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Comment by lbj | Hacker News Reader

What does "90 demos exposed" mean. Will there be any way to run them?

The demo-scene back in the day was magical. I remember presenting a demo in half ASM half Pascal at The Party in 96 I think it was. Crazy event, 3600 geeks in attendance. We had a gimmick in the demo where it would reset to 80x60 and print a runtime error, only for the music to pick back up and move to the next scene. The entire crowd laughed at that point - But they were evil laughs.

Anyway, a year before we had all reached the level where we could do some very simple 3d with very simple shading/fake lights. That was when Future Crew showed up with 2nd Reality and the double bouncing, transparent balls. I still remember the feeling of amazement and utter loss at seeing that :)

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Download the Mind Candy 2 DVD for Amiga demos: http://www.mindcandydvd.com/2/ It's a fantastic DVD that was released about 10-15 years ago as a physical disc and is now available for free. The demos were captured from real hardware and they went out of their way to ensure it was the highest quality capture at the time. It's a trip, and many of the releases have commentary tracks with their creators.

The volume 1 DVD on PC demos is equally good. The blu-ray #3 is great for later 2000's era and early hardware accelerated demos (I don't think this disc is a free download though).

Wow! Thanks!

I won a physical copy of this way back in the day in a little entry level demo compo. Such good times.

I somehow snagged a copy from a local video store back in the day, when those were still a thing. Was weird to see something so niche in a mainstream shop, it was good to put on in the background when entertaining guests, and it feels nice to hold a physical piece of a largely digital history.

Thanks for the link! I have a physical copy of the Mind Candy 1 DVD somewhere, but this is way more convenient.

MindCandy has a nice selection but it's getting old and to be honest, DVD quality doesn't do these demos justice.

If you don't have real hardware, you're better off watching them in 60fps glory on Youtube, see this channel for example : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdaWE88_VrLbXuQrq3Uudvg

The internet Archive has a repository of demos for DOSBox and various consoles:

https://archive.org/details/msdos_demoscene

https://archive.org/details/consoledemos

Looks like they also have a 2008 documentary(?) that I haven't heard of before:

https://archive.org/details/demoscene/demoscene.ogv

Loved reading this comment, thanks for sharing.

The demo scene is what got me into programming in my youth - in particular Denthor's BBS tuts, and many late night adventures in mode13h.

Good times!

> That was when Future Crew showed up with 2nd Reality and the double bouncing, transparent balls. I still remember the feeling of amazement and utter loss at seeing that :)

Future Crew's 2nd Reality demo, for those that haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes

I was there in Aars, Denmark in 96 as well! Awesome event!

It was pretty amazing and we've probably bumped into each other in the queue for hotdogs.

I also recall we blew out 2 fuse stations and laid the entire city dark for a few hours.

Remember grabbing newly released demos from your local BBS? Remember ansi packs, mod music, all that? It was truly magical.

I remember being 12 years old, listening to Technotronic dance hits as MOD files. Also, I was among the youngest members of the BBS community in my area of New Jersey. If only I learned how to program back then. The Turbo C++ book in my possession felt like Egyptian hieroglyphics and I gave up trying to learn it fairly quickly.

I was a similar age! I didn't have any form of internet, but a friend of mine was somehow able to source MODS, and they were the main music I listened to. Copying some MODS onto a floppy disc so that I could play them on OctaMED at home was one of my best memories of childhood.

> What does "90 demos exposed" mean. Will there be any way to run them?

Probably just a bad translation from French. It's just a book. :)

What did you think of desert dream?

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