DEMOSCENE

HT Gold Gets Cracked and Hated

In 2008 we hacked an old C64-game and turned it an even more fun game, that also looked a lot better: HT Gold. I guess it’s called glitch art. It was exhibited in a number of places, but it wasnt released in the scene. Until now.

It’s a funny coincidence, since I talked about HT Gold a while ago, as a perfect example of something that works in the art world but not in the scene. And it turns out I was right — just read the comments.

> Download the game (C64)

Jucke’s Experimental Up Rough Show

This is a DJ-set by Jucke, mixing together material from Up Rough members like Qwan, Yoki, Dipswitch, Elusive and me. Released at Bit Jam, it continues a series of Up Rough mixes. Illustration here by Raquel Meyers, logo by Spot.

Very well mixed by Jucke as usual. And if nothing else, a good way to discover Qwan’s fantastic Amiga music.

From the Zoo

I was at Triad‘s C64-party Zoo in Finland last weekend. I was there to do a live concert (with lots of Amiga electro pop which is my current fetish). I also did a quiet live jam during food (again) and released a short thing called Boklöv for the music competition. Aaand, made a song for the short demo Monday Night by Extend, including graphics by Tommy Musturi (see above).

This was by far the biggest dose of PETSCII and disk covers in any demoscene competition. Really high quality, too. Zoo also had the highest amount of (half)naked sauna men with data bellies, which was a great feature.

20 Years Is Nothing (video)

This C64-production celebrates the 20th anniversary of Hack n’ Trade, a group I started when I was a pre-teen Guns n’ Roses hacker. For this demo called 20 YEARS IS NOTHING I made the sounds, Acid T*rroreast (Raquel Meyers) typed the visuals, and Mathman (Johan Kotlinski) did the magic coding.

The visuals were really typed by hand, one by one on a Commodore 64. No undo function. I think it was something like 50 000 key presses for the whole thing. We made it in a few days, and it was a process with lots of twists and turns, so the music could’ve been better (especially since I did a lot of it at a place like this).

Thanks to Lemming/Offence/FIG for capturing it properly. Not an easy task!

Fågeldisk With Top Secret Software

When I was a kid I started a group called Hack n’ Trade, and now it’s 20 years old. To celebrate this, we made a release disk – FÅGELDISK – with bird-related C64-productions like 20 Years Is Nothing, double and triple SID music by Jellica, burning birds and also some very secret HT-tools and games.

We made 10 copies and spread it around at the BFP copy party, so we’ll see when it starts to spread around. In the mean time, here’s how it looks:

Dansa In Video

A story with pirates, sloths and sex told completely in text graphics and chipmusic. A blocky and brutal visual aesthetic synchronized with explosives, drunken funk and computer screams. All made in 44 kilobytes, to be executed by a Commodore 64 and its colourful ASCII-alternative called PETSCII.

Shown at UCLA Game Art Festival, competed at the Datastorm demoparty and is available as C64 executable here.

Visuals by Raquel Meyers, audio by Goto80 and coding by Johan Kotlinski.

Shown at Net Artist Music Videos in London (2013), UCLA Game Art, Los Angeles (2013).

Sloths, Sex and Pirates

Our new C64-demo Dansain was presented at the Datastorm copy party last weekend. It’s a pirate story told in text graphics, tightly integrated with the audio. There’s explosions and sloths, boats and bars, sex and dancing – everything you need! For now there’s no video, but I’ll post it soon enough.

It received some very good criticism at the party. Good to get applauses and screams from an audience that appreciates the effort and the format. Quite different to pop/art where results & concept is so dominant.

On the other hand, the aesthetic conservatism of the scene is not exactly fresh, lol. But I guess it’s what keeps it together. All the way to its death! Oh well, enjoy the demo. It was very much inspired by Lennart Hellsing.

In the Name of the Sword

Acid Terrorist (graphics), Goto80 (sound), Linde (code). Released at LCP 2011. Please download and watch this on C64 & CRT screen, because it’s impossible to capture it. All graphics made in PETSCII, which hopefully won’t be the new hipster thing (is it already?).