Demo Parties: Breaking The Mould By Gasman / RA Ecstasy was one hell of a demo. I first saw it at a Speccy and SAM convention in September 1996 - the same show that I first met Extacy-3 and the United Minds. It wasn't a demo party as such - just a place where Speccy and SAM fans could meet up, buy and sell games, generally see what was going on with our favourite computers. But back to Ecstasy Megademo. It was my first glimpse of the Russian scene, and I was so unprepared for the experience that my first thought was 'Is that a SAM Coupe demo?' In one part of the demo, Imp asked the question "Amiga rules, but Speccy is still more widespread home computer - so why are there no demo / game competitions where everyone could show his talent and get his reward?" It wasn't long before his question was answered, in the form of Enlight 96, and so a revolution on the Speccy scene began. That was then, this is now. I'm writing this in the week after Millennium and Paradox. I must admit that nothing from those parties has particularly inspired me, and with this in mind, I've started thinking about what the Speccy has really gained from the demo-party culture. It's no surprise that my current thoughts about this have mainly been sparked from my visit to this year's Forever party. Seeing it all first-hand made me realise the real value of demo parties - appreciating each other's work in a way that a simple e-mail could never communicate. Without events like this to bring the scene together, demo making would feel like throwing all your work into a black hole. At Forever I also learnt about the C64 and Atari scenes. Or maybe I didn't. Certainly I got to see a selection of the all -time classic demos, and the Atari demos in particular were mindblowing. I can easily imagine that they came about from rival groups, striving to be the best. But when it came to the competitions, I realised what had happened to those scenes. There were simply too many parties. As a result, parties in France would only attract French groups, parties in Germany would only attract German groups - and consequently they would struggle to find enough entries for the competitions. That's what I saw at Forever - the Atari and C64 were only represented by a handful of Czech and Slovak groups, and ended up overshadowed by the Spectrum. As Forever was one of only half a dozen Spectrum parties this year, it attracted contributions from all over Europe, and this gave the impression that the Spectrum scene was more active. Admittedly, you could point out the lack of a full demo competition at Forever and claim that even the Speccy wasn't as well represented as it could have been. It appears that Spectrum demo makers, in common with other scenes, are focusing their attention on the biggest party. In the case of the Spectrum, that party is Chaos Constructions. "Peanut prizes inspire monkey competitors," declares one of the taglines on Random's e-mail. And yet the philosophy of 'bigger and better' isn't necessarily a good thing. After all, surely it goes against the whole demo scene principle of working for enjoyment rather than money? But don't worry, I'm not going to start a rant about the evils of capitalism. Everyone likes money, and I'm not going to change that in a hurry. However, it's a sad fact that the demo maker of today is not asking "What can I do for the scene?", but "How can I win this compo?" (Hello Serzh! ;) To explain what I mean, let me take you back to Forever. The darkened school hall in Trencin. The end of a long evening of competitions. The finale of the night, Bobering 2000 by Syndrome, the one full Spectrum demo to be released at the party. Chip music still echoing through my head. The sense that I had finally 'experienced' the scene. Feeling practically dazed by the sensory overload, and the anticipation of the results. It was then that Ellvis came up to me, and asked what I'd thought of Bobering demo. Without really thinking, I said "Yeah... fantastic..." Sure, it was. Lightsourced and texture-mapped 3D figures are impressive, no mistake. A minute or so later, my thought processes arrived at an afterthought: "...But very... Russian." As much as I liked the demo, I felt that it amounted to a rerun of Napalm, or one of the CCOO0 invitation dentros from a couple of weeks before. It's easy to see why it was done that way - it's a tried and tested formula. Rather than trying to break new ground, they'd opted for a style that wouldn't add much to the scene, but would make them safe contenders for winning the competition. I'm all for demo parties - not too many or too extravagant, that's all. And a word of advice to demo makers - be imaginative. You never know, it might pay off big time. And then you won't be a one-day-wonder party winner - you'll be a legend on the scene.