The Best of Commodore 64
Digital Memories is a selection of the best demos for the Commodore 64.
An exciting retrospective trip through virtual worlds full of effects,
bleeps and pixels that is truly multimedia of the generation #1.
The spreading of pirated software in the pioneer days of home computing soon
spawned the first digital youth culture. Crackers, as they were called, would
compete to produce the quickest »crack« of a game. And the best way to gain the
appropriate fame and notoriety for this feat was to add an »intro« to the game,
showing off their nickname and group name. These intros got spread along with
these games at schools everywhere throughout the 80s. They were often works of
art in themselves, and it wasn't unusual for the intro to be better than the game
it preceded. They often required enormous programming skills and audiovisual talent.
Intros led to a new independent digital artform pushed by competition: the demoscene.
Demos are music videos without dancers, with no sets and no camera. Instead,
demos generated realtime calculated animations created by specialists in programming,
graphics and sound, pushing the computer to its very limits - and often making the
impossible possible, even on classic computers like the Commodore 64, where demos pushed
the computer harder than the games. They also borrowed the best music of the genre,
often turning an unremarkable game tune into a classic in the process.
»Digital Memories« is a selection of the best demos. An exciting retrospective trip
through virtual worlds full of effects, bleeps and pixels that is truly multimedia for
the 1st digital generation.
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