects. Krill delivers the main code, Cosowi, Fanta, Gangstar and dgazz have the music in hand Caprice and Seba display urban pixels. Should it have placed number one at the event? This can be debated of course. Not only did Plush present a brilliant demo in the main compo, they placed number one in the 4K compo with "+H4K". Krill mentions the design and effects were inspired by Orangi by Extend released back at Zoo'98. Placing third in the demo compo was Smash Designs "Triage 4"; this is another one for the Demo Map honour list with code again by AEG and soundtrack by SoNiC.

+H2K by Plush

The following year and Mekka Symposium was still the major event in Germany. Three demos are really worth remembering here. Firstly, in the main demo compo, we have the second placing "Embryo" from the boys in Padua. This is a long demo with a slow pace but one well-remembered. Following close behind Padua was the next instalment of the Smash Designs series, "Triage 5", particularly memorable here is the 'Doom'-part, go check it out.

Moving away from the main demo category of Mekka Symposium, we have the WiLD category. Crest and Oxyron placed second with the first real C128 demo "Risen from Oblivion", which had two sides: one coded primarily by Crossbow that was running on the VIC and featured the first graphics in 2MHz mode and made heavy use of the $d030 register (which allows messing with the video signal on C128, as Ninja/The Dreams had previously discovered). And one side which catered to the C128s VDC graphics chip, coded by Graham. Finally, someone was able to push the VDC and present modes, graphics and effects that sceners had long waited for. Amazing that the VDC (80 column mode) has not been utilised more. Anyway, Graham went on to one-file this demo (!) and gives it some NTSC fixing and defect ironing five years later in 2006.


In 2002 Digital Excess presented "Timesaver"; this is a 4K take on the Focus demo Timewaster.

Later in the year, Padua delivered "SNN" - the Scene News Network. A nice design carries the demo, including a newsroom with two animated actors. As with a lot of Padua demos, there seems to be a deliberate slow pace.

Another worthy mention, also at Mekka Symposium, was Plush's "Hat Trick 4Krill". Love it how he named it this, predicting his third win in three years running for the 4K category at the event. The original working title was 'Heavy Rotation', but then Krill decided to gamble with the title (also because it didn't have "4K" in the title, unlike the two predecessors, he also continued the same naming scheme for the next two 4Ks and only broke it with his 6th, "Artefacts").


In 2003 just days before American and British crusaders invaded Iraq, the guys in Crest and Fairlight teamed up to invade the Deadline compo with "Anyone". The following month was Breakpoint, replacing the Mekka Symposium party as the German 'Easter Event' that demanded our attention. Another cooperation effort brewed (which was becoming more common), this time Oxyron and Smash Designs gave us a 4K intro called "The Impossible Thing". This zoom-stretcher was man-handled by AEG and Axis.

At Primary Star in August, The Dreams went to Holland to deliver "The True Story about Knoops". Some of the demo parts were wasting away on disks from 1995-1997 until Ninja found them under a stash of magazines :D and got it ready for the event, thankfully he did, because it won the compo.


In 2004 the demo kingdom of Germany is still strong. The Dreams were active this year with their April releases of "Brief Bursts of Happiness" and "Darwin". The latter was a brilliant release at the Breakpoint party, including the world first of 6 sprites over FLI. Those 6 sprites over FLI *seriously* impressed Crossbow. He had a look at the code and just said "I don't even want to know how much time he spent timing this" - and Ninja confirmed that it was actually several months on the train to work! Placing only fourth, it should have ranked a wee bit higher - Camelot took the top spot with You Know The Routine, as old legendary groups returning often do, with a nice demo featuring some cool effects that unfortunately lacked quite a bit on the design side and actually used some tunes that had been used before.

Darwin by The Dreams

Moving to August, The Dreams teamed up with their friends in Resource to present "Real". This one is actually not the final release, we are still waiting on Ninja to bring that out (hey Wolfram, may be the disk is under the same pile of magazines again? ;)) This demo placed third at X'2004 (my first European party after being stuck in a convict prison in Tasmania all my life). Agree with HCL on this one. If there is a well-designed demo, people shout for hardcore effects. If it's the latter, people complain about missing design. In other words, divided opinions. This one is great; I just hope that a finished version will make it in my lifetime.

Also released at X, but not made available until several months later, was the Oxyron, Plush and Instinct cooperation "Panta Rhei". Placing fourth, this was JackAsser's debut demo (younger brother of the famous Pernod/Horizon). The other highlight of this demo was the brilliant track by Fanta.

At the end of the year, The Dreams proved that not only 8-bits were enough, but so was 256 bytes, "Borderless" is a memorable 1K demo released at the Out of Orderia party.


Jumping ahead to Breakpoint 2006 - The Dreams and Resource continued their partnership, this time delivering "Error 23 90%". Ninja writes: "Imagine that a whole bunch of people is working on this for weeks. Most of them are going to travel from Hungary to Germany just to see it on the big screen. You are responsible for linking and optimising this stuff. Then, suddenly, your father dies and you have to take care of the funeral and legacy stuff. It was one option to let the production down. I (in agreement with the RSC-guys) decided to continue and see how far we could come under these circumstances. It was a period of immense stress for me, but I do not regret a bit. The decision feels good to me even today. Your mileage may vary." Hey guys, whilst a 91% version of this does exist, please give us the remaining 9%!

How much is 4K? What does that mean for the coder? Plush's "Artefacts" is another winning Easter release in the 4K category, taking up a mere 17 blocks. This small demo has a tune, a spinning planet, voxel-routine landscape and alien artefacts. A storyline and mood that is amplified by Fanta's music. Krill touches my spots well as he also releases a NTSC-version of it named "Artifacts".

Moving to Christmas, Crest and Oxyron are back, coming in third place at The Party with "Coma Job 2/3". Released 8 years after the original, this contains a soothing borderless zoomer. Groundbreaking!


Oxyron also placed second at Breakpoint 2007 with "Natural Wonders". Neat design and fresh coding (960 plots WR) from two of the legendary Oxyron coders (Graham and Axis). Good to see Oxyron kicking some major ass in 2007. Shaded vectors melted my brain. Britelite writes: "Man, if I could have sex with those dithered vectors I most definitely would!". The following month, Oxyron power was again on display with their "Coma Light '87". This one did the data boogie on the big screen at Maximum Overdose 8 and also featured live text input from the wild party goers there. Kudos also to Fanta who takes us back to 1987 with some David Whittaker styled track.

Smash Designs "Industrial Revolution" should also be mentioned for their third placing at Breakpoint. AEG's raw style with some improved and well-known routines.

In May, Crossbow hit back again with "Krestage 3 - More Weird Stuff", the best of the series. Parts that got people talking such as 9 sprites on one scanline, multiple world records, picture mover containing both an FLI and a multicolour both swinging left-right smoothly, and... if you're willing to wait... or know the password; a hidden part which revealed a killer game preview called 'Mythos'.

Krestage 3 by Crest

In July, TRSI joined forces with Vision and Triad to give us "On the road again". Coded by Street Tuff, king killer music track by Mr. Linus, graphics by my old mate Hein and released at Big Floppy People in Helsingborg. TRSI's love for the C64-DTV was evident, releasing perhaps the best demonstrations witnessed on that hardware. "Ghost in the machine" is testament to that statement, especially the shadebobs and twister routine. This DTV-hack was done over a period of only 5 weeks by Street Tuff and Peiselulli.


The following year in Flensburg, Oxyron Party 2008 was taking place. Arsenic was present to chill us to the bone with their unique dark undertones (wish there were more like this on C64 - trips to the dark side of the imagination) in "Farbraus". Dot tunnel at 50FPS is the shit. Also at the same event, Tristar and RSI came first in the demo compo with "2008 - a DTV Odyssey". Looks like TRSI have become the rulers of DTV with this atmospheric demo.

Next we move to Trencin, right near the Czech border, where a demo bus full of German demo nerds arrives at the Forever 2008 event. LHS and his brethren in Padua vanquish the competition and triumph with "Shorture". In the same month, back in Germany at Breakpoint, the guys in The Dreams, together with Resource and Exceed deliver "Cauldron". This 4x4 revival was started only 10 days out from the deadline, admittedly the effects were already at hand (except the 'Witch' part); still an impressive feat to stitch this one together and save the C64 representation at an otherwise lacklustre event.

"Natural Wonders 2" by Oxyron is a worthy contender for Demo Map Vandalism. This superb demo has great transitions and effects (mostly 50FPS) with the music fitting the pace perfectly and some good pixel work from oys. This placed number two at X'2008, bested only by Edge of Disgrace.

Wrapping up the year was the one-file demo "Negative Karma V2" from Crest. WVL/Xenon once wrote: "Crossbow? He's just an invention of our imagination, he doesn't exist! And even if he did exist, he can't do 80 real kefrens bars either ;)". Werner, seems this one-file demo is your final salvation? Still waiting on your 160 bar response.

Natural Wonders 2 by Oxyron

Is it 2009 already? By now, the world has gone App-crazy on their Smartphones. The scene is utilising some of these Apps, to increase communication between group members. To what extent is anyone's guess, but the net and the mobile App had definitely assisted some.

Five demos to add to this list. Beginning with Oxyron and their release of "3DEH" which ranked third at LCP. Despite rushing hard with coders sweating bullets, they managed to pull this one off. Of particular note is the full screen glenz vector which simply rules. Later in the year, Oxy teamed up with their Hungarian friends in Resource to deliver "Cute Overdose".

Yazoo recalls: "We only had 3 weeks to make this demo - almost from the scratch. So I'm happy we managed to finish it in time for the mini-mo :-) thanks again to everyone who was involved. We were a bit in trouble with diseases, so Axis only really had 1 week for his work. Also oys had a disease and therefor couldn't totally finish his picture. Veto finished it as good and fast as possible (added some dithering) so that we could use it. It was a pleasure to make the coop with the Resource guys, and we had lots of fun coming up with more and more gay... errr cute ideas ;-)"

The guys in Resource were pretty busy. They teamed up with The Dreams twice this year.

Firstly, "Salute!" in April. This placed second at Breakpoint and the prize money was donated to CSDb. Well done guys! In July, the duo came again with "Still Ready", which was a much bigger demo than their previous outing. Concept on this one is fantastic and the music by Linus (tributes to Last Ninja, Bruce Lee and Forbidden Forest) carries the demo magnificently (damn, is Linus in every demo in the past few years or what?!). Also, nice graphic line-up with AmN, Archmage, Leon, Poison and Jailbird moving their digital paint brushes here.

Tristar and Red Sector Incorporated came back in October with their DTV production "Misery 3". Perhaps the most polished DTV demo on C64? Even just for the ruling ray caster part, oh and the 1280 colours graphics?! Whilst this is not pure stock C64, it has to be mentioned. Kudos to Tuff, Benson, Peiselulli and Jammer.


In 2010 I got on a plane with ALiH/WOW and went to X'2010 to secretly celebrate my birthday. My second trip to Europe and at the event I witness Arsenic deliver "Frighthof". Another one delivered under immense time-pressure (plan it better guys, but then again, pressure can be what some need). Yazoo's cemetery and the bat flying in were particularly memorable, backed up by the eerie soundtrack by Fanta.

Earlier in the year, Crest had delivered "BluREU". Whilst it is not the first REU demo (as claimed by some, Oliver Stiller showed something at Venlo way back, unfortunately lost), it is the most jaw-dropping REU-release to date. Requiring the 16MB REU (emulation) or via 1541U-II to run. Some people said it was just an animation or a movie. DeeKay replied: "And as for "just wired and converted": Meh. We spent about a year designing and optimising the GFX-mode and the converter and some weeks on the dithering tool, also on tweaking and optimising to find the best approach to conversion. We made *all* the necessary stuff ourselves and did not just simply use some tools other people made."


At LCP 2011 Arsenic released "Toxyc Taste". The chainsaw wielding Ninja carving into the stone set the mood. My favourite demo from the party. Loved the greetings part at the end with the very atmospheric beat by Fanta (I loved the end tune so much that I re-used it in Vandalism News #57).

Toxyc Taste by Arsenic

At Evoke, TRSI released their one-file tribute to our fallen friend Intensity (R.I.P.) called "We Got Signal". Street Tuff recalls: "The tune I used in the demo was chosen on purpose. I just love it :D I built up the whole demo and sync on it. Was kinda hard at times. Never really hard synced on so many changes in a music player. This is all to honour Arman and his great music. Really bad he passed away. I still (and will forever) miss that crazy guy."

In September, Crossbow was showing some interest again. This time a solo release that many may have missed (go check it). He entered the GOTO-less BASIC coding competition with his entry "2Bit Mess". Placing second in the competition with this mind fuck of a demo. Just run the listing of this before running. In October, Crossbow teamed up with HCL and gave scene town "Zeroes & Ones". A lovely piece of art with much detail, enjoyed the turn-disk part the most.

At the very end of the year at Maximum Overdose 9, Oxyron released "20 Years Oxyron". Happy birthday to one of the most consistent groups to grace the C64.


2012 was a busy year for the German demo scene. TRSI went to Revision and gave us "Krawall Deluxe". Good flow, combination of real-time versus animated, placing number two against other platforms, showing the power of the breadbin. In July they also delivered "Vampires Empire" at Nordlicht. This contains more 1280 colour action for your DTV.

At Flashback in Australia, Genesis Project delivered "Are we there yet?" a fantastic little animated demo (note: this is more the Scandinavian division from their resurrection year onwards).

Let's count down X-2012, again the German demo forces dominated...

Fourth: Arsenic with "Cause of Death" - Highlights: one of the best fire effects. Massive twister. Brilliant track by dEViLOCk. Most of this done in less than 6 weeks before the party.

Second: Hitmen with "Artphosis" - Highlights: Design. Flow. Beautiful. Took a lot of people by surprise.

First: Oxyron with "Coma Light 13" - Highlights: Greetings part. Vector part. Transitions.

CONS writes: "This should have a warning at the beginning, directed at all the people who know the C64 from its beginning and are now returning to the scene: "Beware, you may shit yourself!".

HCL writes: "Now i have watched it a few more times and, well.. It will be easily beaten :). People seem to compare this with EoD, and so be it, but have in mind that i had to bear with 6-7 year old parts in there. This demo was made in 1-2 years and still there are weak parts (!). Music and graphics are flawless, but we in Booze will show those coders how to do their homework soon.. We just have to raise our kids first ;)".

Coma Light 13 by Oxyron

Closing out 2012, we should also mention Delysid's release of "Chemtrails". So refreshing to see something like this out of a compo. So many demos these days are at parties, understandably so, but don't keep the audience starving, throw a bone now and then.


The following year, Hitmen gave us "Crowd Pleaser", this one had some pretty good physics in one of the stand-out parts. Also Delysid is worth mentioning again here for their effort in "Delysid Island". Genesis Project (Mermaid) ranked number one in the compos at Edison in June with their "Tiki Pahu!". Made within 1 week before the party, neat animations and great pixels as always from Vanja!

TRSI had two releases in July that should be mentioned. Firstly, "Natura Morta" at Nordlicht. Nice animation and design by CONS. Next is "Zeropage Gravity", another one-filer and also at Nordlicht. Nice and stylish production by both CONS and Virgill!

At the Big Floppy Party, Arsenic was "Too Hot to Trot"; featuring great graphics from Death and Yazoo and glorious soundtrack once again by dEViLOCk.

TRSI were at Revision 2014 with their crack intro styled release "10 Orbyte" and Oxyron went to Nordlicht and released "Oxy Rock", containing enough cool animation to win the event. This was a warm-up to October, when together with Censor, they released "Comaland", which won X-2014. Shine captures it well with his comments: "I am SPEECHLESS!!! This is such a masterpiece ... 4 disks of "evil" quality ... monster business!!! Design, graphics and code is mind blasting (music fits very well) ... Now I am tired a bit of watching demos ;) Anyway this is a straight 12/10 (+2 for this killer amount of effort) ;)" That dancer part; oh wow 10/10. Beating Booze Design's fantastic demo Uncensored.

Another one to mention here is the re-release from The Dreams of "Cauldron 101% +++", bug fixed and containing proper music playback.


Oxyron and Censor were back together again in 2015 with "Fantasmolytic", a powerful demo with Joe and LMan added to the line-up. In August, Hitmen released "Evokefeile", what's not to like here? Cool dots, great graphics and nice music. Groepaz, Seven, Jeff.


"Tangled Up" by Delysid in 2016 is one of those rare 'fun' demos. Well-polished, lifted by the well-suited tune by Scarzix. Definite crowd pleaser and refreshingly not-so-serious.

Genesis Project delivered a really cool petscii show called "Nothing But PETSCII" in July, followed by Abyss Connection's "Tentacle 2016" the following month. At X in October, Arsenic delivered "Incoherent Nightmare", this featured some fresh humourous ideas.

Hitmen were also at X with their "Monumentum". This one contains consistent flow with very polished transitions.


In 2017 Delysid delivered two demos in February that are worthy mentions in our Demo Map. Firstly, "Vega" and followed by "Lollipop". Both at the BCC Party 11!

A surprise for some was the Digital Excess and X-Ample cooperation called "Veterans of Style" released in August. This is a comeback oldschool scroller demo featuring the return of Joachim Multermann, Goesta Bergfeld and Thomas Heinrich together with Björn Odendahl (Seven).

Veterans of Style by DXS and XAP

In June 2018 Raistlin returned to scene activities to continue his demo series with the fantastic "Delirious 11". Amazingly solid demo for being away from 8-bit reality for so long and apparently, a world first? (50FPS bitmap scroller with 400-pixel high image). Genesis also were at the famous X event and delivered "X Marks The Spot".

Abyss Connection deserve another mention for their great work in releasing "Jump" this year at Evoke. Also at that event was Tristar & Red Sector Incorporated with their stylish one-filer called "Kellerkind".


Now that brings us to 2019 - I am happy to report two major entries for the Demo Map. In February, the guys in Delysid hit back with "Snakepit" at the Berlin C64 Club event nr.13. Mixture of oldschool and new effects, love the petscii animations in this one! At Revision in April, Genesis Project joined forces with the old farts in Fairlight, Censor, Bonzai and Offence to present some "Rivalry", showing the other platform sceners present at the event how we roll. Nice cooperative effort and enjoyed the motif.


Your journey down the annals of German demo history is now complete! So many highlights, so many great releases! As mentioned earlier, this is our subjective view on those that we remember and there is bound to be productions that have been missed out by accident. Covering 30 years of history is not an easy task (but someone just has to do it!).

Now the next part of Demo Map will call out the groups; their key members, trivia and hard-sought information direct from the source (we tried hard to get some information that is tastier than what is available on WikiLeaks).

MRC, TMA, fieserWolf, Bert and Henne put together a history on the group, especially for Vandalism News - read it here first! "When searching for Abyss-Connection (AC) on the web or CSDb, you will soon find out that AC has not been founded in 1991 but a few years before.

Losing contact to the founders of AC makes it impossible to research any earlier than 1991. Well, in 1991 'The Mysterious Art' (TMA) and 'Mr. Curly' (MRC) joined AC. TMA started with some demos and supported the code and gfx for the AC diskmag called 'Bitmania'. MRC continued as swapper and created the famous digi-sound series 'Der Motzer' and some other minor releases plus a few cracks.

It was a great time with 'Cruise', 'Per' and 'Serge'. The story was interrupted after releasing 'Bitmania 12' in 1992 when most members of AC decided to quit unfortunately. But MRC and TMA did not. The two boys continued the history of AC a few years longer until that last release of the 90s 'Der Motzer 4'.

MRC and TMA first met in 1990 when a mutual friend called 'Wesi' brought TMA to MRC's house to swap some new stuff. The C64 scene was at its 'peak' at that time, and every day new games and demos were released.

But there was another way to get the 'newest stuff' around Europe. Actually, it was in the town called 'Venlo' in the Netherlands.

Those were really great times. Loading anything new we got into the car of a father of one of us and going hundreds of kilometers to the big place where all the 'big sceners' were present. Sometimes the hall was 'overcrowded', so the organisers had a hard job to keep out any more visitors. The local bus stop and even the train station was scribbled over and over with 'tags' and 'signs' of every group which had been there. Those parties took place till 1993 before they closed doors forever. Sad but true: the C64 sceners lost an important forum to share stuff and knowledge.

But 'Venlo' was not the only party place which was located in the Netherlands. Other towns which held Commodore parties every month were 'Nijmegen' and 'Den Haag'. When we got to 'Nijmegen' first in January 1994, we soon had to recognize that the real Venlo feeling somehow could not be recovered. Many 'PC' and mostly 'Super Nintendo' users took part in these parties. From then on, TMA brought his 'Amiga 1200' and MRC bought a 'SNES' with a 'Copy Station' and almost moved over to the SNES scene. This hardware made it possible to copy the SNES cartridges right to 'regular 3.5" disks'!

But those times did not last very long. In the meantime, the 'C64 scene' seemed to be 'dead' already: no more new games, no more magazines in bookstores. The 'last issue' of the German magazine 'ASM' (Aktueller Software Markt), which was 'very popular' among the C64 scene, was published in 1994. 9 years of home computer glory ended on that sad day.

After 1995 the C64 scene seemed to be dead for TMA and MRC, but living in the same hometown and being friends for many years kept them together for other free-time activities outside the scene as well - until 1999!

At the end of 1999 MRC got his first private internet access at home and while searching the web for Commodore 64 related topics an article of the 'X-Party 1998' was discovered before long! Totally excited that the C64 scene still was alive, MRC and TMA reactivated the hardware and software they still owned. Getting to know that there would be another 'X-Party in 2000' TMA and MRC prepared to take part and even release a demo at that event! The 'X-2000 Demo' wrote history as it invented SID-dancing on demo parties which is essential today. The scene vibes caught TMA and MRC at once, and they met the boys of 'VOZ' and 'RAIDERS' at X-2000 as well.

Totally flashed after X-2000, there was no doubt for the duo to get really active again. New friends were made on 'Mekka-Symposium', 'Breakpoint', 'Primary Star', 'Evoke' and 'Nordlicht' demo parties. the friendship to 'Bert/Raiders' (who has been the only one left in 'Raiders' as 'Kamp' left in 2006) and 'fieser Wolf' got stronger over all those years visiting most demo parties together, having a coop-demo on the C64 in 2003, sharing knowledge and, first of all, always having a good time!

After his group broke up in 2012 the way to join AC was short for 'fieser Wolf'. He became a full member at 'Revision 2014' and 'Bert' followed at 'Evoke 2015'! So, that is where we were in 2016 - looking back at '25 Years of Abyss-Connection History' - grown up from school boys to men, got girlfriends, got married, got children and all that kind of mature stuff. Soon after, 'Background' (2017) and 'Henne' (2018) made the crew complete.

Background is a highly dedicated C64 coder and a former fellow student of fieser Wolf. We first met him in the year 2015 as we held a small AC meeting at a vault cellar of a pub in Osnabruck. He was quite busy with programming a brand new game, but due to lack of time and missing tech support from other coders, the release was delayed year after year. This rapidly changed when he joined AC and we are very happy to have him with us now.

Henne is in the demo scene since 2001 and started making SID music in 2004. One year later, he joined The Dreams and has been at demo parties every year since. That's where we met him many times. Being a more or less active SID musician for several years, his C64 coding activity increased in the years 2017/2018. In summer 2018 he finally joined AC and is happy to be part of a highly active C64 group.

The 'Commodore 64' was always with us over all the years - and it is here to stay! We are looking forward to partying in the next 25 years very much - because 'WE ARE LIVING FOR THE CURSOR'!"


Key Demo Members:
A-Man, Amidi-Girl, background, Bert, Bon Jovi, Cascay, Copkiller, Cruise, Diabolo, Diesel, fieserWolf, Henne, Hooper, Human, MVA, Mr. Curly, Per, Pioneer, Ragman, Reject, Scholle, Serge, Stormbringer, Tanja, The Midnight Mover, The Mysterious Art, The Red Shadow.

http://abyss-connection.untergrund.net

New-H writes: "Acid was founded by Glasstiger, also known as The Judge, in the course of the first quarter of 1989. The name was inspired by the hippie smiley symbol that saw its revival during the late 80s thanks to the new Acid-House music trend. However, the group was not really about Acid-House music; while some members liked that music, some did not.

Back in our days as The Future Generation, Miraculix and Obelix met Glasstiger, a rather active swapper. He joined us in TFG, but when Trans-X merged with us into Extasy, he did not come along and founded Acid instead. We remained friends though and after a short time started working together again and eventually just decided that it was easier to join Acid.

Acid was not just a C64 group, but also a circle of teenage friends. We had many real-live meetings and focused on having fun with creating demos and letting the world know about the fun we had. We really liked the challenging C64 coding, its graphics and music. The hand-crafted demos of X-Ample were a huge inspiration, and I really admired Horizon demos for their great code.

...proud to be dead

Started as an Amiga group in 1996 and 1997 founded by Yazoo and Axis of Oxyron.


Key Demo Members:
Axis, Bitbreaker, Celtic, Cruzer, Death, Devia, dEViLOCk, DJ Gruby, Fanta, Graham, Kasmo, Kronos, Lotus, Linus, Mactron, Peiselulli, Shine, Sphinx, TheRyk, Veto, Yazoo.

Fuck the Zoo

Founded by Tim, Tanner, Fate and VIP on the 4th of March 1989 at the Sharks/Savage Party and based in Frankfurt. Built up from The Sharks (due to some internal problems in the group).

Based in Frankfurt; founded at Sharks/Savage Party FFM 1989.


Key Demo Members:
Fate, Goreflex, Hero, Pompom, Tim, Treat, VIP.

Thumbs Up!

Founded by Crossbow and Chake in July 1988, with Goldrush and Vision joining soon after followed by Xayne a bit later.


Key Demo Members:
Carrion, Chake, Crossbow, Cyclone, Dane, Deek, DeeKay, Drax, Fanatic, Goldrush, Jeff, Joe, Laxity, Linus, Mac, Maduplec, Mermaid, Mitch, MSK/O'Neill, ptoing, Reekol, S.E.S., Scorpie, Slice, The Syndrom, VIP, Vision, Xaver, Xayne.

Founded by Dequal Smith, Peter McDonald and Jack White in July 1988.

Originally known as The Techboys, D-Vision is a bit of an oddity in the German demo scene of the late 80s. As they went to the same school in the small city of Kamen, they'd made early contact with members of Omega 8 and were even considered members for a short while. When they key members of Omega 8 founded X-Ample in July 1988, The Techboys did everything they could to emulate them. They picked a hyphenated new name, and with the graphic artists of X-Ample calling themselves The Picturesque Art, D-Vision gained The Picture Equip as a subgroup. They went on to copy several demo ideas from X-Ample, but even being mostly a mediocre copy of X-Ample still made their productions interesting enough to stand out visually against the typical rasterbar and scroller demos of the time.

In 1989 they went into a small cooperation phase with infamous intro linker and self-promoter Moskwa TV (technically still in Trans-X at the time), then went into cooperation with Double before they folded altogether after little over a year of activity.


Key Demo Members:
Dequal Smith, Jack White, Mr.Turnip, Peter McDonald.

Only users lose drugs!

Founded by nomiStake and Reject on the 20th of April 2011.

nomiStake writes: "The group Delysid was founded on April 20th 2011 by Reject and I (nomiStake). I decided to learn assembler a few days before that when I watched a video of someone coding a simple scroller. This got me inspired. When I wrote my first little demo, I wanted to greet the guy who made the scroller but I greeted the wrong person by mistake - this person was Reject. He contacted me and it turned out that he was a graphician and we decided to make some demos together. This is kind of how I got my name - it was no mistake to get together with him :-) Also my first name is Simon (nomis backwards) and so Reject came up with this handle for me.

Dr. J joined one day after the group was founded and we've been a "family" since then. Delysid was the brand name for lsd25 invented by Albert Hofmann in 1943 and sold by Sandoz.

We thought Delysid (lsd) would be a cool name for a demo group since demos and lsd trips have some things in common like changing colours and optical illusions etc. That's why we chose the slogans "realtime illusions" - "only users lose drugs" and "bioram enhancement since 1943".


Key Demo Members:
Dr. J, Mythus, nomiStake, Reject, Shine.

Who else?

Founded by Thomas Koncina and Arndt Heitkamp in 1989.

Primarily founded as a game development group, Digital Excess emerged from the group The Chip Crunchers that had previously reached some level of recognition within the German scene with their "Digital Jukebox" series as well as their anti-fascism demo "Necronomicon". Their small "Meeting" demo dates their first collaboration with X-Ample Architectures in 1988.

As Digital Excess, they continued said collaboration with the soundtrack of their first demo "High Technique" partially composed by Thomas Detert of X-Ample. Released at Venlo in August 1989, the demo made the "Best New Demos" list of Sex'n'Crime #7, but in terms of demos the group is likely best known for their 1990 effort "Digital Excess - The Demo". They're also responsible for "Demo Demon", the first demo maker produced for and sold by Digital Marketing.

The group went on to do contract work for Starbyte and TV game show conversions for PCSL, and published several of their own game productions through Magic Disk 64 and Game On.

They eventually came full circle with their past as The Chip Crunchers in 2005 with the release of their "International Karaoke", kind of but not quite a music disk, though it took 9 years of silence for a full version to finally be released along with several previously unreleased tools to commemorate their 25th anniversary in 2014. Their latest sign of life to date was another collaboration with X-Ample, their 2017 demo "Veterans of Style".


Trivia:

- Kokomo, the group of two female game creators who supposedly produced the game "Hi Ska Do" and was interviewed for issue 3 or Propaganda, was in fact a label of Digital Excess.


Key Demo Members:
Arndt Heitkamp, Björn Odendahl, Gösta Bergfeld (ne Feiweier), Thomas Koncina.

http://digitalexcess.de

Founded by Flash in 1985. First demo using interlace effect simply called "Interlace", released on the 3rd of September 1987 together with Radwar. They also released the first demo to break the upper/lower borders called "Flash XI", released on the 11th of October 1985 by Flash and AVH. It was first presented on the Commodore Fair in Frankfurt 1985. The group died in 1987.


Key Demo Members:
AVH, Flash, The Mercenary Cracker (Charles Deenen).

Europe's No. 1

Founded by The Nasty Ounk, Catman & The Nauseating Timelord in 1986.

A well-known group that had a huge influence on the cracking, demo and magazine aspects of our scene. Founded in 1986 by The Nasty Ounk, Catman and TNT, the group expanded outside of Germany to have divisions in most major scene countries. The main architect of the group was TNT, who later renamed to Antichrist. He was the editor of the first real C64 scene diskmag called Sex'n'Crime, later he became the editor of Propaganda and Bad News.

G*P has had some great members over the years. Bizzmo, Deek, Raistlin, S.E.S, Snacky, The Goblin and Tyger were only some of the guys involved in first releasing cracks on the boards (NTSC partnered with the likes of Exodus and ATC) and releasing memorable demos like Spritemania.

The group were also known for having many wars, mainly through Antichrist (also under his OMG/Amok pseudonym). One of their most famous wars was with Fairlight when G*P released one of the Fairlight produced games called Rubicon.

Other interesting facts about the group were that Sorceress was the sysop of their BBS called Mystic Cavern. She built a special relationship with Antichrist (to the point where members could not call their leader due to the phone-line being so busy) and eventually they got together and were married in 1993!

After around 600 releases, the group dissolved in February 1995 with most of the active members like Newscopy, Walker, Scope and Motley all leaving for F4CG. The group was never officially declared dead and in 2009 were re-activated through some new membership and the organising of the Datastorm 2010 party in Sweden.

It should be mentioned that the Genesis Project revival from 2009 onwards, is Scandinavian, with that aside (in context to this article and focusing on Germany). Focusing on pre-2009; it's really down to Alf+Spike, Olle+Hires, Frankieghost, Raistlin and Scrap.


Trivia:

- Graphician Scope was found dead in a subway in March 1995. Foulplay is suspected as there was signs of a beating.

- There was the large war between G*P and CRAZY, mainly fought through the magazines Propaganda and Mamba. Remember the anti-Mamba intro by S.E.S?

- After his parents' house was raided twice by the KRIPO (the German version of the FBI), TNT pretended to have left all illegal activities behind, but secretly continued on as Antichrist/G*P, while officially being involved in legal activities only under the handle OMG/Amok. When rumours spread that OMG and Antichrist were one and the same person, he went through great lengths to keep the truth hidden, for fear of getting busted by the police again. He asked one of his school friends to come to Venlo meetings with him and pretend to be Antichrist, so that OMG and Antichrist could be seen in the same place at the same time. He also created a completely different hand writing style to fool anyone who received disks from OMG and Antichrist. It worked. The Arrogance told OMG on the phone once that he had proof that OMG and Antichrist were 2 different people: He swapped with both of them, and their hand writing was different.

- Remember MWS' discussion with pirate hunter Gravenreuth on the German TV show Highscore? The show's producers also asked Antichrist/OMG if he would like to debate a skinhead on Highscore, after he had published an anti-skinhead article in Sex'n'Crime. Antichrist/OMG declined.

- After Antichrist/OMG quit the scene, Newscopy took over as the editor of Propaganda. To add authenticity and a sense of continuity to Propaganda under new leadership, Newscopy wrote several articles under the name Antichrist, to create the illusion that Antichrist was still involved in the making of Propaganda.

- After Antichrist/OMG moved to America, he became a cartoonist and published several books. You can find some of his cartoons on his website: http://www.gaspirtz.com

- During his C64 days, Deek/G*P worked in his parents' graphic design company. In his spare time he liked to play the guitar. Later he became a musician in a Scottish blues band called Boogaloo Investigators.

Key Demo Members:
Alf, Alien, Antichrist (aka OMG, Bonecrushing Bill, The Nauseating Timelord), Bizzmo, Boozer, Brandon Walsh, BSC, Bud, Catman, Deek, Facet, FGTH, Frankieghost, Greenfrog, hardy, hedning, Hires, HJE,, Imagine, JO, Jucke, L.A.Style, MagerValp, Mathew, MCH, Mermaid, Metalux, Micro, Motley, Mr.Death, Newscopy, Norrland (aka H Macaroni), Nova, Olle, Raistlin, Razorback, redcrab, Rock, Roger Rabbit, S.E.S., Scope, Scrap, Shadow, Sixx, Skywolf, Snacky, Sonax, Sonix, Spacie, Spike, Steel, Stinsen, TDM, Technic, The Nasty Ounk, uka, Veda, Walker, Wertstahl, Widdy, Wild Bill, X-jammer, Xiny6581, Zyron.

Merciful Release

Hitmen was founded by Jihad in 1989 as a cracking group, and other than a few decent demos by the duo of TWF and APB during its first incarnation and a couple of original graphic collections showing off the talents of Thunder and Death during the second, they clearly concentrated on cracks.

With a troubled history of disbanding twice before finally being rebuild on more solid ground in 1995, the group surprised the scene with "Cucumber Juice" at X'96, taking home 2nd place in 1the demo competition. The sequel followed the same year at The Party.

A year without a bigger demo was bridged with smaller “Eierfeile� releases, the third installment of the Tyron’s "Tales of Esgaroth" PETSCII collection series and "Elven Magic", a 2nd place in the 4K Intro competition at Mekka Symposium by Burn. A year later the duo of Groepaz and Peacemaker returned to Mekka Symposium with "Reanim8ed".

Afterwards activity in Hitmen decreased rapidly. Key members had already started their transition to the console world, and finally the C64 section was almost abandoned. A few graphics by Cupid and Jailbird and an occasional smaller releases by Groepaz was all that kept Hitmen alive in the eyes of the scene.

It took over 14 years for them to release another big demo. "Artphosis", once more coded by Groepaz and Peacemaker, was originally supposed to be a 25th anniversary demo, but ended up being released early at X2012. "Crowdpleaser", coded by Groepaz, followed the year after at Mekka Symposium, before demo activity died again.

The following two years saw little more than Peacemaker's music releases until Seven rejoined the group and instigated a couple smaller demos, starting with "Evokefeile".

Then "Monumentum", the final big Hitmen demo released at X'2016, turned out to be the group's downfall. Seven left the group before its release for being denied any chance to participate, and collaboration for the demo had driven a deep wedge between Peacemaker and Groepaz.

Unable to reconcile, or even come to terms with Peacemaker and Curlin over who was actually running the group, Groepaz and group founder Jihad finally quit and founded The Solution.

After a few small releases, the leftover Hitmen have not released anything in over a year. The Solution keeps releasing smaller demos, music and graphic collections regularly ever since the split, but has yet to prove itself with a bigger demo.


Key Demo Members:
Acorn (AKA Feezy), APB, Balance, Banshee, Burn, Cruise, Cupid, Curlin, Death (AKA N3XU5), Edelence, Erol, Groepaz, Hi-Lite, Hibisch, Jihad, Jinx, Kristian Rostoen, Luke, Nerdine, Oldskool Customs, Peacemaker, Seven, Skud, The Barrel, The Gee, Thunder, TWF, Tyron, Zore.

Level 99, also known as The Level 99 Industries (TLI) for short), was founded in 1987 by Black Sabbath and Copyfox. The two were doing demos, cracking, swapping and importing games. They were soon joined by MCA and KGB, who were primarily supporting Copyfox with cracking and coding intros while Black Sabbath took care of spreading their works.

Markus Schneider recalls how he joined the group: "In 1987 I was working on a sound player for my school colleague Jens Blidon and myself. I had seen stuff from Level 99 and noticed that KGB was living only 40 miles away from my home, so I sent a demo tune, still in Hubbard's player, to him and was immediately invited to join Level 99. So I left The East Agents and The New Patriots 2552 some months later and joined Level 99 in 1988, changing my handle name from Synth-Man to Diflex. My cousin Hexworx followed soon and together we made some demos."

One day Copyfox decided to prank me with a fake bust, and had his father call me, pretending to be the police. This 'joke' caused me some trouble at home, because my father decided to call the real police."

Copyfox was eventually busted for real thanks to von Gravenreuth, and stopped all activities. KGB kept the group active and recruited new members, with the likes of Stringfellow, The Mysterious Fighter, Tyrant and Steven joining in late 1988. With KGB and Diflex concentrating more and more on commercial things, it fell to this new generation of members to create the memorable demos of 1989 and 1990.

When KGB eventually stopped his scene efforts, Level 99 disbanded.


Key Demo Members:
7th, Black Sabbath, Copyfox, Diflex, Dr.Cool, Hexworx, KGB, Marching, Steven, Stringfellow, Synth-Man, The Mean Machine, The Mysterious Fighter, Tyrant, XAZ.

Founded by Oliver Stiller sometime in 1989, The Human Code Machine writes: "I joined MDG in maybe 1988 or 1989 when Oliver Stiller lost interest in producing demos on the c64 and took over the group activities around 1991. At that time he only coded some commercial stuff like games. The last time I heard from him was 2003. He stopped all game coding activities in 2000. We met a few times at the monthly Venlo meeting in The Netherlands (1988-1990). I'd say MDG will be remembered for Amica Paint, which was the best gfx program for the c64 at its time."


Key Demo Members:
celticdesign, HJE, MF, Odi, Oliver Stiller, Energy Master, Frank Ewald, Frank Nurnberger, Sky, The Human Code Machine.

http://mastersdesigngroup.de

Founded by TTS, AKC, Yazoo and Graham on 7 December 1991. Originally started out as "Gloom" in 1990 but changed the name to Oxyron.


Key Demo Members:
AKC, Andre (AS), Asmodis, Axis, Bitbreaker, Biz Kid, Caprix, Cruzer, Dave, Death (AKA N3XU5), DeeKay, dEViLOCk, Ego, Elko, Fanta, Fuben, Graham, Kasmo, Kirk, Linus, LMan, oys, Peace, Peiselulli, PRI, RRR, Slide, Sphinx, The Human Code Machine, Tommes, Trice, TTS, Veto, Yazoo.

http://oxyron.de

Style is Innate!

Founded by Lubber, Sanflex, Cruise, Roman/B2 and Anonym in Berlin in late 1989, first release in 1990.

Where does the name come from? The name was invented by Sanflex, when a new group was to be formed by the former X-Rated subgroup called Elect. Sanflex always said that it was the name of a Spanish sailingship, but he never was able to prove that he was right. Later on they realised that PADUA was the English name of a city in Italy (PADOVA). The group even wrote to their tourist office and got some information from them which was brought along to the Horizon Party. Even later they also found out that PADUA actually was an abbreviation, which either meant Prostitutes Are Doing Unusual Acts (? by MAD) or the more serious explantion: Professional Artists Doing Useles Artwork. And here's even another one: Presenting Artistic Design to Unrealistic Action.


Important releases and why:

- Deluge first release at Horizon 1990, because it was the first release.
- Torture (1990) - people started paying attention.
- Tools (Tool disk (1991), Digi Organizer).
- Update / News Press Disk Magazines.
- Splish Splash - Simple Demo, great "hack" by getting Mekka & Symposium singing. We also handed out sheets with the lyrics.
- Screech (1999) - Lubber returns.
- Reluge - Padua returns.


Important years:

- The beginning 1990-2005.
- Members helped organise the C64 part of Mekka & Symposium party series from the late 1990s until the last one in 2002.
- LHS & Sad Driven - our Eastern European members, starting in 2002.
- Dano brought new life with Reluge in 2017.


Trivia:

- While German based there were/are many important members in other countries without whom Padua wouldn't be what they are today.
- Dano's tattoo. Check it out if you meet him at a party - it shows true dedication to the Commodore 64.
- Ray Tracer, a friend of the Padua family who has supported Padua for many years, works on special effects for movies and music videos (Rammstein's Deutschland, Netflix' Babylon Berlin, Bladerunner 2049 and many many others).


Key Demo Members:
Aggressor, Alias Medron, Anonym, Aomeba, Arena, Cactus, Chaotic, Cupid, Creat, Cruise, Dano, Diabolo, Doomed, Flare, Franky, Gordon, Hi-Lite, Hoogo, Hornet, Jadawin, Jailbird, Leonardo, LHS, Lubber, MAD, Mojzesh, Pixel, Polonus, Powpin, Raze, Roman, Sad, Salem, Smart Monkey, Steel, The Syndrom, Toggle, Tracker, Waz, V, Vip.

http://padua.org

nOrmAl Is bOrIng

Founded in February 1994.


Key Demo Members:
Brisco, Brix, Caprice Design, cosowi, dgazz, Dow Jones, Echo, Eyesee, Fanta, Gangstar, Krill (AKA Mystic), Map, Mip, Seba, Skate, Tecmo, V.O.

Pleasure Is Our Business

Radwar Enterprises 1941 was founded by AVH, BKA, Duke, Flash & MWS on the 20th of November 1985 and was built upon the ashes of Flash Cracking Group (FCG). The name Radwar is an abbreviation of the two words "Radiological Warfare". Their name was slightly changed from RDW to RWE. RWE is a well-known abbreviation for "Rheinisch-Westfaelische Elektrizitaetswerke" - which is a power company based in Essen that delivered electricity, power that was used for computers amongst other things).So Radwar became Radwar Enterprises 1941. The 1941 was the only relic of the former FCG and it was a popular "line number" during those days. They were legendary for a number of reasons. Radwar were the first to open the top border (1001 Crew, who is credited with 'opening the borders' first in most references, opened the sideborders and not the top/bottom); they also arranged the famous Radwar copy parties and also had a legendary interview on the German TV show "Highscore", where they discussed cracking games (that performance was followed by a big police crackdown soon after). After the big bust the group went into a secret cooperation with Strike Force & The Movers and Mr Zero Page etc. called Elite. After this label died Radwar came back to life again.


Trivia:

- MWS moved to Munich to work for the computer magazine "RUN". There he got some originals really quick. But he had no time to crack them, so he sent them to Flash. MWS and Crisp invented "Betaskip" mastering/loader protection system which was used commercially by Ubi Soft in a 1991 compilation called "MultiOps" containing Aspar GP, Rick Dangerous and Pick'n Pile. Also, their very first ever crack was Neverending Story.


Key Demo Members:
AVH, BKA, Crisp, Duke, Flash, Marty, MWS, TC, USR.

http://radwar-enterprises.de

We mirror the future

Founded by Condor, Hogan, Chainsaw and Warp 8 in 1993.

Felidae writes: "Reflex had (and has) its main roots in Dresden in Germany, where in 1993 and later many sceners and groups were very active.

Zorc and I had just joined Reflex somewhen in 1992 or 1993, after we met in Grandmastersoft and found out that it would need more than just the two of us to make good demos.

I do not remember any more how exactly we first met the other Reflex members. However, we - Happymaker, Warp8, Zorc, PVCF and I (Felidae) - met very often and so our first demo Cafe Odd was born. Which leads us to the worst experience I had in the demo scene...

After a lot of struggles we "finished" our first demo ... Cafe Odd ... and we decided to travel to The Party 1993 in Herning, Denmark. That means all parts were ready, and (as usual) it was linked together at the party place. Unfortunately the organisers underestimated the number of competition entries for C64 demos. The time slot was just too short. So it was decided to hold a preselection. Every group had to send one member into a jury, which should see all the entries and choose the 10 best demos. I joined the jury for my group. Than it was on me to show our demo to the jury. At first everything went well, but after 3 or 4 parts I realised there was something wrong with the loader and very soon after it crashed. The demo was excluded from being shown in the competition on the big screen... and it was all my fault. As I learnt, it happened because I did not reset the floppy drive of the C64 compo machine.

To my defense, my Commodore 128 at home resets the floppy drives automatically any time you reset the computer. To make it even worse, my entry for the graphics competition was blown... so I travelled home with empty hands and a huge feeling of guilt. Fortunately we prepared some copies of our demo (on neon red and neon green floppy disks with a self made disk cover) as giveaways, so our demo was spread at least.

...the next year we had some new members: Quiss, Guru and PVT.

PVT made graffiti like works I adored (and still adore) a lot. Quiss and Guru are those two coders from the Munich area whose effects made Reflex famous.

Those two guys became awesomely good coders because of two simple reasons: first, they used a cross assembler. So while I had to wait several minutes to see if my corrections in code may have worked out, they were able to check this within seconds. Second, they were friends but they had a fierce competition. That way they pushed each other to new limits leaving the rest of us behind (in skills) in astonishment. As a result the best experience followed at The Party 1994...

The parts were ready, everything was linked together.

However, we were very lucky to finish the demo in time, as far as I remember four minutes before the deadline.

In those days, PC and Amiga were in fierce competition. So many PC sceners did not attend the Amiga demo competition and vice versa. And then it was our time... the C64 demo competition. Literally everyone gathered together. Access Denied was shown... and this time nothing crashed. After the first part with a rather stressful techno part we got the audience by surprise. They loved it... and they even applauded to one of the parts I coded.

I like to remember those old days and I would be happy to see my old friend a bit more often. We all grew up... well, most of us. And most of us graduated, found a job, moved away, married, started a family... and headed towards new adventures."


Trivia:

- Reflex had a game section called Cyance.


Key Demo Members:
Beathoven, Cdaw, Condor, Felidae, Flash, Guru, Happymaker, Hogan, Jim Jack, Johnnie Walker, kb, Odysseus, Praiser, PVT, Quiss, Roder, Warp 8, Zorc.

http://reflex-studio.com
http://z9001.net/reflex

Seven Eleven 1988 was founded by Walter on the 16th of May 1988 after he left his former group Warriors of Darkness (WOD 1933) after some differences with the other members. Their very first crack was Beach Buggy Simulator, which was to be the first of over 100 cracks from Mr. Lee, Rygar and Harry to name just a few of their crackers. They also released some demos too, their first was The Pleasuredome.

After a huge rush of releases in 1988 the group looked further to expand in October 1989 when the remains of Cosmos joined 711 (Antitrack and Big Ben) however this membership did not last long as Cosmos was rebuilt in December. Not long after this, on the 1st of January 1990 the group died as Mr. Lee had quit the scene and Walter Konrad had created a new legal company called Double Density, which went on to become a successful game producer.


Key Demo Members:
Basti, Chris, Dirk, Eid, Frank, Got, Harry, Phil, T'Kay, Walter.

Follow the star.

Founded by AEG (former Fantasia and Presence), Dasheele (former Fantasia), Crazy Igor (Former Acrise) and Ivan (Former Fantasia) on the 4th of October 1992, and joining not long after was Tardox (former Vagabounds).

AEG recalls: "Demos were not mentioned in the beginning, but with our visit at The Party 1997 we decided to create a first demo which was 'Street of illusion'. From this time we focused more and more fon demos. Important release for sure was 'Flatline' at The Party 1995, then everything in the 'Triage' series and of course 'Second Reality C64'. I remember that the Second Reality end credits text already contained the following words as the demo was shown for the first time on the big screen:

"This demo has won the annual international demo competition at The Party 7". The original PC demo won the Assembly and therefore we thought, that it will only be a 1:1 conversion if the C64 version also wins the competition. And therefore we decided to tell the audience, that this demo has already won the competition ;)

No risk, no fun ;)

Another important release for sure also was our game Turrican 3, which took 7 years to complete.

With the time we got more and more members and also expanded to the PC. In 2003 we also created our still existing professional games company VIS-Games.

If we will return is a good question, currently most of my time is here in my company, but I still have some new ideas and still want to realise them some day."


Key Demo Members:
Ace, AEG, Alc O' Hole, Bad, Dasheele (AKA Dcp), Emax (AKA Recoil), Fzool, Gemini (AKA Titan), Idefix, Igor, Ivan, kb, Marcy, MVA, Red Apostel, Rorschach, Shabba, SoNiC, Sony (AKA Soney), Tardox, Tefal, Titan, Wacek.

http://smash-designs.de

The Highway to glory

Founded in September 1990. SD released the diskmags Outrage and Action News and the papermag Milestone (formerly known as C+V Bote). Got some members from Ironstyle when they split up. Dissolved in September 1991.


Key Demo Members:
Antares, Beryll, Bruce, Frezzy, Hawke, Mad Mercury, Pussyrider (AKA Piontec, Pussymaster), Ray (AKA Stingray), Splatter, The Beast, The Little Trouble, Track 18.

Founded by Zaphod in December 1992.


Key Demo Members:
Bartram der Arabar, Bugjam, Calamity, Doc Bacardi (AKA The Real Rabbit), Henne, Madaco, Madgic, mis, MOB, NIC, Ninja, Uncle Tom, Zaphod.

http://the-dreams.de

The Paco Crew 1730 was Founded some time in 1986 and departed in July 1987. Early demos and famous intro editors!


Key Demo Members:
Profi, Redline, The Invisible Man, The Parade International, The Syndicate.

Founded by TEF, Speedcracker and Rub (later renaming to Inside The Building) in September 1987, all three were from Cologne (Germany's fourth largest city). Their very first crack was Reisende im Wind 2 (Passengers on the Wind II) over 150 more releases were to follow.

The group contained some true legends such as Mr. Cursor (Ivo Herzeg - aka IRQ and NMI Monster-coder), Speedcracker (two guys) and Caos (two guys). The group died in November 1989 with members moving on to join with some friends in Elite.


Trivia:

- Check the TV show-footage from 1988 showing some of their members cracking a C64 game (Speedcracker, ZAZ and Caos).


Key Demo Members:
Bone, Caos, Defone, Inside the Building (AKA Rubberduck), Leffty, Mr. Cursor, Speedcracker, The Electronic Federation, The Sorcerer, Vip, ZAZ.

Founded by Wildstyle and WiZLeR in 1991. It was then rebuilt after most of the RSI members stopped activity after the Rainbow Party in January 1994.

Wildstyle had the permission to start TRSI on C64 by the original Amiga members (TRSI wasn't built by Irata on C64).

Members of the 1991 TRSI posse were: Brego, Trigger, Jatagan, Tyger, Wildstyle, Domino, Godzilla, Wizzler, Crockett, Rick and Salt´N´Pepper. Also of note is that Dytec had a coop with TRSI for a while.


Trivia:

- Member Peiselulli is also the coder of Western Games and Grand Monster Slam (Rainbow Arts).


Key Demo Members:
Benson, CONS, Elko, Irata, Linus, Peiselulli, Spider Jerusalem, Spotter, Street Tuff, The Mysterious Art.

Founded by Django on 10 April 1987 (who later became Joachim of X-Ample)

Joachim writes: "United Artists was founded by Mad Max, Pivi and Django. Jack Unlimited and The Killer Inc. joined the crew and left it again some month later. After buying an Amiga Mad Max and Pivi left and joined some Amiga groups. This was the end of this group. Some month later another United Artists group showed up, but has nothing in common with my group. Mad Max and Pivi finally ended at Movers (as far as I know) and Django joined The Last Science, renamed to Deejay, joined Triad and Elite and ended at X-Ample.

The demo section of United Artists was me in person. At the beginning Killer did some koala graphics, but I did the rest of my own. The other coder was "Jack Unlimited" but he only coded on his game "Parsec Ten" which was never finished. (Now you know why i called my R-Type clone Parsec). Jack tried it again with some help of the X-Ample crew and wrote a game called "EON".


Trivia:

- Member of The Last Science.


Key Demo Members:

Django (aka Deejay), Jack Unlimited, Killer.

WOD 1933 was founded by Marc on the 25th of February 1987. The group died when Seven Eleven was born in June 1988 with most members joining.

Trivia:

- Got to love Sebastian's "Demo Maker De Luxe" released by Digital Marketing in 1988! Also, did you know that Harry had one eye only?


Key Demo Members:
Basti, Dirk, Harry, Marc, Walter.

- Fashion is our Profession!

Founded sometime in 1987 and departing C64 in 1991.


Trivia:

- Had a coop with Zenobits and Comtec.


Key Demo Members:
Alpha, Anthiax, Burp, Challenger (AKA Perplex), E.T, Gazza, Harmony Productions, Jadawin, Mugger, Powpin, Red Wiz, Rhodan, Rogi, Rooster, Ske, Tamtrax (AKA Murphy), The Buccaneer, The Deviet, Thomas, Yup.

Founded in July 1988, X-Ample Architectures emerged from the demo groups Omega 8 and The Electronic Boys. Omega 8 had just gained some attention when their demo "Super Nova" was published on the well-known disk magazine Magic Disk 64, but founding members Thomas and Michael Detert and Helge Kozielek (B.U.C.K., M.I.C. and Chap Bizzarre of Omega 8), and Thomas Heinrich (Playboy 7007 of The Electronic Boys) wanted to raise the bar on the C64 with their own demos and games, and decided to continue together with a new group. Their approach to concentrate on a massive amount of self-created graphics by the duo of Thomas Heinrich and Michael Detert, who labelled themselves "The Picturesque Art", made their 1988 demo "Spirit of Art" stand out clearly from the masses. Andreas Becker (The Viking of The Electronic Boys) joined shortly thereafter to program "Fantastic Colours" and Artists of Time". Joachim Fraeder (Deejay, previously member of United Artists and Triad), a colleague of Thomas Heinrich, joined in 1989.

Michael, whose last name has meanwhile changed to Satzer, remembers: "A lot of professional contacts were made at the infamous copy party in Venlo; among others to Walter Konrad (CP Verlag), Markus Wiederstein (Radwar), Dieter Muckter (Digital Marketing) and Mario van Zeist (Boys without Brains). Thus, in the beginning we worked together with many developers and game companies and created graphics and music for numerous games. Also, development of our own games under the label X-Ample Architectures took more and more shape. At a Reline-Software party we got to know Markus Schneider and Ivo Herzeg (Mr. Cursor). They both became members a short time later.

Markus finalised a new music routine in cooperation with Helge, which at that time was one of the best and fastest music routines available. It was put to use for the first time in 'Breeze of Diogenes'."

Music played no small role in the popularity of X-Ample, as Markus and Thomas Detert both composed an impressive amount of memorable SID tunes, Thomas himself composed a medley of some of his memorable tunes for the demo "In No Sense".

Over the years, many X-Ample Architectures game productions were published on Magic Disk 64, Game On and Golden Disk, the last of which was "Bronx Medal", released in 1994. While some members moved on to working on the Amiga, Atari or PC, for others a new period of life began through regular professions or studies.

X-Ample surprised the audience at Evoke 2017 with a sign of life by releasing "Veterans of Style", a collaboration with long-time friends of Digital Excess.


Trivia:

- At the end of the 90s more games were released on Playstation under the label X-Ample Architectures (Viper and Mission: Impossible). Thomas Heinrich, Michael Satzer and Ivo Herzeg were significantly involved in these games. Michael Satzer is still working in the games industry.


Key Demo Members:
Helge Kozielek (Chap Bizarre), Joachim Multermann (ne Fraeder, Deejay), Thomas Detert (Stephen Taylor), Michael Satzer (ne Detert, Takashi), Thomas Heinrich (General X), Andreas Becker (The Viking), Ivo Herzeg (Mr. Cursor), Markus Schneider.

http://xap64.de

Founded by Marc, Mike and Wander (R.I.P.) in 1987 the group lasted a whole decade in the scene with around 300 releases.

The group was pretty much all-round, demos, magazines, tools, cracks and even some first releases from time to time. It died in 1993 but was rebuilt by X-Raffi and Danzig in 1995 mainly with guys from TRSI. After a few more cracks and demos the group died again sometime in 1996. Mike writes: "In 1990, I stopped because I was caught by the police. They couldn't prosecute me because the crime was committed when I was 13. The rest of X-Rated continued for some years, and that made me very happy because X-Rated released some nice demos and became a sure-fire success."


Key Demo Members:
Ano (AKA Anonym), CMC, Count Zero, Danzig (AKA Vortex), Deathbird, dEViLOCk, Hostyle, Lubber, Luke, Marcus, Mark, Mike, Mustaine, Neon, Pigeon, Roy, Salem, Styles, T.C., TCO, Trouble, Wander, X-Raffi, Xaver.

http://xr-design.de

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