I don't think an explanation is needed as to what demoscene is, so I'll begin with my first experience!

Back in 2011, when I was just beginning to delve into the realm of antiquated technology, I downloaded Atari800Win. I found a piece of software called "Theta Music Composer", and initially used that to write music. Back then, my inspiration came from people like X-Ray, Slight, Taquart, Grayscale and others. While browsing through the websites of some of these people, I came across a demo called Numen

. At this point, I had never heard of the demoscene, nor had I even heard the word used before. I wasn't even sure what a "demo" was perse. I was just downloading software that interested me. Download link for those interested!

Everything I knew about "8-bit graphics" was about to change. You take a look at any game made for a computer like that at the time, and you think "it can't get any better than that, right?..."

The demo started out with a black screen, rightfully so, and music and graphics faded in after a few seconds. "What... The.............???" Barely a second in and I'm already immersed. I never really thought about it until now, but I basically managed to shut out all of my surroundings. The low bass notes and flashy logo set the mood for what was to come, and then the POV segment kicked in...

Numerous utterings pertaining to "Holy shit", "Oh my god", and "How the ffffffffuck is this possible" happened throughout. It just layed itself out beneath my very eyes: 3D/scaled animations, 3D rendered objects, 3D objects rendered on top of 3D animations, stunning imagery, fractal effects, what have you. All with a kickass song to go along with it.

I've seen many more demos across various systems since, but rewatching Numen takes me back to a time where I was still finding my place.

Recently, I found my name showing up in the credits for Minerscale's Genesis demo for the FM Synth 2 major. While it's a small demo that not a lot of people will see, to me it's awesome that I've left a big enough footprint in this community to warrant a direct mention (among many other great people) in a demo. It's wonderful that we have attracted people who will go out of their way to make full-fledged demos for traditionally music-centered events. That's the kind of competition that shakes this place up, and makes these events more interesting.

So to the BotB community, what were your demoscene experiences like?

Huh, you started with A8? Please come back, we need some POKEY dubsteps!

Well, I think my demoscene adventure started with watching Numen as well, but also uh...Second Reality I think?

Then I found BotB, through that i found people from scene, and long story short, now I'm into the Atari scene - even getting a game released in the next month!

I've run into demoscene-like material before, technically speaking, but I almost got to make music for one such demo.

I was asked to compose demoscene music once for Revision 2014 to replace someone who could not compose the music to a SNES demo (not due to technical difficulties, but legal limitations), and actually referred to two of my songs in here. The demo was not completed in time, and on my end, I couldn't keep going anyways due to what I believe is a combination of problems trying to dedicate time due to college, probably my G5 gradually failing (this was four months before I left the G5 due to hardware failure), and what I ultimately determined was a lack of interest in the usual demoscene-style music on my own end. Plus, I definitely would not have been able to attend the actual event (This shouldn't have been too much of a problem, though, since it was for a demo, and not just music.).

All I have on my end are my music and a prototype ROM with source code included.

I loved chiptunes for quite awhile, and back in 2014 I found rez & kenet's unreeeal superhero 3, the Sony Vegas Cracktro. I loved this type of music and found a video of Purple Motion's Second Reality, with the demo of course. This got me interested and all that so I delved in deeper.

I don't remember. Around 1991-2 I ended up with a disk with .MOD files and a PC player and I wondered how I might use the format myself one day.

I'm a fakebit n00b. One of the earliest demos I ever saw was George and Jonathan's III. It no longer works properly :'( but still cool!

someone from the philippines got me a version of spyro with a cracktro on it

i was scarred for most of my childhood

I found something on an old MS-DOS shareware CD and I was all "wow, this is cool". I didn't have any internet at that time to find anything more though...

Uhh, well I guess I got started when Th4 D34D said, "Hey! You should make a demo!" and I said "OK! But I don't have the time to make a song too. We should collab!" And he said "OK!" So we made a demo. Does that make me part of the demoscene?

A bit like Tiido tbh, a friend let me borrow a CD that came with his Windows 98 computer. It had stickman's world by Coma as well as some others which I thought were pretty amazing, and soon I started searching for other productions.
I became hooked on Second Reality, Megalo Demos, Budbrain's productions and some acid house ones I can't remember so well (there are a lot of great acid demoes).

First mentions of demoscene i've seen were from a polish gaming magazine (yes, they actually ran a small demoscene corner (focusing mainly on x86 PC part of it) in a mainstream magazine, from late 90s to (very) early 2000s, there even used to be some actual demos and module music packed on CDs that came with it - pretty uncommon thing i reckon), sometime around 2000, but at that time i've only had a really vague idea of what all this stuff is about, it kinda felt like something very intangible or maybe out of this world even, lol.

I didn't have my own computer, let alone an internet connection back then, and was unable of doing my own research on the topic, beyond what i could read in those articles, so i only listened to the music with Winamp (yes, MikMod, veri gud playing engine, yes [actually not]). Sadly they never included any trackers (or maybe i was just unlucky and missed those issues), so i could dissect those files and maybe even try to make my own tracks.

Then, I largely forgot about the demoscene at all, and it wasn't until ~2014 when i've stumbled upon OpenMPT while trying various music software for fun, and this was what reminded me that demoscene exists.

I'm not really an active participant of it, let alone attending IRL demoparties, i'd rather say i'm just an end consumer of that brilliant form of art (that's not to say i exclude any future possibilities of me contributing to some prod, if a good opportunity happens, ^^).

Also i can totally relate to Dimeback's feelings about Minerscale's demo, it doesn't matter how obscure the prod is, i think it's cool and nice of that person if they remembered about you and felt like including you in the shoutouts section, (and i was pretty surprised to see myself there too - thanks guys :3)

@Minerscale absolutely

@Cessor, but demoscene isn't all about chiptoorns tbh

my very first introduction to demoscene is this very same cracktro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99TU_2R6qxA

since then, back on 2006 i researched what cracktro was and how to make music like that with no success; even stumbled to the very same par4d0x forum BUT i didn't even knew english enough to get what were they all talking about, and even less their technicalisms

keep my search until my brother started seeing some demoscene and chip music documentaries and got with two keywords; trackers and amiga, then i managed to emulate my first demo and fortunately a damn classic on WinUAE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jziQBWQxvok

later, i stumbled the ultimate demoscene community; Battle of the Bits, or i though so; after a while i though, where are the gfx sex? and then understood this is a chiptune based community; it helped me all what i needed to get more into the scene and backstage of how demo music worked :D BUT since then i also have been asking y u no demo botb lol

mad thanks to Minerscale for his shoutout at the greets of his demo, made half of a dream true =' D now only left to be the one working on a demo and win my name on a very prod i collab on x3

I wish the NEC PC-98 would get into the demoscene.

Also I've been noticing that the GBA demoscene is kinda lacking in the audio path, I couldn't find any GBA demo or intro that makes use of the Gameboys sound channels along with samples.

The very first demo I ever saw was BB.

http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/bb/

I think I discovered demos around 1994. I might have seen some earlier than that through BBSes. My high school had internet, but the lab was all macs. So I would donload demos and example codes to a disk and take them home to the family's 286 PC.

Cracktros on atari st roms, so that'll be.. 2000 or 2001
I was trying to find chiptunes from some people in particular in 2006 and it led me to csdb.dk (i didnt know what a sid file was), I think that's when I first heard about demos, honestly I wasn't really impressed by them at the time

came across the fm funk madness bandcamp thingy, began to idolize some of the musicians on that album. stalked them in #mod_shrine and tried to improve my music skills for ohc and stuff. eventually they banned me (i'm unbanned now) and told me to go talk in #botb. i think i got banned from #botb a few times as well. it's all a bit hazy 5 years later

why whould they ban you though

i am cray

I bought Mind Candy 3 at some convention from Inverse Phase's booth in 2012, and while it took me some time to understand what was happening, I fell in love with 1995 by Kewlers.

Later on, when I got bored of making bad LSDJ music, I found maxYMiser and then the Atari ST scene (as well as the Amstrad scene), which I think is exceedingly cool.

Now I'm trying to attend more demoparties, and maybe actually make a real prod. But for now, I'm a wannabe :)

The first demo I ever saw was probably Demotronic

, a Game Boy Color demo by 1,000,000 Boys. I think it came with the Mac version of KiGB if I remember correctly...

As for actually doing demoscene stuff, y'all saw that Game Boy intro I made for Nintendo trilogy, right? That was literally my first venture into proper demoscene stuff (not counting chiptune stuff because right now I'm Lazy^tm and I Don't Feel Like It^tm)

really neat demo the Demotronic one ^ =' D though it get a bit buggy on the lsdj part :c i think it was rendered in a bad emulator, too bad ;-;

Pirate cracktros on my Atari ST, sometime in the 80s.

Hm, funny to see the prevalence of Atari here. Same for me, my first contact must've been via YM Rockerz'

music disks around 2003-2004.

the first demo i ever watched was sts-05 royal temple ball about ten years ago but i don't really remember why https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb6erJZiUgc

...ytpmv

embarrassing and long story short ...... albinoblacksheep

I discovered the universe fairly recently. Somewhere in 2011 I think. It all began when I was getting some PSP homebrew. I had a music player called MODO, and I was curious about the different file formats used on it.
I googled, then stumbled on MODarchive, and also Pouët. I immediately fell in love with the technical achievements, and all the music from different platforms.
Atari soundchips became my coup de coeur since then, and I'm always enthusiastic about newer demos coming at every demoparties.
Since that day, I've been constantly looking for newer content, complete archives from different platforms (HVSC, ASMA, MODarchive, and the like).
I really do enjoy listening to master compositions. I also played around myself, but I'm not a very good music composer, so I never really completed anything myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJSQnfgTNxE