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The Furulund party and Another Perfect Demo

Exactly 30 years ago on this day, me and my friends in the C64 demo group XAKK went to a so called copyparty in Furulund, Sweden. Here we met with other people that was part of the early Commodore 64 and Amiga scene in Sweden. Three demos was released on this party. One of it was the first if a long series of more advanced demos for Commodore 64 from my team in XAKK. This demo was called Another Perfect Demo. My friend Jolly Cracker did the assembler coding and I made music and graphics.

You can read more about it in my story about XAKK that I wrote in the 90s when I still remembered some details about my years hacking the Commodore 64. It’s hard to believe 30 years have passed. My generation of computer geeks are nearing our 50s and some have already passed.

RIP Mr Bacher/CombatManiac who went to the next level a couple of weeks ago.

May 28th, 2017|Commodore 64, Demo|

BONZAI 2016 THE PHOENIX CODE (C64)

Back in the mid to late 80’s I was quite active in the Commodore 64 demo scene, as Knatter of XAKK. That ended in 1990 when I got an Amiga and ventured into a period of game development.
I still like to keep track on what goes on with the old C64. There is a quite active demo scene, mostly consisting of men in their 40s and early 50s, hellbent on pushing the 8 bit boundaries even further.
Once in a while something really impressive is released, like this fresh new demo from Bonzai, called the Phoenix Code. Recorded on a real C64. Everything is great with it. The overall design and graphics, the coding and of course the music, oh the music.

November 2nd, 2016|Commodore 64, Demo|

Pictures from the Commodore 64 scene in the 80s, part 2: The Ikari & Zargon Party 1989

Let us take a trip down memory lane to the year of our lord 1989. The Commodore 64 and Amiga demo/cracker scene had become quite big among us geeks of northern Europe. My team XAKK had released demos for the C64 for more than two years by now. Truth be told, we were beginning to feel a bit like, “was this all there was to it?”. Maybe we were just getting a bit too old for it all.

The Ikari & Zargor meeting in Slagelse, Denmark, on the 23-25th March 1989 was the first nail in the coffin for us. We were supposed to finish and release the demo Bound to be best but had to shelf our plans because of constant power cuts. Since we were quite a competitive little bunch and really wasn’t there to play around (Remember, the oldest of us were 20 at the time), we decided to leave the party and finish the demo at Vivaces place in Sweden. Bound to be best was to become our second last demo ever on the Commodore 64.

More photos here: Part 1, and here Part 3

: The dark innards of the Slagelse meeting.

: Sceners at the meeting. Comment below if you recognize anyone.

: More dark innards of the Slagelse meeting.

: Mr Cross, Jolly Cracker/JC and Vivace. All from XAKK.

: Jolly Cracker/JC (XAKK) with his trusty old Commodore 64.

: Knatter (XAKK) didn’t approve of this meeting.. ;)

: Vivace, Jolly Cracker/JC and Mr Cross getting pretty tired of the constant power cuts.

: Cleo, Vivace and Mr Cross chilling and coding at Vivaces place.

: Mr Cross (XAKK) playing with his home built sampler, at Vivace’s place.

May 30th, 2015|Amiga, Blog, Commodore 64, Demo, The 80s, The demoscene|

Commodore 64 demos are part of our cultural history

Last year the demo No Sleep 2 (1987) by my old C64 group XAKK was chosen to be part of the exhibition Typemotion at ZKM at the Center for art and media in Karlsruhe Germany.

If you missed the exhibition you can catch it again and again since it’s a travelling exhibition. Next up will be in Vilnius, Lithuania and the National gallery of art, the branch of the Lithuanian art museum, between Oct 10 and Nov 9, 2014.

August 9th, 2014|Blog, Commodore 64, Demo, Retro|