4. Demos and groups

You are listening to the Ericade Radio Network. Good evening and welcome to another hour of Amiga Retro music. And it's time again for well Amiga flashback as per usual with your host Demon. Today it's gonna be a little bit of everything but one cool story you're gonna hear is what killed Evacue? Yeah the Demo group that failed but why?

On the Jazzwave is the name of the song, another fine omega tune. Yeah, you probably remember the term Lamer, you know, what you call people that were obviously unskilled. A Lamer was simply a blanket term for someone who is just playing computer games and does not know anything about computers at all. But the more common term is to give it to someone who is supposed to be good, like a demo, or group, orsome kind of artist that simply he or she is a hack. They're worthless at what they're doing, but they should know better. And it was a real deal back then. It was kind of the worst thing you can call someone in the demo scene, so to speak. It was a death sentence to any credibility that you might figure they would have otherwise. So it was serious business and many people that couldn't cut it simply while they quit.So anyone who just remembers the demo scene from the last years here and now, when everybody seems to be friends with everyone, well, it wasn't like that back in the day. I can tell you that much.

Commodore was not eternal. That's one for sure. In April of 1994, last days, Commodore declared bankruptcy.And this slogan was coined by Eternal, a demo group that I was part of that was founded in May of 1994. So it was kinda with the background of Commodore's demise that this slogan came up. And well, as I spoke about Lamers,my demo group, or the one I was member of, was quickly declared lamers. Not because we were bad, but because we didn't do anything. So in some kind of panic, we set up our first demo in 1994, in November, just to escape from the lame title. I told you this before, but I may not have told you that one day I was going to a BBS, found some kind of hidden forum, and there were a lot of people talking about us.

Yeah that was sneaking out and before that we had 1993. Which I guess was greater that year it seems logic. Okay so where were you when you saw State of the Art? I know I've beentalking about this previously. But I was at a friend's house and he showed me the coolness that was just that demo. It ran perfectly and looked like an MTV video on the Amiga 500. We couldn't just believe how it would look that good. And everybody has said, it's the Amiga. know, Commodore wasn't totally out there when they said only Amiga makes it possible because for a while it was like that.

bubble song what it's called here by something called SEO and it's not that company. Also on the Linux side here remember SEO with some bad memories but it's not them okay. Well okay so let's think about demos then shouldn't we? You know if you remember state of the art you cannot have forgotten about Enigma the other great demo that everybody spoke about.Another thing I saw and said, how is this possible to do on an Amiga? How can it be done? The thing we were looking at is a cube rotating around its own axis with pictures that were moving in each of the surfaces on that cube. And it's like, wow, that must take enormous programming prowess just to make it happen. And it probably did.But we were amazed. Today I guess you can do that with a powerpoint, slider or something.

And how I remember those nights. Yeah I did. Well, next song is going to be something I've wondered a little bit about and it's the Bomb of Luck. was created by Fassett from Energy and I can't really...figured out which demo it belonged to so I kind of googled it and I actually noticed that it was part of the party in 1992

Time for another story about the Retro-Past, from your host, Damon. Yeah, it's time to tell the story about EVA-Q, what did bring them down. Well, EVA-Q was a demo group that I knew some of the people that were involved in. So I was taken aback a bit when Mattias Nord or Inpose told me that, hey, have you heard about EVA-Q? Uh-huh, yeah, what? They had to shut down in disgrace.because their demo didn't work on the gathering. Really? Yeah, yeah, you know, it needed some kind of fast mem that the demo computer that they used to show the demos on didn't have and it crashed. Really? Yeah, that was an interesting thing. And I have noticed this story in my BBS in the logs there where you can read that it was shut down for those reasons. So I always believed that was the truth.and I wondered why they chose to stop producing demons for that reason. Was it that part of shame? Was it really that bad? It turned out that the history is a little bit more complex than that.

Glamorous Life. Yes, that's the name of the song. So, Ewa Q, what to do with you? Well, I actually started looking into this story to see if it actually was true because just because you remember it one way it does not mean that that is the correct thing and I'm happy that I did. You see, it does not seem to be right. What we do know is the gathering in 1994 in Norwayin April, yeah, Evacue did participate. They made, I think, the intro demo to the whole competition. So as far as I can see from whatever things that you can find on the internet, they never really participated in the competition in itself. So that in itself seems to contradict the whole thing, but the story is true, I tell you. If you look into the...Whole login information that you can find on this site poet. I think that's name of it You notice that on 23rd place and disqualified was a demo called suicidal tendencies by see loose or Silas I don't know. Yes, and the given description on why this was disqualified from the comments are diverse and handed over to the compo accidentally needed fast man the real version ofdidn't. It was written in 2005 by someone calling themselves AlienBF. So there you go. The story is true, but EverQ was not involved in it as far as I can see. And corroborating that story is the fact that EverQ actually released a demo in August of 1995. It was called NIL and it was an AJA demo. This means that they did notWell, have to shut down in disgrace or something. What actually happened to Z-Los? I don't know. Maybe you can find it at a later date. So let's think a little bit about why it must have happened that the LVQ stopped doing demos. But before that, music.

Winter Dreams and I like winter. Winter and fall, those are the best parts of the year if you ask me. well, anyway, where were we? EviQ, why did they shut down? I don't know, I have no idea, so I'm going to speculate here, okay? Why does anything die? Because it has to. I mean if you think about it, there are a lot of demo groups still...doing their stuff here on Amiga and C64 and whatever, but if you think about it, pretty much anyone back then had a demo group. Some were totally losers and lamers and some were super skilled and I would say, well, Eternal was kinda more looser and FQ was quite decent actually. They did not do bad stuff. The problem was that Amiga was losing steam, Commodore as I said before was dead.and the PC was getting better and better and the CPUs at the time were killing the Amiga. Even a decent 486 ran circles around anything the Amiga could do. And even if you accelerated it, mean the Pentium made short work of it. I mean without Commodore backing it up and all the failed ways you tried to like rescue the Amiga, it had nowhere to go.Okay, so I guess the demo scene kind of waned a bit. maybe the people from EverQ simply decided to do something else and I can't blame them. I just wish they had come back.

That was silly, but it had to be done. The Monty Python theme, what else? I don't know if that's a classic theme that they repurposed, or if it was written directly for them. Well, I have some stories to tell, but more music. And today, given how the world looks, I think the United States of America needs a bit of love.

Lombastic! It's called Love USA 1, of course. That's the way they want it, isn't it? Very nice tune actually. We are going to continue with a song just called One Sample, and it shows what you can do with, you know, one sample. Stay tuned, because we have a few minutes left of interesting banter.

You know something, I like Commodore 64 demos more today than I do with Amiga ones. Because Amiga ones, well, they are often run on accelerated Amigas with 6830s and 60s, whereas the C64 ones, they run on stock hardware. And what you can do with a 64 when you're pushing it to its limits is much more appealing to me than anything else. So I guess there's that. And okay, I'm sorry I'm gonna do this.I shouldn't play songs like this, but I will.

Never been so much fun Never been so much fun Never been so much fun Go to your brother Kill him with your gun Leave him lying in his roomErik Zalitis

It's part of a common knowledge if you're an Amiga fan to know that's Cannonfodder. And the tune might sound very happy and cheerful. But actually, Never Was This Much Fun has an alternative meaning. That war is no fun. Actually, the whole game is against war, not pro war. Yeah, play it again if you don't believe me. But it's time for some uptempo beat and then we're leaving for today.

shopper flies out of sight here on the Ericade Radio Network. And we're flying out of sight as well because this is goodbye for now at least. We're going on with Bern Hollywood. This is a demon signing off. And remember, this is also a podcast. So go to radio.ericade.net and click on the Amiga Flashback link.

Given the stories we told, time for an encore.

The Ericade Radio Network. The Commodore was limited, but the Amiga is eternal.