tathHere is a summary of all the ZX Spectrum demoscene public activity and releases made available since the last Subliminal Extacy issue was released to the public in early 2021.
In January 2021 we had DiHalt demoparty (https://demozoo.org/parties/4165/) taking place as usual in Novgorod, Russia with releases in many categories, not just targetting eastern ZX Spectrum but also Electronika BK-0010/11M and ZX Advanced. The low end 256b intro competition in particular was packed with releases of high quality for different platforms and GleEst by bfox won over Superform by Marquee Design (their 3rd ZX Spectrum intro release). The low end demo competition was easily won by space story demo VOID by Invaders. A lot of ZX Spectrum music and graphics entries were also released.
With the COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdowns happening in everywhere accross the globe, in February 2021 Lovebyte was organized as an online event focusing on size limited competitions. This event that was taking place for the first time was a huge success amongst this niche of the demoscene, becoming the party with the most number of executable releases ever submitted to a demoscene event (248). There were a big number of ZX Spectrum releases (27) with famous Spectrum demoscene names like Gasman, Joker, bfox, g0blinish and Tiboh participating in multiple categories.
In March 2021 Subliminal Extacy #4 was released after 20 years of hiatus.
In April 2021 we has the online edition of Revision demoparty (the largest pure demoscene event in the world). The big surprise for the ZX Spectrum demoscene was the release of Delightful Attributes by Darklite and Offence, veteran sceners in other platforms that suddenly targetted the ZX Spectrum as a release platform for their 4kb intro. Their release got second place in the competition but was highly acclaimed by the demoscene at large and even received a nomination for the Meteoriks awards.
In the end of April, Info Guide #13 by Conscience was released in both Russian and English.
In May 2021 at Outline demoparty (https://demozoo.org/parties/4201/) in the Netherlands there were 4 ZX Spectrum releases overall, with highlight to the winner of the oldskool 128b intro competition: Blueprint by Marquee Design.
July is a typically extra busy month for the demoscene, although in 2021 it was a bit less lively due to the pandemic. Lost (https://demozoo.org/parties/4023/) took place in Poland, a country with a quite active ZX Spectrum scene and had a total of 19 ZX Spectrum releases, amongst graphics, music and intros.
Highlight to ViFi - Videoram Filler by Busysoft which not only won Lost Party ZX Spectrum 256b Intro competition but was also nominated for the nano awards.
Still in July, the Out of Compo 2021 (https://demozoo.org/parties/4290/) took place in moscow focusing on adult themed entries and had over 30 entries.
In August 2021 there was Xenium (https://demozoo.org/parties/4038/) taking place in Katowice, Poland and Chaos Constructions (https://demozoo.org/parties/4239/) taking place in St. Petersburg in Russia. Both of them had some ZX Spectrum releases but CC had more Speccy dedicated competitions and also saw the release of Devolver by Stardust, one of the best ZX Spectrum demos of 2021.
September 16, 2021 became known as the day Clive Sinclair was declared deceased. There were a few tribute releases and events in his honor.
The next event worth mentioning was Demodulation (https://demozoo.org/parties/4358/) happening in Moscow, Russia in late November 2021. Had a lot of graphics, music and demos released.
Highlight to the winner of the oldschool pixelart graphics competition Grongy with his entry MSX Night and CSI winning the Oldschool demo with an Electronika BK-0010/11M demo.
At the same time in Hungary, at the Experience demoparty, a new ZX Spectrum demoscener named Kaszi75 would start his series of ZX Spectrum releases with Celtic Peano (https://demozoo.org/productions/302848/).
In December 2021 it took place in Poland the Winter Edition of Silly Venture (https://demozoo.org/parties/4172/) which is typically more focused on the Atari scene but this year also had a couple of ZX Spectrum categories counting with strong presence of Joker on the intro competition and the demo competition being won by a demo titled Possible by Acid Maker and Jakub Husak and Scorpio.
Still in December the Vintage Computing Christmas Challenge (https://demozoo.org/parties/4398/) took place online and ended up featuring a bunch of ZX Spectrum Xmas trees.
In January 2022 DiHalt (https://demozoo.org/parties/4384/) took place once more with it's usual array of different competitions featuring plenty of new music, graphics and executable ZX Spectrum releases. Highlight to Shiru winning the ZX Spectrum Beeper Music competition, who would soon after the party also release his massive musicdisk Shiru's 1-Bit Music Compilation Vol. 2 (https://demozoo.org/productions/318273/).
January 2022 was still marked by the release of Scroller (https://demozoo.org/productions/304794/) which ended up being nominated for a Meteoriks award for Outstanding Technical Achievement with it's demonstration of how fullscreen smooth scrolling is actually possible on the ZX Spectrum, something that had been deemed impossible during it's previous near 40 years of existence. Source code available!
In February 2022 there was another record breaking edition of Lovebyte (https://demozoo.org/parties/4378/) with a total of 30 ZX Spectrum releases across the different categories. We had intros from Busy, Ped, g0blinish, Superogue, Noro, Baze, Omega, Joker, Aki, Nik and Shuran33.
Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the ZX Spectrum there was a special event held in Cantanhede, Portugal. Which i was able to attend in person and see talks from different legendary and contemporary ZX Spectrum game developers, some people related to ZX Spectrum history in general, the Timex Portugal history in particular and also fellow Portuguese demoscener lordcoxis telling us about esxDOS development. All the sessions were recorded in video and you can find them at the LOAD ZX Spectrum Museum youtube page: https://www.youtube.com/@LOADZX
March 2022 was marked by the Russian army invasion of Ukraine.
It's humanitarian, emigration and energy crysis rippled throughout europe and the world. A few stop the war intros were released, but i don't think Putin cared much about them, the war is still ongoing. The eastern ZX Spectrum demoscene often shared members between Russia, Bielorussia and Ukraine so this whole situation is sad and abhorrent to witness. And it's not just Ukranian demosceners that suffer the effects of the war, Russian and Bielorussian people also get blamed for Putin's decisions and are left in a difficult situation, many decided to leave Russia but a lot of them are not able to do so. This war affected the ZX Spectrum demoscene in many ways and had to be addressed in this activity report, even if we try to avoid getting into politics on the diskmag.
In March 2022 Atebit, the british demogroup released a ZX Spectrum slideshow titled Electric Dreams (https://demozoo.org/groups/549/) they would end up releasing a whole series of slideshows for the ZX Spectrum throughout the upcoming couple of years.
In April 2022 we had Revision, happening online once more still due to the pandemic travelling constraints and the new war / refugee / energy crysis situation. There were a total of 3 ZX Spectrum releases at Revision, 2 of which placing quite well.
Later in the month speccy.pl party took place in Warsaw, Poland (https://demozoo.org/parties/4418/) and was fully dedicated to the Zx Spectrum with many different categories of competitions.
Many good releases like Impact by Joker, a new Stardust demo and the winner demo Attributica.
In May 2022, P_Malin of Bitshifters made his debut on the ZX Spectrum scene winning Outline Oldskool 256b intro competition with Bitplane Revolution (https://demozoo.org/productions/308580/). More from him later in the year!
In June 2022 Field-FX happened in the United Kingdom and saw the release of You Wouldn't by Oni (https://demozoo.org/productions/308830/) also making his debut on the speccy with a reference to old anti-piracy ads.
July 2022 had several Spectrum releases all over Europe, in Hungary at the Arok 8bit platform focused demoparty (https://demozoo.org/parties/4435), in Poland at Lost Party (https://demozoo.org/parties/4198/) and in Norway at Black Valley with the release of Cubelon by Darklite and Offence (https://demozoo.org/productions/310463/).
August 2022 had couple more events with ZX Spectrum releases, Undefined, a smaller party in Russia (https://demozoo.org/parties/4497/) with a few competitions dedicated to the Spectrum and Xenium in Poland (https://demozoo.org/parties/4361/) where the ZX Spectrum Intro competition saw the release of 4 new intros with special mention to the high quality productions by Joker.
In September 2022 the Queen of England died and the Function demoparty took place in Hungary which once more had a small ZX Spectrum representation. There was also the release of a new packer called UPKR which featured a z80 targetted unpacker algorithm, there was a release by rMDA promoting this (https://demozoo.org/productions/313991/) which was later also released at CaFE demoparty (https://demozoo.org/parties/4352/). Meanwhile Demodulation held a record breaking 53C graphics competition that clearly shows the boom in popularity of this format on Russian parties. For those like myself who have no clue what this format is: it's a simple checkerboard pixel pattern following the 2 attribute colors by 8x8 charset limitations of the ZX Spectrum but with multicolor by realtime render timings.
In November we held Inercia Demoparty (https://demozoo.org/parties/4406/) in Portugal featuring with some ZX Spectrum competitions and invited the Load ZX Spectrum museum community to participate. We had a few new songs and intros and special mention to the executable graphics double release by P_Malin. A couple of weeks later Demosplash (https://demozoo.org/parties/4432/) took place in the United States and saw the release of Grongy Time by Eye-Q Team, one of the best ZX Spectrum demos of the year.
To round up the year, another edition of the VCCC Christmas Star Challenge (https://demozoo.org/parties/4578/) with even more entries targetting the Spectrum than in the previous year.
January 2023 rolled around with a Happy New Year 2023 intro by foym (https://demozoo.org/productions/317191/) who has released several other small intros throughout the year. Then we had DiHalt (https://demozoo.org/parties/4556/) happening in Russia again with many ZX Spectrum categories and releases, highlight for the winner LowEnd Graphcis entry "To the Nowehere" by Ruguevara. Shortly after DiHalt we also had the release of Yo Yo Beep Beep by Tufty (https://demozoo.org/productions/317879/) a beeper music entry.
February 2023 was time for another edition of Lovebyte (https://demozoo.org/parties/4492) with yet again another all time record of submissions entered, 26 of which were for the ZX Spectrum. Highlight to the winner of the 256 byte oldschool intro Entangler by Baze.
March 2023 saw the return of the legendary Slovakian 8bit demoparty Forever (https://demozoo.org/parties/3887/) after their Pandemic hiatus. The quality of the entries did not disapoint with a stunning ZX Spectrum demo competition of 4 very high quality demos despite lack of Russian scene participation who have known on past years for being more active then the west and central europe groups.
Just a few weeks later at Revision 2023 (https://demozoo.org/parties/4569/) we would witness even more high quality demoscene releases with Darklite and Offence winning the Oldskool demo competition of the largest pure demoscene demoparty of the year with their demo In Color. We also saw new releases from releases from RMDA, SerzhSoft, Kaszi75, wbc, MmcM, Aki, Pator and newcomers to the spectrum Lex Bailey and h0ffman, the later even winning the Oldskool music competition with his beeper track 1-Bit High and Rising.
Outline (https://demozoo.org/parties/4627/) in May 2023 also had 3 new ZX Spectrum releases.
In July 2023, Swedish group Five Finger Punch released Beyond Sea Level (https://demozoo.org/productions/325939/) at Edison demoparty and in Poland we had another edition of Lost (https://demozoo.org/parties/4385/) with another handful of Spectrum releases by Joker and a few others.
In August there was one more edition of Demodulation (https://demozoo.org/parties/4652) in Russia with the usual high amount of ZX Spectrum intro, music and graphics entries including another flood of realtime 53C graphics submissions.
In September 2023 another gathering of speccy.pl (https://demozoo.org/parties/4739) with many Spectrum categories and releases, including a competition for the ZX Spectrum's cousin the Sam Coupe. The highlight of the party goes to the winner ZX Spectrum demo Add Astra by Arise and Joker.
A few weeks later at Nordlicht Gasman released Bazematic (https://demozoo.org/productions/330023/), a tool for live coding Z80 Assembler which we hope to see used in live coding battles at future demoparties soon!
In October 2023 there was the Argentinian Flashparty (https://demozoo.org/parties/4676/) with a few ZX Spectrum releases aswell, including a new intro by Joker and a demo by Argentinian group Confed titled Posadas Vice.
And with that we reach the release date of Subliminal Extacy #5, out at Inercia 2023 in Portugal on the first days of December and where we hope to see some more ZX Spectrum demoscene activity besides this diskmag being released. Speaking about the Portuguese ZX Spectrum demoscene, there are some plans in the works to organize a demoparty at the Load ZX Musem in Cantanhede, Portugal on the later days of April 2024, stay tuned for date confirmations and official announcements and we hope to see you in Portugal sharing your ZX Spectrum demoscene experience with us!
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