ZX Spectrum Demoscene [1st Edition] 8323348626, 9788323348627, 8323347522, 9788323347521, 8323370621, 9788323370628, 8323371253, 9788323371250

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 2
Title - Complete......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Table Of Contents......Page 6
The Demoscene And ZX SPECTRUM: A Guide For Outsiders......Page 8
I. ZX SPECTRUM Demoscene......Page 20
II. Digital Genres Of ZX SPECTRUM Demoscene......Page 80
III. The Platform......Page 114
Conclusions......Page 138
Bibliography......Page 144
Index......Page 148

Citation preview

The ZX Spectrum Demoscene is an initiative of fundamental importance for the study of the history of digital culture in Central Europe. The authors offer insight into the environment, aesthetics and histories of the platform’s assimilation in varying social and historical conditions. Dr hab. Anna Nacher, professor of the Jagiellonian University

Piotr Marecki, writer, publisher, translator, digital culture scholar. Associate professor in the Institute of Culture at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, also the head of a creative computing lab. In 2013–14 he did a postdoc at Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the Trope Tank lab. Yerzmyey, lo-fi artist: demoscener, musician, graphic artist, photographer, writer, creator of the Hooy-Program. Author and co-author of numerous demos, intros, graphics, chiptune songs, interactive fiction, games, collection of photos. He works mostly with ZX Spectrum, but also with Atari and Amiga computers, Commodore 264 series, the Raspberry Pi and many others. Co-author of a creative computing lab at the Jagiellonian University. Robert “Hellboy” Straka, z80 & x86 programmer, mathematician, AGH UST lecturer. Author and coauthor of several demos, intros and games on the ZX Spectrum. His academic career is linked to advanced numerical methods in science and engineering with emphasis on GPU computations and Lattice Boltzmann Method.

Marecki / Yerzmyey / Straka | ZX SPECTRUM DEMOSCENE

This monograph was written from the perspective of the demoscene, i.e. users and creators whose interests are focused on the capabilities of the British 8-bit computer ZX Spectrum. The book does not include the official history of the computer, but the local narrative. The authors examine the processes of “taking over” the western platform, e.g. mass cloning of the hardware. They investigate creative artifacts specific to the ZX Spectrum scene and discuss the computer’s capabilities for creating graphics, music, demos and games, applying the ethnographic method as well as platform studies and media archeology.

Translated by Justyna Jochym

REVIEWER dr hab. Anna Nacher, prof. UJ COVER DESIGN Jakub Woynarowski

Publication financed by the program of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education “National Programme for the Development of Humanities” for the years 2016–19, 0020/NPRH4/H2B/83/2016 Orginally published under the title Demoscena ZX Spectrum.

© Copyright by Piotr Marecki, Yerzmyey, Robert Straka & Jagiellonian University Press First edition, Kraków 2020 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any eletronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Authors special thanks go to Alone Coder, Adam Ladziński, Anastazja Naumenko, Martyna Chmielińska, Renata Sikorska and Zofia Sajdek. ISBN 978-83-233-4862-7 ISBN 978-83-233-7125-0 (e-book)

Jagiellonian University Press Editorial Offices: Michałowskiego 9/2, 31-126 Kraków Phone: +48 12 663 23 80, Fax: +48 12 663 23 83 Distribution: Phone: +48 12 631 01 97, Fax: +48 12 631 01 98 Cell Phone: + 48 506 006 674, e-mail: [email protected] Bank: PEKAO SA, IBAN PL 80 1240 4722 1111 0000 4856 3325

TABLE OF CONTENTS The Demoscene and ZX Spectrum: A Guide for Outsiders 7 Why the Demoscene? 10 Why the ZX Spectrum? 11 Sound 13 Graphics 14 Why Locality? 15 I. ZX Spectrum Demoscene 19 Structure of the Demoscene 19 Nicknames and Friendship 23 Platform Wars 29 Teamwork 35 Contests and Voting 41 The East-West Divide or Decentering Digital Media 49 Clones 57 Creative Programming 64 The Archive 72 II. Digital genres of ZX Spectrum Demoscene 79 Texts on the Scene 79 Demos 79 Magazines 89 Electronic Books 91 Real-time Text 91 Text Games 92 1-bit Sound 93 The Return of 1-bit Aesthetics: MISTER BEEP 98 Development of the Scene 102

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Table of contents

Homebrew Games on the ZX Spectrum Homebrew Games—the Modern Period

105 107

III. The Platform 113 ZX Spectrum—Official Models 113 Soviet and Post-Soviet ZX Spectrum Computer Clones 120 ZX Spectrum Programming Languages 129 BASIC 130 Assembler 132 Other Languages 134 Conclusions 137 Bibliography 143 Index 147

THE DEMOSCENE AND ZX SPECTRUM: A GUIDE FOR OUTSIDERS

This book describes three phenomena in digital media. Firstly, it concerns the 8-bit personal computer ZX Spectrum produced by the British company Sinclair Research since 1982. As a publication about a specific platform, it falls into the mainstream category of platform studies, and it pays special attention to how the computer was used for creative purposes. Secondly, the story about the platform will also be presented from the perspective of the community that flocked around it. Therefore, it is mainly a book about people who identify with the ZX Spectrum. We do not describe all the users of the platform here (players, people using apps), rather we adopt the demoscene criterion (which we explain below). And the last and third phenomenon discussed in our book deals with the decentering of digital media or discovering digital phenomena from beyond the hegemonic center. Therefore, even though the ZX Spectrum was created in Great Britain, the use of the computer in the country of its birth will not interest us. Thanks to its creator, Sir Clive Sinclair, the ZX Spectrum was designed as a computer primarily for educational purposes. As it often happens, the work detached itself from its creator and took on a life of its own. In our narrative, we will focus on the acquisition (cloning) and creative use of the computer in Eastern and Central Europe. In March 2016, in the small town of Horná Súča near Trenčín, Slovakia, the 17th edition of the world’s largest 8-bit demoparty, called Forever, took place. Dozens of people, mainly from Europe spent 3 days with their 8-bit machines: both the popular ones, such as the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64,

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The Demoscene and ZX Spectrum: A Guide for Outsiders

Atari, and Amstrad CPC, as well as the more exotic ones, including Thomson, SAM Coupé, PMD 85, but also any other computer with 8-bit architecture. The majority brought their own machines and often newly designed devices like, for example, the peripheral devices that strengthen the computer’s capabilities or emulators of old disk drives. Participants of the Forever demoparty also brought new creative pieces, like demos, intros, chiptunes, and graphics prepared on the abovementioned platforms. The people in question did not meet only to play games on old computers or to reminisce about the 1980s (when they usually became the owners of these platforms), but to show their new achievements, meet friends that share their passions, listen to lectures, take part in quizzes that tested their knowledge about the platforms, but above all, to take part in a contest for the best digital works presented for the first time at this event. During the demoparty in Horná Súča, many of those involved continued to finish their works or programmed the next ones. On the last day, the winners received prizes awarded through a voting process. Only participants of the event who paid their entry fee and received a special voting ticket could vote. Nobody sponsored them; no one provided them with funds for transportation or accommodation in Horná Súča. They came here because of their interest in computers and with the intent to showcase their programming skills. The Forever demoparty was one of the hundreds of similar initiatives taking place in Europe, the United States, Canada, South America, and Australia. We call these demoparties, and the people who participate in them are called demosceners, while the whole phenomenon is described as the demoscene. When someone first encounters the demoscene, they typically ask questions about what it actually is and why crowds of people sit in front of computers creating things that have no practical use, only aesthetic value. Additionally, the creators do not receive any remuneration for their work, and they often give the resulting products away for free. The demoscene is both its creators and their work. It is a subculture and its products. It is about computer users, who use it creatively (as opposed to game players or office workers), as well as demos (as opposed to video games or programs made for practical use).1

1  Previous research about the demoscene has focused on the use of many tools and perspectives. The demoscene was treated as a subculture, a manifestation of youth culture. The phenomenon of hacking was studied, but also the taming of technologies, the retro platform, and the network culture. See Markku Reunanen (2017) Timer of Change in the Demoscene. A Creative Community and Its Relationship with Technology, https://www.utupub.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/130915/An-

The Demoscene and ZX Spectrum: A Guide for Outsiders

Ill. 1. Forever Party 2016, Horná Súča. Photo by Piotr Marecki

It is a type of informal association of creators and those who enjoy computer arts. It involves the creation of demos and other related products, such as intros, dentros, diskmags, music collections, slideshows, etc. Of course, demosceners can and do create computer games and application software as well (the latter is usually used to prepare other demoscene products, though not only). Originally, demos (short for “demonstration”) were programs that showcased the capabilities of a given platform. Demos, however, also provide an opportunity for their author to demonstrate his/her own skills, which he/she acquired over the years while working with a given platform. These can be programming or coding skills, as well as music, graphic art, and sometimes literary skills. The skills of each member of a given group, like the coder, graphic artist, musician, and others, are very important here. Some functions remain unchanged; others change in accordance with technological development. What is crucial, these works are computer programs that are calculated and generated in real time, at the very moment of viewing or experiencing

nalesB428Reunanen.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y (accessed on 5 December 2018). Research on the demoscene is available at: http://www.kameli.net/demoresearch2/ (accessed on 5 December 2018).

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the work, and not a set of ready sounds or images. The code (demo, dentro, intro, etc.) is characterized by the fact that it is not pre-prepared computer animation (which might well be detached from a given platform and treated in terms of film or television), and it is closer for this reason to video games. The beginnings of the demoscene date back to the early 1980s (ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Atari XL/XE), and the productions themselves came out of the hacking and cracking scene, i.e. from a group of people that broke through the security systems of programs. The first demosceners using the ZX Spectrum called themselves hackers. Interestingly, they did it regardless of whether they were mainly involved in coding, music, or graphics. At first, the demos were products created entirely by one person—everyone had to be able to program or at least hack the code from a game and use it in their own program. Although the hacker, if he did not have music and graphic art skills, could simply use music and fragments of graphics from games. Still, to this day there are many products containing a code, graphics and music created by the same person from beginning to end.

Why the Demoscene? Why study platform hardware by analyzing the demoscene? Undoubtedly, this is one of two of the most interesting perspectives, alongside game developing. Only demos and games really show the capabilities of a given platform. The fact is, however, that the latter are mainly commercial products made for financial gain and entertainment, while the demos are noncommercial works, the main purpose of which is to evoke aesthetic and intellectual experiences. Perhaps this raises another question: why does the demoscene perspective suit the study of this platform? It is possible to analyze any platform on which the demoscene was created. If there are enough demos created over the years, the demoscene becomes one of the main factors that characterize a given platform. Undoubtedly a commercial approach is more significant for most people. They recognize that when talking about the platform only games and practical use count, and a reliable indicator of the quality of products is the

The Demoscene and ZX Spectrum: A Guide for Outsiders

profit they make. In this sense, the platform is all the better if more original computers were sold officially, i.e. the more commercial success it has. Although this approach is strongly connected with reality, we consider it to be one-sided and mercantile. In this context, it is also interesting to note that there have been a number of platforms that were commercially successful, but with a demoscene that was limited. There is a series of computers considered a commercial failure that, despite this, great demos are written on to this very day (for example, the Commodore 264 series, computers: C= 116, C= 16 and C= Plus/4). It seems that even if we decided to research the platform in terms of the games being created on it, at some point we would have to go back to the demoscene and deal with it. Sceners, in twenty, thirty, and even more years after the halt of production of a given computer or just after the collapse of a particular company, still use their equipment, creating software on it, and developing it technically. Finally, the time is coming that only demosceners are creating games on increasingly older platforms; moreover, they do so usually on a non-profit basis. It should be mentioned that they are equally good productions and often much better than the older commercial games. The demoscene perspective can be useful and productive precisely because it is not only historical. It also has a modern dimension, even though it may refer to classic computers from the 1980s and 1990s. Although some of the demosceners personally started the digital art trend, they have not had the last word yet. They are still active and often work on the platforms they started with thirty years ago. The demoscene is therefore a group of active creators that stay with the platform after its commercial death. This definition applies well to both the ZX Spectrum and other platforms.

Why the ZX Spectrum? How does the ZX Spectrum demoscene differ from the others? At first glance, it seems that these differences are small. Demos, intros, music, graphics, disk magazines, and parties are a part of every scene. But as always, the differences lie in the details. In the case of the demoscene these result from the technical

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specifications of a given computer, the level of affluence of the community members, the geographical region in which the given platform has become the most popular, etc. Unlike outsiders to the demoscene, sceners from various platforms are well aware of how the ZX Spectrum is technically limited. This is connected with an interesting phenomenon; the ZX scene is often omitted in various types of comparisons and reports, including annual ones.2 Even when it is appreciated in the literature, the ZX Spectrum is usually admired for the fact that a given effect was achieved on this platform, which was considered to be very limited. Perhaps such a reaction, which is, on the one hand, an expression of admiration for the demoscener’s abilities, and on the other, doubt about the capabilities of the equipment, summarizes the characteristics of this scene and its development. Especially at the turn of the 20th and 21st century, that is during the most prosperous times of the newschool ZX scene, the demos that were created were made to look like demos of much more advanced computers, such as the Amiga or PC. That is why they were such impressive coding achievements, especially if compared to modern products of other platforms, whose users repeatedly rested on their laurels living in the belief that whatever will be done on the C64 or Atari XL/XE platforms will undoubtedly be good and well-received, and this is due to the more advanced technical solutions used in these devices. Meanwhile, one must remember that the demoscene is based on competition not only between the platforms themselves. It is based on the conviction that the human mind can overcome all obstacles placed before it. What are the most important technical differences between the ZX Spectrum and its competitors? Well, American competitors, creators of such platforms as the Commodore 64 and Atari 800XL/65XE, made computers that were far more technically sophisticated. They were built with many dedicated circuits and had hardware sprites (a set of two-dimensional raster images), hardware-based screen scrolling and more. None of these things are found in the ZX Spectrum, and all procedures, such as the mentioned sprites, had to be written by the programmers themselves from scratch mostly in Assembler (language). Spectrum 48K did not even have a sound chip; the programmer,

2 

For example: http://awards.scene.org/ (accessed on 5 December 2018).

The Demoscene and ZX Spectrum: A Guide for Outsiders

Ill. 2. Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K. Probably the most well-known computer of the series, presented by Sinclair in 1982. 48KB of RAM, 1-bit sound, 15 colours, resolution: 256 × 192 pixels, rubber keyboard. UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Iwona Grabska-Gradzińska

and sometimes even the musician himself, had no choice but to program multichannel procedures for synthesizing and playing sound. Here are the best examples of the differences between selected platforms that we can give to those not specialized in the subject:

Sound Commodore 64 was equipped with a technologically advanced, for those times, analog sound synthesizer SID 6581 or 8580 (Sound Interface Device). The chip was monophonic and had three sound channels connected to one filter. It allowed for a choice from four waveforms—triangular, sawtooth, square wave with a variable filling and noise generator. Atari possessed the POKEY chip (POtentiometers and KEYboard) equipped with four 8-bit synthesis channels, generating a square wave in

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The Demoscene and ZX Spectrum: A Guide for Outsiders

theory, in fact a wave with a rather complicated waveform. Each channel has an independent volume register, a three-band random interference generator (noise). It was also possible to choose one of three base frequencies for all generators, like the 15 kHz, 64 kHz and 1.77 MHz. Moreover, pairs of generators (1 + 2 and 3 + 4) could be independently combined into one 16-bit generator. On the hardware side, the ZX Spectrum 48K had a 1-bit and 1-channel beeper, a simple subroutine in ROM (memory) was able to generate only a square wave in 10 octaves (no envelopes, no volume control). In the later model, 128K, a simple digital 3-channel 7-octave synthesizer AY-3-8910 or 8912 (General Instrument company) was added.

Graphics Atari XL/XE had nominally 256 colors generated by C/GTIA (Color/Graphic Television Interface Adapter) and ANTIC (Alpha-Numeric Television Interface Controller). It actually created 240 colors on the screen. The model offered 6 text modes, 8 graphics modes, 8 hardware sprites, a display list allowing to set the mode for each scanline, smooth screen scrolling, display list interrupt which could raise interrupt for each scanline, and the ability to set the framebuffer anywhere in RAM (memory). The maximum resolution is 320 × 192 pixels (and by programming the extension of the screen at the expense of the border, you could get a resolution of 320 × 240 pixels). Commodore 64 had a built-in VIC-II (Video Interface Chip II), additional 16KB memory for the screen, sprites, and its own font. It offered 3 text modes, 2 graphic modes, 16 colors although with restrictions, raster interrupt, which was very useful for bypassing limitations, smooth screen scrolling, 8 hardware sprites for a scanline. In theory 256 sprites could be used on the whole screen. Maximum resolution is 320 × 200 pixels. (As can be seen from the above comparison, both computers had programmable graphic chips and supporting chips with many possibilities to circumvent their own limitations). Meanwhile, on the ZX Spectrum (in both models, both 48K and 128K), the display of 16 colors was nominally used with only 15 colors realistically obtained on the screen with the use of the Ferranti ULA (Uncommitted Logic Array) in versions: 5C/6C/7K010E. This chip simply gets the same data and always from the same place in RAM (with the exception of the 128K version,

The Demoscene and ZX Spectrum: A Guide for Outsiders

which has a second screen, shadow VRAM in one of the additional memory banks), and finally, it always generates the image in the same way without the possibility of additional interference. As if that was not enough, the ULA chip slows down the CPU of the computer during the execution of program and reading/writing data in the first 16KB of RAM (I/O operations at certain ports were slowed down by the ULA as well). There are no hardware sprites here, no hardware-based screen scrolling—nothing really for the programmer at all. Maximum resolution—256 × 192 pixels.3 To summarize, as compared to American home computers that were popular on the European market, Sinclair only really developed and sold the motherboard with the processor and RAM, and until 1985–1986, it was only 16KB and 48KB.

Why Locality? As a result of the various complications in the construction of the devices described above, they differed in price. There were only a few users of the C64, because it was the most expensive computer from the above-mentioned, while a much larger number of people could afford to buy a ZX Spectrum computer; the low price was due to its uncomplicated construction. As a consequence, there was a geographic divide. Users in the West bought the C64 and Atari XL/XE more often, while the poorer center of Europe (including Poland and Czechoslovakia) favored the ZX Spectrum 48K series and its official licenses, mainly the Timex Computer 2048. The East, even poorer, was forced to simply copy the technology that was the cheapest and easiest to clone, so, in this case, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. This was the reason for the huge popularity of this platform in the Soviet Union, and later in Russia and post-Soviet countries. In those days (due to the use of the technology of the time), Russians were never able to clone machines such

3  More information about computer graphics in 8-bit computers is provided in the article: Steven Collins (1998) Computer Graphics during the 8-bit Computer Game Era, ACM SIGGRAPH Comput­ er Graphics, Volume 32, Issue 2, pp. 47–51.

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The Demoscene and ZX Spectrum: A Guide for Outsiders

as the Commodore 64 or Atari XL/XE. Were it not for the Spectrum, the Russians might never have created such a broad movement in digital creativity. Since the second half of the 1990s, Spectrum users and demosceners later added to the PC scene and the gaming industry. So, no one is able to say what would be, if not for the specific IT boom caused by cloning the ZX Spectrum in the first half of the 1990s. The simplicity of the ZX Spectrum construction remains the reason why cloning this computer is still popular, this time among the retro community. Previously used chips have already been worn out, new ones are no longer produced so old ones cannot be replaced. Therefore, cloning uses implementation technologies of old chips into new ones but this was intended only for the “mimicry” of other chips. We’re talking about FPGA technology, VHDL implementation, ARM microcontrollers, ALTERA digital circuits, CYCLONE circuits, and others. An analogous phenomenon is still prevalent: the simpler the original computer, the simpler it is to copy it using the above-mentioned technologies, and the implementation itself is very successful (often indistinguishable from the original). This does not mean that only the ZX Spectrum is cloned. Although imperfect, clones of other computers (MiniMig, the Amiga 500 clone, or MIST, originally the Atari ST clone) show how much effort is required to clone complicated circuits from 16-bit computers, and how often this process does not end successfully. It should be remembered that at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s no one tried to clone computers such as the C64 or Atari XL/XE in the East, because it was impossible due to their complexity. In various places around the world, similar initiatives were started sporadically, but they were usually based on the original technology provided by the original manufacturer (Atari: Hades, C-LAB Falcon MK; the Japanese clone of the Commodore 64—the Commodore MAX Machine, seriously trun­ cated, inserted into another case, etc.). Often these were just the same motherboards that were purchased from the original manufacturer, placed in other casings, possibly expanded or truncated. Wide-scale cloning only began with the PC series machines when IBM released the technology. However, this was mass-scale, factory-based and professional cloning, which makes it much easier to carry out, not like the practices found in Central and Eastern Europe that are referred to in our book. In this region, private individuals were, in fact, able to make ZX Spectrum clones at home.

The Demoscene and ZX Spectrum: A Guide for Outsiders

For Westerners, whose geographic knowledge about Eastern Europe ends on Berlin and Prague, it may seem that in countries to the east of Germany it was impossible to propose anything original in the field of technology. Our book opposes this belief by discussing local phenomena that are insufficiently understood by the West. We start by recognizing that the value of ZX Spectrum comes from the fact that it was the easiest, most primitive, limited and cheapest computer, claimed by some to even be “unworthy” of comparison with other platforms. While the rich and developed West had access to more advanced platforms covered by copyright and featured in promotional offers in stores, the East focused on DIY practices, using the simple and cheap construction and creatively taking it over for its own purposes. Needless to say, if it was only a matter of acquisition for mercantile purposes, our research would not make much sense. But, the acquisition of the ZX platform has gone in a very creative direction. In our opinion, it was one of the most interesting phenomena in the history of digital media on a scale and of scope incomparable to any other phenomena in this area. Knowledge about digital media has been developing very rapidly for several decades. Most often, it is also constructed from the position of the hegemonic center. Even if other movements are noticed, they are treated colonially, as dominated ones carried out from the margins, and therefore not worthy of attention. Our narrative is local; the authors of the book are convinced that they are talking about a unique phenomenon that was possible because there was no influence from the center. The activities and creative uses of the platform discussed in this book are authentic and original. Our argument is supported by ethnographic research, which investi­ gated the uniqueness and specificity of the ZX Spectrum demoscene in Central and Eastern Europe. The fascination and creative use of the platform are primarily visible in Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia; this publication is therefore focused on these countries. Our knowledge is based on 20 in-depth interviews with demosceners, analysis of digital works, and personal as well as active participation in the ZX Spectrum scene for nearly thirty years.

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I. ZX SPECTRUM DEMOSCENE

Structure of the Demoscene The demoscene is a  phenomenon in terms of management, and this certainly requires more research. It is characterized by no official structures and a  weak hierarchy. Cultural production in the field of digital media has existed for several decades despite the lack of any registration in the courts and the possibility of generating revenue or obtaining grants. According to traditional economic approaches, the demoscene as a  field of cultural production has no right to exist, because, as its participant rdx stipulates, “there is no central management (hierarchy), no hired experts, and no money involved (except for the ongoing delivery part).4 The demoscene can be perceived as well-organized anarchy characterized by the fact that it produces a lot of valuable symbolic and social capital, in the form of new works and friendship networks respectively. Many sceners perceive friendship or a friendly attitude as the basis for its existence. Alone Coder claims that the scene ends where anarchy begins. The strategy of the existence of the demoscene is based on the rules of the “economics of free.” The term used by Chris Anderson in the book Free: The Future of a Radical Price (2009) lent itself to describing the great phenomena of modern digital life such as Wikipedia, which is based on the gift economy and community

4  Unless otherwise stated, all quotes come from interviews conducted for the purposes of the research project “Creative programming. Laboratory” [“Twórcze programowanie. Laboratorium”].

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I. ZX Spectrum Demoscene

participation. And while Anderson’s term could be used to understand the phenomenon of the demoscene, it should be remembered that it was used to describe later phenomena. Therefore, it can be said that the dictionary has not kept up with the reality which it is meant to describe. The words of the elite quoted in the previous chapter find further confirmation: “If people feel like they do things for a purpose, things happen and sometimes better than in centrally managed organizations” (rdx). Russian scener Alone Coder does not exaggerate when he describes the phenomenon of the demoscene: That was an active community, maybe the largest intellectual and creative community of the time (it could be compared to the “Silver Age of Russian Poetry”). There was always something to do and to show others. A kind of science. And a kind of communism because people shared software and hardware.

Alone Coder’s claim should be emphasized because never before had such a  great phenomenon that intersected technology, visual arts, music, literature, and programming flourished as a  form of expression that was non-commercial in nature. Is the demoscene really based on anarchy? Is it an underground world, a fight club? Is the world of the demoscene really governed by separate rules, unknown in social life? What drives this mechanism? What are the hierarchies in the scene; what are the places to be occupied in this area; and does the demoscene have a structure? Asked about the rules of the scene, the members themselves describe it in the following words: “creation of products that are of value for free, knowledge-sharing, bottom-up organization, egalitarian society, and access to goods” (rdx). The creation of such a world required observance of certain rules, mainly based on the division of roles and occupying a specific place in the structure. There is no demoscene without the coder, musician, graphic artist, party organizer or swapper. There are sceners who sometimes perform all of these functions. A great example of such a jack-of-all trades is Alone Coder, who is the engine behind the Russian ZX scene. The same goes for DC PAK: Above all, I’ve programmed and designed demos. I wrote texts for each one. I did draw sometimes, and less often, luckily, I created music. While cheering on my colleagues to increase their efforts when working on demos, I also hurried them along. In corresponding with Polish and foreign sceners, I was also a swapper.

Structure of the Demoscene

There were roles that were significant on the scene but that have virtually disappeared. In the era before the Internet, the key figure was the swapper, or the person responsible for the distribution of programs. Sceners used traditional mail to share their products (demos, intros, magazines). However, to maximize productivity one specific person was responsible for this, and you could send him five unsaved floppy disks and an envelope with a stamp, in order to get back five floppy disks with recorded programs. Due to the fact that the shipping costs were often a  challenge for the sceners, they also learned how to use stamps several times, i.e. they were peeled off over a steaming kettle and were specially lubricated before sending so that the stamp could be washed off and re-used. Another function that has disappeared was the trader, or someone who provided equipment and programs and had connections to the market (a function formerly very important in the Soviet Union and Russia, but also in other Communist Bloc countries). Both roles were significant for the integration of the scene. They were, in a sense, threads connecting the community. Alone Coder also points to the emergence of new roles that were important in the age of the network and in the contemporary development of demoscene. These include archivists, who care both for the history of the demoscene and sharing new productions presented at contemporary parties. Sceners asked to indicate the hierarchy among these roles point to the lack of social stratification, which is characteristic of such communities as the army or university. On the other hand, in every social structure, especially those existing for several decades, there is a hierarchy. Ralf says that “greater respect is enjoyed by people who are capable of doing something and who create. The veterans—people who have been associated with the scene for many years— enjoy greater respect. The organizers of the parties receive much more respect.” Almost all the sceners agree on the uniqueness of the organizer’s position. For SS, the position of the coder, graphic artist and musician is equal, but “on top should be an organizer or someone with vision.” DC PAK has similar reflections: Technically, one person—a designer—is necessary to make a demo. Someone who has an idea for what to create. A graphic artist, of course—thanks to the help of a talented graphic artist, a demo will probably be better. But graphics can also be scrawled on or stolen. The same applies to music and sound. Even programming, everyone is able to learn how to program, just as everyone is able to learn how to sing. In the worst-case scenario, it will be bad.

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I. ZX Spectrum Demoscene

Ill. 3. DiHalt 2016—a party dedicated mainly to ZX Spectrum computer. Photo by Piotr Marecki

These conclusions are confirmed by Alone Coder: “In a group, the hierarchy is organizer vs. others. The organizer can have any specialty (coder, musician, cracker-fixer, hardware guy, etc.) or none. He could just be an organizer.” Rdx, in turn, claims that especially with the ZX Spectrum, hierarchy is unnecessary: There were roles that required more technical skill (i.e. coder > graphic artist) and roles that required an artistic touch (i.e. graphic artist > coder), although this may also be fluid. Especially on ZX Spectrum, some graphic effects required extensive coding to be possible and sometimes code was used to generate graphic patterns or pictures in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

Sceners also point out that nowadays specializations have appeared in the field of programming, and so the sceners are mentioned in the products.

Nicknames and Friendship

No one is described as just a coder anymore and frequent phrases include “coder responsible for 3D engine,” “coder responsible for particle effects,” etc. A separate role on the scene is that of a demo party participant without input into the organization of the event or the production of content. Crucial to the demoscene parties are also the times when the public can participate, too. Such sceners are placed lowest in the hierarchy: “those who can’t do anything and only come to drink vodka. If they get crazy after the vodka, this is an additional minus” (Ralf). It is also worth adding that a separate way of hierarchizing is according to nationality, e.g. Russian, Polish, Czech.

Nicknames and Friendship To enter the scene, one should start using a pseudonym (nickname, nick) and decide what platform to represent. Sceners do not use real names and surnames when dealing with other users or when they sign their creations. Most often they do not recognize each other in any other way than by nickname. Members of the demoscene use the nickname only as part of this activity, which means that it is difficult to verify the real data of the person using it. The genesis of using nicks on the scene has at least two sources. Firstly, the demoscene originated from the cracker scene, which traded software covered by copyright restrictions.5 Distributors of such software could not use real names. Those selling on the black market wanted to make customers come back to them and buy games from a specific distributor, so they had to use signs that indicated the source. In this sense, the cracker’s pseudonym was a kind of logo. Most of the programs on the 8-bit computers took a very long time to upload. Those that were overriding these security protocols would use this time to display their nicknames on the screen. With time, the crackers began to compete with each other and their nicknames began to

5  For more on the cracker scene, see: Markku Reunanen, Patryk Wasiak, Daniel Botz (2015) Crack Intros: Piracy, Creativity and Communication, International Journal of Communication, Volume  9, pp. 798–817.

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I. ZX Spectrum Demoscene

turn into short animations, even commercials that still had one goal, which is to attract the client to illegal goods. It is worth remembering, however, that the contemporary demoscene has nothing to do with this practice and the adjective “illegal” should no longer be associated with this phenomenon (although it is often perceived in such categories). Secondly, the use of nicks could be attributed to the early age of those who entered the scene. Among primary and secondary school students, the use of nicknames or pseudonyms is a common phenomenon. This points to a very important feature of the scene, that is, its lightness, playfulness, and carnivalesque energy.6 In this sense, life in the demoscene is a carnival life in an inverted world in which laws are somewhat different than those of the normal world. Using a nickname confirms belonging to this different social order. DC PAK points to “coolness” as a factor contributing to the decision to use a nickname. “It’s great to be Superman, not boring Clark Kent,” he adds. American pop culture inspired the rise of goblinish’s nickname: “I liked Gremlin Graphics, so I changed the word Gremlin to Goblin.” In a very similar, frivolous manner Gasman got his nickname: “It started out from a joke at school. It was just a game between friends, you had to try to make the other person laugh by saying stupid things. For some reason one of the things that ended up as a recurring joke was ‘Hi, I’m the Gasman,’ and it means nothing. But it worked as a nickname.” Besides, in English, nicknames work in a variety of logos. This is important because, in the demoscene of 8-bit computers, nicknames are often the basis for creating effects. For example, that’s the source of Busysoft’s nick: In the past (about 1980), it was trendy to make up a nickname by joining some word with the word SOFT. So, when I was deciding what nickname I will use, I got out the Slovak-to-English dictionary and found a few words that looked good with the word SOFT. The meaning was irrelevant, only the look was important. Then I selected two words: SIDE and BUSY. I planned to use SIDE for “serious” applications and BUSY for more “crazy” programs like demos. But later I stopped using SIDE, and I used BUSY for all programs. I selected this word not for its real meaning in English. It does not refer to the regular English word “busy” (meaning occupied, engaged, industrious,

6  Michaił Bachtin (1975) Twórczość Franciszka Rabelais’go a  kultura ludowa średniowiecza i re­ nesansu [Rabelais and His World], translated by Anna and Andrzej Goreń, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków.

Nicknames and Friendship

hard-working…) and then its pronunciation is not “b, i, z, i” as usual, but it is the regular (not the spelling!) sound of these letters: “b, u, s, i.” Many people don’t know this fact, and they (especially those who speak English) say my nick wrong.

Alone Coder became Alone Coder after his father left him (they previously coded together). This fact made the scener decide to change his nickname from Bystrov & Bystrov to Alone Coder. Factor6 was created by replacing 5 with 6 in the name of the game producer (Factor 5). In the era of Michael Jordan’s popularity, an exceptionally tall Polish scener got his nickname after the basketball player, but he decided to add something extra and he became Jordan of Exodus. In turn, the nickname Trix comes from the pronunciation of the phrase 3X. Sceners with nicknames often turned into the above-mentioned supermen. Radosław added the adjective “excellent” to the nickname Radxcell (abbreviated as RDX). Ralf is different from Rafał. DC PAK took on an original nickname that referred to superhuman powers, which he explains: The genesis of it is probably quite funny, because such a nick comes from the top score in arcade games. It starts with the first letter of the first name, ends with the first letter of the last name, and in the middle, as it was impossible to choose a hyphen, “A.” And so it stayed like that for some time. In subsequent products, the nick was enriched with the DC prefix, i.e. I signed them DC PAK… As young people we were convinced that being on scene is about friendship and wars. Friends were there, enemies needed to be found. It fell, quite accidentally, on Muad’dib, and later also on Drozol. At the beginning, if I remember correctly, he lost a few points because of some clumsy crack. And so from scroll to scroll, we made something of a megademo. They kept coming back at us, focusing mainly on me, and they’d say things like “if this PAK thinks that he is such a divine coder then…” We just watched this demo, the three of us with Jordan and Agent-X, and the latter said it sounds great and that I should add “Divine Coder” before the nickname. And so from then on, with DC perfectly matching, I’ve never parted from the nick.

There are also nicknames whose origin is not typical, like the name of Alex Ryder, the protagonist of the novel The Dark Wheel translated back from Russian to English (in an unsuccessful way). Or those pseudonyms referencing the world of Speccy. That’s how Scalesmann came about: “Everything started with SCL, because this is the abbreviation of Sinclair. :) Later I added vowels (because without vowels it sucks). It became Scale, and when in cor-

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respondence with C-Jeff he called me ‘skala’ and so, Scalesmann was born with German flair.” If DC PAK did not want to sign his demos as DC PAK, then he used the nickname Mr. Incognito. It was, however, a secret to the public. Sceners have changed their nicknames for a variety of reasons, like artistic development, change of platform or group, but also for more prosaic reasons. A Slovak scener explains the change of the pseudonym: My surname is Seliga. Seliga Software didn’t sound good to me so I shortened it to SS. I could also draw a logo for it. Later many newcomers on #z80 started to accuse me of being a Nazi. I never was and never will be, and honestly I never even thought that someone may come up with that idea. I certainly didn’t. Anyway, later I got tired of it and tried to change the nickname to Anubis; I was fascinated with ancient Egypt at the time. It was a very stupid move, because to everyone I knew I was still SS. It only caused chaos.

The multiplication of nicks has become a visible phenomenon especially in later years. As Alone Coder claims, it was related to the shrinking ZX scene, especially at the beginning of the 21st century. “Some people created virtual characters to simulate scene activity. For example, Lamer1&Lamer2, MISTER BEEP, Expirt, ZXDN, and SMAN are virtuals”. When asked to indicate the percentage of people who could be recognized by name and surname, the sceners gave different numbers, from 0% (Busysoft, goblinish) and 5–10% (rdx) to 20% (Factor6, Alex Ryder) and 50% (Ralf and Gasman). Most of them say that they do not care about real names. This is interesting because most of the sceners deny that friendship in the demoscene is transferred in any way to professional life. Sceners therefore usually meet at a party, work on their productions together, but only for the purpose of showing the work at a party. They do not set up companies with each other or work in the same places. It should also be emphasized that sceners do not necessarily work in the IT industry. Most of them have non-IT professions. They work in offices, or as technical support, car mechanics or university lecturers. Using nicks is also associated with the creation of a persona, someone different from the person in private or professional life. In this sense, the scene is a carnival, and the nickname is a mask that is assumed for a limited time. Sceners explain it differently. Rdx gives only the sentence of Oscar Wilde: “Man is the least himself when speaking in his own name. Give him a mask, and he’ll tell you the truth,” which he did not want to comment on

Nicknames and Friendship

further. SS says that under the nickname the person is “different, more interesting, stripped from all boring real-life stuff.” Using a nick also gives him the option “to write or do things I would not dare to under my own name.” In a similar vein, Gasman comments on his dual personality: I guess [I use it], perhaps, especially when I’m doing live music performances. People would be quite surprised that in my real life. I’m quite shy, and I’m playing keyboard and singing at my music performances… People are sometimes quite shocked by the different personality there.

And although sceners rarely perceive their products in terms of art, in the use of nicks one should look for strategies to convey authentic content that is important in artistic expression. The scene appears then as a separate world, and the use of a pseudonym is not just a game, but a very authentic and natural activity. “The computer world was so different from the real world that it felt natural to use a nickname. It was a different life led by a different person” (rdx). SS also points to the issue of authenticity: Yes, in real life one has to be diplomatic and think about consequences. In the virtual world, I can be honest and more open, because I don’t have to worry that someone from real life, who doesn’t know my “second identity,” would use it against me. Especially when I know that a person I’m talking to is so different from me that with the exception of the demoscene we have nothing in common.

It seems that the use of nicks and honest expression is associated with the demoscene or friendship. Nicks allow you to express both negative and positive emotions in relation to other sceners. Ralf points to a special type of demo, which the members call a “fucktro,” “where, in general, insults are written and directed at another scener. It’s a bit like rap / hip hop, where songs like that are made. However, we wouldn’t spew such things at a colleague from work.” On the other hand, most sceners greet each other in demos. An interesting phenomenon on the demoscene that strengthens ties between users is the creation of special works en masse on the occasion of cyclical or momentous events in life (birthdays, deaths, weddings, holidays, etc.). One of the most popular varieties is the giftro, i.e. a demo that is offered or sent as a gift to someone celebrating a birthday. The demo is intentionally sent not only to the correct recipient but also to all members of the scene.

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I. ZX Spectrum Demoscene

Most often, such products contain traditional elements such as code, graphics, and music, also birthday wishes (in the form of a scroll) from the author, a group of authors or more people from the demoscene and related to it. In giftros, the sceners are not likely to express anything specific. It is only about having fun. For example, this is exactly the tone of the Happy birthday guyz demo made on the ZX Spectrum 128 in 2015, where all the elements of the demo are set in motion.7 It’s an 8-bit dance party, mixed with birthday wishes. There are also other types of occasions that these demos are made for. On the occasion of a wedding (weddingtro), we can see, for example, a bride being told all the reasons why she shouldn’t marry the scener. Obituaries are also popular as well as requiems on the occasion of the death of a platform user, and less often, there are giftros on the occasion of the birth of a child or joining/leaving the military. They all express honest friendship between the various sceners and groups of the platform. They cement scene friendships, which fuel the work of the community around the platform. Giftros are also the best proof that the scene is first and foremost a social construct. Sceners also remember about each other during Christmas and New Year’s. A Christmas giftro classic is the old school production of Kolędy [Christ­ mas Carols] by Haker Kicia from 1989 made on Spectrum 48K with AY interface (code, graphics, and music were created on December 15, 1989 in four hours). 8 One could say that this demo is an old school icon. Deprived of effects, it only has a scroll, image, and melodies. It contains six Christmas carols covered on Spectrum by Haker Kicia on The Music Box 128 editor. Characteristic of the old school is also mixing English with Polish (introduction and instruction manuals are in English, but greetings in Polish). The author also decided on the Polish title of the giftro, and it is also worth noting that the nickname of the scener himself is Polish, which is very rare on the scene. Interestingly, best wishes and greetz (greetings) are shared in the demo with all (including owners of almost all platforms available at the time in Poland), but Atari users, which is an obvious fact for ZX sceners. Haker Kicia also excludes from his greetings a certain individual, referred to as the “jerk from Lublin” (“Christmas fucks” are directed both at him and Atari users). This giftro has gained international recognition and is considered a classic for the ZX scene (it appeared in the magazine “Sinclair User” in 1990).

7  8 

https://demozoo.org/productions/182578/ (accessed on 5 December 2018). http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/classic_demos.html (accessed on 5 December 2018).

Platform Wars

Platform Wars One of the phenomena connected to affiliation with a particular platform on the scene was its active defense against others. Sceners describe this phenomenon either as platform wars or flame wars, sometimes format wars. LCD puts it plainly, “if someone owned a computer other than the Spectrum, he was treated with contempt.” “It was a quarrel about whose computer is the best. Maybe not even a quarrel, but discussions without clear arguments. Few people took it seriously, though those who did were also around,” says LCD. When asked about the platform wars, DC PAK talks about the phenomenon, but simultaneously strikes out at a computer he doesn’t like: “From my perspective and my own experience, I would rather talk about all the shams. Of course other platforms were dissed and there was excitement about the fact that ours is the best. It was known that Atari wasn’t good at all ;-)”—rdx explains this by commenting on ambition, especially that of people for whom the computer was their entire life. Some sceners associated with a particular type of equipment changed it along with the development of technology once higher platforms appeared. Sometimes the term “switched” is used, referring to automotive terminology, when a weaker vehicle model is changed for a better one. For many people such a phenomenon was treated as a betrayal, and Alone Coder cites a FidoNet term for those Russian sceners who switched from the Spectrum clones to the PC and are advertizing PC, “засланцы Билла Гейтса” (envoys of Bill Gates). In terms of the use and changes of scenario platforms can be divided into two categories: “There are sceners who release for many platforms to be famous. There are other sceners that code just for one platform to make the platform famous” (Alone Coder). Because of the hardware constraints that made it difficult for the ZX Spectrum to compete with other 8-bit computers like the Commodore or Atari, other platform users often did not perceive it as worthy of battle and excluded it from the race. Nonetheless, the Spectrumists are known for antagonizing. Among the famous slogans used ZX Spectrum sceners was, “Atarowca wal z gumowca” (“Beat an Atarist with your galoshes”). There are two slang words in this statement. The first refers to the Atari computer user, and although such a word does not exist in the dictionary, it is used colloquially in the forums where computer users were grouped by the platform names:

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Spectrum—spectrumists, Atari—atarists or atarians, Commodore—commodorists, and Amiga—amigists. Slang terms also were attached to the respective computers: Spectrum was called “Gumiak” The Rubber (which commonly also refers to galoshes) or sometimes a “spectrumna” (the word trumna means “coffin” in Polish) with reference to the ZX Spectrum’s shape and color. The Commodore was called “a soap dish” (due to its shape), but also “crapmodore” (złomodorek in Polish) or “komoda” a chest of drawers (old furniture). The unkindest names, however, were reserved for the Atari, which was especially popular in Poland. “Everyone knows that TOS stands for Trash Operating System for Atari ST (Super Trash)” (rdx). In this respect, it was only matched by the PC, which in Poland was called “a scrap of tin” (“blaszak”) and “mushroom” (“pieczarka” used maliciously to expand the abbreviation for PC). The Czechs, in turn, used the name “pec,” which means “stove.” Similarly in Russia, as stated by Alone Coder, “we hated IBM PC compatibles. This was useful for keeping our platform, because PCs became widespread. We called PC ‘пц’ or ‘писю´к’ (sounds like ‘wiener’ in Russian) because ‘PC’ is too generic.” Especially during the height of PC’s popularity, the Russian sceners also used many slogans that appeared in demos, like “PC sux,” “Windows must die,” “Bill Gates is a lamer,” and other blue screen jokes in demos, etc. Russians also created their own names for clones, for example the ATM2, or the ZX Evolution (baseconf ATM3), was called an ATM of (TSConf) “дендиконфа” (dendikonfa), which has a negative meaning (Moroz). LCD claims that when Spectrumists wanted to write Atari into the demos, from time to time they simply used the word “shit.” “Sometimes we also hung the logo of the company from the gallows. We wanted to show that Spectrum is better.” And indeed, the ZX demoscene is swarming with demos like the 1990 Pyldro by Paweł Pylak and Daniel Drobik (on the ZX Spectrum 128K), which depicts the Laboratory for the Destruction of Useless Equipment.9 As can be easily guessed, this useless hardware is Atari. The destroyer machine pushes the huge Atari logo from the right of the screen to the center, and this is followed by a monstrous fist that comes from the top and destroys the pride of the users of the enemy platform. The machine disposes of the destroyed remains, pushing them into a hole marked with the word “sewage.” The authors of the demo will treat the Atari like this for

9 

http://zxdemo.org/productions/13602/ (accessed on 5 December 2018).

Platform Wars

Ill. 4. Atari Future 2, 1989, The Heep Soft, UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Piotr Marecki

a few minutes. On the other hand, in the Ghostbusters Demo10 (1990) made on the ZX Spectrum 48 K + AY, Mark I Faon starts by shooting at the Atari logo and when the bullet hits it, the word “shit” appears and the logo disappears from the screen as the ghosts push the words “Timex the best” onto the screen. Atari was humiliated even more in the 1989 demo Atari XL/XE/ ST Symulator made by Axelsoft on the ZX Spectrum 48, which not only featured the name of the American company in Cyrillic but in the demo itself, the computer is featured primarily as an ashtray. The Spectrumists bickered so much with the Atarists that entire demo cycles against the platform were born. The most famous, from 1989, is called Atari Shit.11 The author of the first, Tomcio Paluch International introduces himself as an electrician from Białystok, a city located in eastern Poland, close

10  11 

http://www.speccy.pl/archive/prod.php?id=64 (accessed on 5 December 2018). http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/classic_demos.html (accessed on 5 December 2018).

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to the border with Belarus. Right in the first sentence, he warns that he repairs all equipment, but not Atari. Then he makes a statement to all Atarists, namely that they should smarten up and throw out their equipment while there is still time. On the screen, a large Atari logo with “2 + 2 = good” is displayed at all times. In the Atari Shit 2 demo we see the gallows from which the popular-in-Poland Atari 65 XE is hanging, with an ax lodged into it. 12 The inscription below states “The Future of Atari.” The heads of the “Atari Users” decorate the stakes. Above the image, the authors placed a very long scroll. It is so characteristic of the seriousness of platform wars that it is worth quoting in its entirety: Once upon a time, a certain alcoholic, under the tide of intoxicated genius, grabbed a hammer and a chisel and created Atari. He then grabbed his head and hung himself with the power supply cable. From then on, hundreds of absent-minded dim-wits without imagination, later-scorned as “Atarists” (AT-Scums), buy this piece of scrap metal, thus revealing their complete idiocy. They are characterized by complete helplessness and lack of imagination. Unlimited patience is the only positive attribute of the Atarists. These people (like dogs) spend hours with a tape recorder, in order to upload a program, play it for 10 seconds, and so on…trying to upload the next program. Those with floppy disk drives (for sketching, bending, etc.) do not have to sit for hours, but they are without a doubt the stupidest people, which is the mildest term that can be used. Recently, the editorial board of one of the famous computer magazines, you know which one, came to their aid. Yes, we’re talking about “Bajtek;” they are inventing non-existent games on this piece-of-junk computer, and besides this, they try to help the poor Atarists to adopt this junk into something resembling the Spectrum and better computers in every issue. I will not mention all these attempts. The results of these tests are all known. Here’s a brief summary of “Bajtek” 6/89 Atari 63 pages, Commodore 33 pages, Spectrum 23 pages, Amstrad 1 page, calculators 1/2 page, advertisements 65 pages. I propose a new name for this tabloid “Kajtek-Srajtek-Atarajtek.” That’s an appropriate name. Now, a riddle. Do you know why the Chernobyl reactor crashed? Yes, Yes. The Russians bought the Atari. How can it be? . . . Mr. Tramiel, I will sic an attorney on you. And if you have not done this earlier, take a look at this image now. We understand it without words, no? This is the future of Atari. When it comes to games on this funny comp(ugh)ter, we’d play the Robocop one, wouldn’t we, you Atarist? No, I won’t go on. Yesterday, I caught

12 

Ibid.

Platform Wars

up with an Atarist, and I thought about what to do with him. And I got it. Locked into the monitor, the Atarist with all his power turns the crank on the screen and the words “Rolling Scrolling” come up. Unfortunately, the Atarist got tired and he was cranking unevenly. And that would be all.13

We can end this slew of insults against Atari with the example of the 1989 The Miracle14 demo by Mac, which shows a computer user manual and an image of a toilet, in which the toilet is a user interface and a debugging tool.15 Studying the entire manual provides an ingenious example of how to offend an enemy platform. Other platforms don’t draw the ire of the ZX Spectrum scene as much. Occasionally, one can find malicious pokes at PC, for example in the Russian new-school demo Devotion from 1998 on the ZX 128K by the Antares group, where the play on words was used in the diss “C64 IS SHIT, PC 64MB IS SHIT TOO BIG” appears.16 Also on the viral wave of the 2006 blender commercial called Will It Blend, ZX sceners decided to try to blend the C64. In the demo Will It Blend?, comments from Commodore fans aimed to insult the Spectrum went like this: “Wait. That’s a C64 in there? I couldn’t tell because of the Spectrum’s sucky graphics ;-)”17 Another example is the 2007 Koopaville18 demo, in which a sign reads that the ZX is giving the C64 “the boot”.

13  It is typical that in the demo there is a reference to Jacek Tramiel, the legendary creator of Commodore-64, who in 1984 bought out the financially troubled company Atari Inc. Already after the acquisition by Tramiel, the company released the Atari 8-bit series, especially popular in Eastern Europe Atari 65XE. It is also worth noting that frequent reference to Tramiel gives these a bit of local flavor. Fans of 8-bit platforms had to be aware that Tramiel was born in Łódź in 1928, he emigrated to the USA only in 1947. 14  http://zxdemo.org/productions/13389/ (accessed on 5 December 2018). 15  Atari was also not liked by other platforms. In comparison with the Amiga-Atari war, the Spectrum jabs appear to be mere child’s play. The Amiga battle against Atari is described in the Anti Atari Song, released on the Youtube platform (about 25,000 views), where a survey is run with questions like “What is Atari?,” to which the interviewer answers “I am not a farmer.” The song also encourages the hanging of Jacek Tramiel. In Anti Atari Song 2 in the chorus, we can hear: “Atari was made of shit and steel,” and the verse shoved in the mouth of a poor Atarist went like this: “I loved my Atari, it was made of wood and steel, it did not work well with electricity, it ran on coal instead, throw wood in quickly evenly, because the piece of shit kept breaking. I kept leaving it in the corner, and didn’t dare to use it.” 16  http://zxdemo.org/productions/12905/ (accessed on 5 December 2018). 17  http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=31182 (accessed on 5 December 2018). 18  http://zxdemo.org/productions/9323/ (accessed on 5 December 2018).

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The Atarists did not remain indebted and in retaliation, they prepared their own products that were part of the flame wars phenomena. In 1990, in Czechoslovakia, the game Revenge on Sinclair Users19 written by Michal Bu­ kovjan (Mibusoft Inc.) for Atari XE/XL was created. It is a text adventure game (there are no images or other graphics, just text) controlled by the keyboard input, i.e. the player writes the commands on the screen. As in other games from that time, there is no description of the commands recognized by the game player, which had to be discovered and mastered by the method of trial and error. The whole game was written in Czech. The first screen of the game explains the plot: We find out that 40 years ago, SINCLAIR won the elections and started to terrorize all Atari users by closing Atari clubs and kidnapping leaders of those clubs. Now the revolution has started and the player was selected by the last member of the “Atari caste” to infiltrate the SINCLAIR stronghold and kill the boss—David Gemrot. After that, the player starts in the flat of the last member who gave him his flat to use while preparing for the revolution.” The name of David Gemrot sounds similar to Rostislav Gemrot—the author of Gama Copy, a tape copying program for Didaktik Gama (ZX Spectrum clone from Slovakia).

The game itself is rather hard to play, as every bad move ends with the death of the player and starts over. Analysis of the binary files allows one to extract some information about the game without its completion. The author knew ZX Spectrum games and mentioned some of them in one location (COMMANDO, TRANTOR, MAD MIX). The game had to have been fun for the Atari users because its author promised a sequel “Revenge on the Sinclair Users II.” The majority of demos, intros, games, which contain crusades against other platforms, should be treated with a grain of salt. Factor6 says, “Of course, the relic of the wars is poking at other-platform-guys with bad jokes every day, but it’s just a light poke… just for fun. There are no more real wars between those so-called retro platforms anymore.” Dividing up by the platforms has also been taking place in the organization of contemporary parties, such as the 8-bit ones, in which sceners organize space according to the platform.

19  https://romsmania.cc/roms/atari-800/pomsta-sinclairistum-205969 (accessed on 5 December 2018).

Teamwork

They occupy tables dedicated to individual computers. We can see that by doing so there is an attempt to recreate the micro-worlds of those platforms. In contemporary times, what remains from the platform wars are “nostalgia and memories of those times more than anything else. Spectrum, Atari and Commodore people meet at various parties and have fun together” (rdx).

Teamwork The demoscene is a social construct. An extremely important aspect of its existence are interpersonal relationships, camaraderie, cooperation, spending time together, mutual greetings. The platform is a factor connecting the group’s activities. Thanks to it the sceners have met each other, and it is an element that unites their acquaintanceships and friendships (it is stronger than national affiliation). As has already been pointed out, the sceners often become other versions of themselves thanks to the platform and nicks. They open up and forget about the habits of regular life. The impressive power of the relations on the scene was summed up by Scalesmann: “On the scene, there are, above all, common interests and hobbies. Friendship at work is born from the work itself. If you change your workplace, 99% of people who you could identify as good friends or even friends disappear from your sight forever.” The scene without these social relations would lose its significance. Demos become small productions about the platforms and skills of their producers. Only the experience of meeting and cooperating helps to understand the whole picture. It is complemented by parties during which the sceners spend time together, code together, create graphics or music or take part in competitions. The sense of community is explained by the widespread use of greetz, or greetings for other sceners, which, like a mantra, appear in most demos and are related to the authors’ nicknames. The scene is a social construct, but one that rewards skills and specializations. In this sense, it is a cooperative phenomenon, because it values the cooperation of talented people in various fields. It is difficult to achieve mastery as an organizer, coder, musician, and graphic artist. Due to the clear reliance on competition, the most talented people in various fields work together on

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a common project. Effort and effect are rewarded only by the recognition of the group, which is expressed either with rewards at individual meetings or in greetz in the demos of other groups. If you were to look at the demoscene historically, it is worth noting that teamwork has been a pursued model of cooperation for some time. In the 1980s, its participants were individualists. They independently programmed, made graphics and music. Gradually—along with the development of program distribution, information exchange, the emergence of parties, and then the development of the Internet, a classic model based on cooperation developed. This is confirmed, for example, by Jordan of Exodus, who belonged to the pioneers of the scene in Poland in the 1980s: “I made my first productions alone, then my circle of friends from the scene began to grow. I met DC Pak and Roger, and we decided to start Exodus together.” When asked why the sceners banded together in groups, the same sceners answered that it was about improving skills: In our case, it was the joint development of more and more effective algorithms. I remember how after a few months of work we developed the fastest, if I’m not mistaken, algorithm for plotting points and lines on the ZX Spectrum screen. The same was true for algorithms computing trigonometric boards necessary for the 3D engine.

Yet another argument explaining this convergence into groups are aesthetic changes, including the requirements for demos in the 1980s and later. Gasman explains these reasons as follows: I suppose demos have progressively become more and more complex. There’s always the feeling that you’ve got to raise the bar over what’s been done before. In the early days, a demo might as well be a scroll message, with a bit of parallax, and that would be seen as a very respectable demo. But I think today there’s the feeling that you really got to try and do something new, either technically or artistically. That’s where it really helps to have the collaboration because you got to combine the talents of multiple people.

It seems that similar reasons for working in teams are shared by other sceners. Younger participants do not remember the individual work model at all, although it should be emphasized that individual activities also occur and are the exception. A good example of this is Gasman, a programmer as well as a talented graphic artist and musician. These skills allow him to win many com-

Teamwork

petitions at demoparties. LCD works similarly. He codes and creates graphics, but always orders music from other groups or individual sceners. When asked about the order in which the phases of the LCD demo are created, he responded: “At the beginning, the code is always created. During its creation, I think about graphics. At the end, the music adapts to it, because it depends on the size of the code and graphics, how much space is left for the music.” Works produced by a team are created in a variety of ways: from brainstorming among people who meet in person to long-distance collaborations. Factor6, a musician, describes the production process in this way: I think in our case, the Gemba Boys, it works like this. The first thing is the idea… Someone makes a single effect; some coder makes an effect, then someone draws pictures, graphics, and says “Let’s make a demo from this.” Then they send it to other people, other members of the group. And they say “Wow, this is great, we think that a demo will be possible. Hey, Factor, can you make some music?” I say yes because I am the first factor. I’ve seen the effects. I have some inspiration already. If I didn’t have it, I can make music as well, but it wouldn’t be as great.

Sceners work in teams not only on demos but also on testing programs or preparing disc magazines. Alone Coder says that with the mag about ZX Spectrum, Info Guide, he engages other sceners to translate texts from Russian to English. 20 But there are also other forms of cooperation, such as mixing. The Russian scener mentions a piece of music mixed by his collaborators: John Silver and I once tried to make a test song for a new version of ProTracker. Then I sent the track to Macros who lives in the far-far North. And he changed the song. I sent the result to N1k-O who lives in the far-far South. And he also changed the song. I used all three versions in three editorials in ZX-Guide #4.5. I wrote three editorials instead of one just because of these three versions of the song! Time passed, and I eventually found another remix of the song!!! The fifth author, Artur (DjIK), lived in Transnistria that is another country far-far West, and I even didn’t know him!

The above example points to an important element of the scene, that is, the pleasure and fun of joint programming, creating graphics or music. Of course, this element is also very significant in the contests organized on the scene.

20 

http://alonecoder.nedopc.com/zx/books/ (accessed on 5 December 2018).

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I. ZX Spectrum Demoscene

Ill. 5. Frank Frazetta Demo 3, 1990, Rafii Soft, UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Piotr Marecki

Teamwork and fun led to one of the most spectacular ZX Spectrum platform ideas, the creation of the world’s largest demo, which lasted several hours. It is called First Association and it was created by Czech coders specifically to beat the world record in terms of size. 21 The final demo was prepared by people from around the world, and the final result came together in March 1997. It was presented at the Doxycon party in 1998. The usual demo on the Spectrum was 45KB or 110KB, and in the case of megademos, it was a maximum of 200–300. First Association has 1626KB, and it lasts about five hours. The final version of the production consists of about fifty parts, with some coders writing more than one. The following took part in this undertaking: Black Team, Busysoft, Chrysagon, ESA, Factor6, +Gama, Gasman, Hlavsoft, Illusion, K3L Corp, Laser, Software, Naughty Crew, Noro, Omega, Schiva, Speccy Boyz, Starsoft, Steel Dragon, TDM, and The Unbelievables. Similar in intentions, but smaller by half, were other outstanding megademo groups exemplifying extensive cooperation. For example, MQM 5: The Reject weighed

21 

http://zxdemo.org/productions/7959/ (accessed on 5 December 2018).

Teamwork

in at 625KB and was created in 1995. 22 Many sceners note that the commitment to work on one production by such a large number of sceners was only possible in the 1990s. These monstrous (in size) demos reflected the idea of the demoscene and parties, including overcoming barriers, meeting together and watching both old, classic productions and new ones be submitted to the competition for hours. One of the permanent and even inseparable elements of creativity and community-building are the greetz. Greetings for other sceners and groups appear in most productions, and they are often a leitmotif, as the greetings of a tens or dozens of people and collectives can take up to several minutes. It will be a truism to add that it is an element cementing friendships, cooperation, but also building hierarchies. “It’s definitely a way to feel part of something bigger, a community of people interested in similar things” (DC PAK). Rdx calls greetz fuel that drives the scene. According to him: “As the whole demoscene is based on social interactions, fame, and respect, greetz in demos are the basis of recognition. Greetz have more value when they are not just about greeting ‘everyone.’” It is no wonder that some greetings are more memorable than others, especially the occasional greetz from sceners that they never met. Because the demoscene is all about showing and demonstrating capabilities, LCD thinks that the greetz are part of this phenomenon: “It’s even fun—everyone wants to boast of just how many contacts he has.” In this sense, the greetz also build stratification. The more greetings in the demos, the more respect in the community. These greetings can also have a transactional character: “It is also important to mark your presence on the scene. When I greet someone that’s more well-known, maybe he will greet me and thanks to that I will become more well-known” (DC PAK). You can also assume that there is a certain poetics in the construction of these greetings. Names or groups are not mentioned accidentally, but both the order and presence are significant. For example, Alone Coder uses rules, which he describes as follows: People just greet their friends and ignore people they don’t like. My personal approach was to greet active groups (there were few when I did it), but later

22 

http://zxdemo.org/productions/13419/ (accessed on 5 December 2018).

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I. ZX Spectrum Demoscene

I abandoned this. In the current situation, there are too few true groups, and we are supposed to greet individual people. But there’s no point to greet people you chat with every day, and there’s no point to greet a random guy that could later appear in an opposing team.

There are over a  dozen productions featured at each party, so the demosceners do a lot to spice up this fixed program element. And although the demoscene rests somewhat on the suspension of normal day-to-day life, there are exceptions. Factor6 talks about one of them, an extended voice greeting on the Spectrum. As you could hear in our demo Tailwind by Gemba Boys, we had a speech. It was my invention; I made it on AY. I created the speech. So I said “Let’s do this for greetings,” because they [Gemba Boys] weren’t sure if they want to include greetings in this demo, but I put forth this idea to make greetings with these synthetic vocals, so they did it.

Finally, there are many radically different demos, including those that only consist of greetings, like the experimental 32-byte production of Alone Coder Self Printing Greets from 2015; and unique ones without greetings.23 A good example is Haiku by Gasman.24 The teamwork model that rewards cooperation among the most talented coders, graphic artists, and musicians and strengthens relationships within the community again differentiates the scene from other creative production fields in the area of digital media. There are no such greetings in any other area and other digital texts. It seems that the model of cooperation between artists and programmers does not always look as perfect as in the demoscene.

http://zxdemo.org/productions/174215/ (accessed on 5 December 2018). “The text is an executable Z80 code itself. It is loaded in memory address #e90c and contains (and prints): PrIvetbI/ Greets: maYHem MmcM Rsi” (Alone Coder). 24  http://zxdemo.org/productions/17518/ (accessed on 5 December 2018). “Some demos are not very text based at all, so it would kind of ruin the flow. There was one demo that I did that was inspired by Japanese imagery. It was called ‘Haiku,’ so the title was the word ‘haiku’ written in kanji. I had some space to fill, so I thought: ‘Should I have greetings?’ but I thought that no, because that would break the mysterious quality, the idea, that this was an artifact from Japan” (Gasman). 23 

Contests and Voting

Contests and Voting The demoscene cannot be monetized, and the activity on the scene does not bring profits and revenue, however, the engaged and outstanding sceners can count on various kinds of appreciation and bonuses. One of the most important elements of the meetings organized by sceners is compo (competition, tournament or contest), during which new productions are shown. Parties are so important for the sceners that there is an unwritten rule that a  new product can be put into the compo only once. Thus, the work of a given group or scener is connected with the party at which it was exhibited. This also distinguishes the scene from other fields of cultural production in digital media. Organized contests are usually considered to be the most important part of the event. If you want to compare the scene to a fight club, it is in the compo that the sceners fight each other. Competition categories are usually set by the organizers. 25 For example, at Forever 2017 there were over a dozen competitions in the categories of music compo, graphics compo, intro compo, demo compo for ZX Spectrum, Atari, Commodore 64 and other 8-bit platforms. In addition to these basic competitions, other competitions took place, such as the Walking Encyclopedia of 8-Bit Gaming, wild compo and real-time. Music and graphics categories, as well as intros and demos, are treated seriously, while the wild compo is a place for improvisers to show off. Here, they can perform a digital song and show a movie or sing a song related to the party or demoscene theme, depending on their idea and imagination. A Forever tradition is a category that tests knowledge in 8-bit production, especially games and interactive fiction. At the start of the party, the sceners receive a voting card. The prizes are decided by those who are in the room where the demoparty is happening.26 They choose the winner, so only those involved in the scene have the chance to select the best. During some parties, online and distance voting is possible when the entire competition is transmitted on the Internet. During the competition, all submitted productions are shown, always from the equipment for which they were made. So if the song was made on

25  26 

https://demozoo.org/parties/3078/ (accessed on 5 December 2018). Select parties also organize voting online.

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I. ZX Spectrum Demoscene

Ill. 6. A votesheet, Dihalt 2016 party. Photo by Piotr Marecki

ZX Spectrum 128 K, Forever organizers will use the original platform to present it to the public. Sceners do not programmatically use emulators during compo (actually this is rare). That’s why organizing a party is associated with great effort on the part of the organizers, because they have to have all the equipment ready, also that which can show productions created in real-time, i.e. a competition announced at the meeting itself. The gist of the real-time compo is that sceners program in real-time during the event. The organizers announce the subject of the compo at the start of the party, which gives the participants a few hours to prepare the graphics, music or program that will take part in the competition. For example, during

Contests and Voting

DiHalt 2016 the theme was “Sofa Scener.”27 Participants in the competition had to refer to the theme that concerned sceners either coding on the sofa, consuming alcohol on it, or being the usual ZX Spectrum couch potatoes. Not infrequently, the productions that are the result of such a contest are bugged or unfinished, which increases the risk that they will not be able to be shown, and this raises the bar for the organizers. All scene productions are shown to the public during the compo for the first time. Demos and intros, as well as graphics and music productions, are always shown on the big screen and using good sound equipment. During each party, at which several dozens or even hundreds of sceners gather, a certain atmosphere comes about. This is helped by the fact that alcohol is usually served. Various elements influence the results of the vote. For example, SS mentions: “Atmosphere, ‘catchyness’ and how it looks on the big screen or sounds on big speakers. Also, it depends on how many works are in the compo. If it’s too much, it’s boring, and all works melt together. Then usually, the winner is far from the best.” Sceners come to the party with their equipment, and they set up their computers at specific tables (during Forever, it’s most often in different parts of the main room). Therefore, during the voting, people are talking at their various stations. It is also important that the competition and voting take place in the middle of the three-day event (usually on the second day), which means that the voters are totally immersed in the experience by then. Another factor influencing the vote may be fatigue. Some compo last for several hours. For example, the competition portion of the 2016 DiHalt Spectrum party, which took place under the open sky, began at 6 PM and ended around 3 or 4 AM. The new productions were presented for several hours, during which it was necessary to focus and evaluate them. This fact (plus the relationship between the sceners and the appearance of nicknames in greetz) probably affects the results. It can be assumed that the results of the competition would look different if the sceners would rate the work alone, in the privacy of their home, with the possibility of analyzing the code, etc. But then, the social aspect would disappear. As underlined by rdx: “It’s quite similar to songs on top hit lists. People decide. It is important, however, to know which people ;)” Often it seems that one of the inseparable elements of the scene is the desire to dazzle other sceners. Some describe new productions as

http://www.events.retroscene.org/dh2016/Realtime_LowEnd_Gfx/897 (accessed on 5 December 2018). 27 

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I. ZX Spectrum Demoscene

a “jaw-dropping” (Ralf) and that their exact feelings and reactions are difficult to express. For this reason, it is interesting to find out which elements were assessed, what the authors appreciated during the presentation, what production elements they paid attention to. Demoparty participants emphasize that in the case of platforms such as the ZX Spectrum, where there are technical limitations of the computer, it is exciting when someone overcomes barriers and achieves the impossible. This is the most important factor. LCD says, “The main criterion for evaluation is doing things that are considered technically impossible and showing how well the platform itself has been mastered.” Factor6 adds that just pushing boundaries is not enough. If it is done like this, and people don’t recognize it, it’s a bad demo. Because you have viewers not only from the Spectrum scene but also from other scenes. They don’t know the platform that well, so if you just make demo full of effects, pushing the limits of the platform, but nothing else, it’s worthless.

He also identifies yet another factor. In his assessment what’s important is the “[e]xpression of the demo. If I really like the graphic effects, and there are wonderful graphics, but the music is shit, I don’t vote for it, because I don’t like it. It’s very important, I must like the whole product.” The reasons for a positive vote are hard to articulate. “It’s kind of a gut feeling. It’s not really any one thing. It’s hard to say what exactly will make me happy about a demo. If it’s technically capable but doesn’t really have artistic flow then… It has to be something that keeps my attention” (Gasman). Ralf points out: “In music and graphics, I think we simply value ‘beauty’ or to what extent something is nice, unique, evoking some reflection. And beauty is difficult to define in words, but once we see something beautiful, we have no doubt that it is beautiful :)” In turn, Busysoft states: “It’s all is about how people like the works and how creative the people perceive the work to be.” But Alone Coder defines what is to be achieved and what should be appreciated differently: “A work is valuable if it brings something good and new to the platform. If it is a tool, the more things people do with it, the more valuable it is.” Gasman draws attention to other elements: I try to [vote] based on the whole package, rather than trying to be analytical about it. The value can be in the humor or ideas behind it or the telling of a story. It can just be a pure technical accomplishment. If you’ve got a lot of different demos trying different things and competing against each other, it’s technical

Contests and Voting

accomplishment up against humor which is up against creativity. So it’s hard to really run with that. I think all you can really do is to go with a gut feeling. “Did this make me smile?” I think that’s all you can really do.

Similarly, Ralf indicates a few possible ways of evaluating the works. In the case of effects generated by the code, there are two methods of assessment. The first evaluates how hard the effect was to achieve, the complexity of the code. And the second is beauty, i.e. the graphics and music. The complexity of the code is such that not everyone knows it, and we can, for example, have some massive sprites fly around the screen. But the viewer will not appreciate it at all, because he has no idea that such an effect is difficult to obtain within technical limitations of the Spectrum. Here, too, we have the topic of real-time vs pre-calculated animations. Again, someone will be delighted that it is live, while someone else will not even notice.

There are also other factors that affect who and what wins the party. The demoscene is a  male-dominated subculture, so “there is also a  dispute whether you can use images of naked women in demos. I know that at some parties it is not allowed to use images of naked women in demos, because it is indecent, but that gives an unjust advantage to the viewer over other demos” (Ralf ). If the party participants are in a cheerful mood, less serious productions will be liked more. “Some funny jokes / catchy tunes / boobs can catch the attention of the crowd, and better work may get worse votes then it deserves. But that’s life” (SS). Or, “at Forever it’s recommended to move things all the time and change colors because the viewers are drunk and want joyful movement on screen :)” (Alone Coder). It also happens that more emotional demos can attract more attention than the more distant and calculated demos. Definitely, a well-written demo that can bring people to tears—there are actual and documented cases of that—or give them the creeps, can accumulate votes despite relatively lower merit in some areas, but this is what demo is about—design and atmosphere. In that aspect, there is something “populistic” about demos, which if used properly, can influence the crowd and, consequently, results. (rdx)

It also often happens that national or local aesthetics win. As DC PAK points out, “For example, there were trends in voting for work from their own country. I’m not saying that it is wrong or dishonest. On the contrary, it largely

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I. ZX Spectrum Demoscene

results from the fact that the aesthetics that we have been developing in our own nation, in the end, turn out to be closest to us.” And although these factors should be taken into account, compo is not the only way to rank works on the scene. Another element is, for example, voting for a given production on the pouet.net portal or discussing demos and various other things in magazines, although these play a much smaller role than the competitions themselves. Sceners sometimes work for weeks or months on a full-blown demo. In addition, they spend hours trying the reach a party, which often takes place far away from where they live. So what makes them invest so much? What is at stake in the game? Why do sceners do all of this? Busysoft responds: “Friendship, face-to-face meetings, discussions about the scene, watching new productions live together, good atmosphere.” A very radical approach is exemplified by Alone Coder for whom “[the] #1 [reason] is to support the ZX Spectrum platform.” Gasman, on the other hand, is on the scene because “it’s a bit about making an impression on people… actually showing off.” On the other hand, LCD says: “The stake in this game is fame, being recognized by my peers. That’s why sometimes people come to parties like this with different gadgets, for example, someone brought a 3D printer with them last year.” And DC PAK puts forth: In retrospect, I can say that the stake in the game and the prize is fame. At the same time, we are not talking about celebrity, like the type a handsome young actor playing in a popular series achieves. Rather, the admiration of a hundred people. From which only a few, maybe ten, express it. And to make it clear, it’s totally worth the time and energy invested in this game.

Many sceners have a very basic approach to fame, unhealthy camaraderie or even populism existing in demos. The most radical is Alone Coder: “Those who work for the platform, not popularity, don’t seek for fame, that’s why they are usually less known.” Still others talk about ethics and purity: I value the moral purity of the scene, like being appreciated for skills, doing fantastic things but not for the money, friendship and knowledge-sharing. It’s a bit different than in the professional world, where effectiveness depends on skills 10 percent of the time at most, as some research postulates (rdx).

For Factor6, the scene is also not about fame: “My main goal is to be with people that I like and that accept me the way I am. For me, fame is in second

Contests and Voting

place or third place, but not first. I’m doing it because of the good people on the demo scene.” When analyzing the works created on the demoscene, the most important aspect should be collegiality. Subsequently, fruitful cooperation, greetz in demos, and the establishment of one’s position in the hierarchy can be set as a goal. Alone Coder describes one ascent within the community as a process of creating a network of relationships: I know one scener that gradually froze his scene activity in the 2000s and began a marathon of meta-scene activity. He made friends at Pouet, then participated in the Scene Awards jury. He brought one local friend of his with him and made his other local friends the moderators at one known forum. Then he created his own demoparty and his own forum.

Winning a compo can also help a scener gain the type of recognition that can translate into professional relationships. In this way, the scene could serve as an extension of one’s CV. The time, contacts, and networking invested in the scene may result in further cooperation and projects. But as SS warns, Personal life and real-life connections may be at stake if someone is too focused on the demoscene and ignores everything else. Recognition and good feelings are the prize. Through the work, some artists, especially musicians may be recognized and get famous. Coders may get interesting work in game producing companies. It is like everything else, it gives opportunities and creates connections between people.

Many sceners have also gotten a job (although sometimes not directly) due to skills acquired on the scene. DC PAK relates: Well, after wrapping up my career on the Spectrum demoscene, I made a game for the Nintendo GBC, which was released by Capcom. The game was written in Assembler from the beginning to the end, so the experience I gained on the demoscene played a significant role here. However, I would be pressed to say that the demoscene is efficient or proactive in any way. It is rather the individual interests of a person that pushed him or her towards the scene, not the other way around. So if someone likes and is able to program, draw, compose, he can gain experience on the scene, but that’s not a given. It can also lead your career to something different, more commercial, bypassing this strange creation, which is the scene.

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I. ZX Spectrum Demoscene

Having fun and investing time in the scene resulted in a job also for Jordan of Exodus, “The passion for coding demos turned into a profession, which I have been in for over twenty years. From my perspective, every experience counts. And the demoscene gave me a solid foundation for programming, analysis and software optimization.” Gasman states that, “Everything I’ve done in my life, including getting a job or inspired to learn computer programming comes back to learning about the Spectrum back in the 1980s.” The ability to program, make music or graphics helps many sceners land in game development and we can even discuss video games inspired by demoscene aesthetics. Ralf, the creator of many games, says: But I also noticed (e.g. in Russian games made on the Spectrum by Russian sceners) that some of the habits of the sceners are transferred to the games and what is good in demos is bad in games. I am irritated by the game that has fancy logos, animations, effects on the borders, and other nonsense at the beginning, but then the game itself turns out to be weak, because it is, for example, a simple game of tic-tactoe or whatever else. Games should not be made for effects but rather good gameplay, which people from the demoscene sometimes forget.

The above reflections about participation in the demoscene comment on the possibilities that may arise from it, but very rarely do sceners point to direct inspiration that they get from the scene and how they apply it in professional life. In the past thirty years, this happened only once to Gasman: There was one event that I helped to organize a couple of years back, where we were at the Museum of Computer Science in Oxford and we collected lots of Spectrums and networked them to play Mahler’s Symphony No. 1.28 In the original Spectrum manual there was a challenge. It was to introduce the sound command, as an exercise, and get it to play Mahler’s Symphony No. 1.

The sceners statements clearly indicate that they are aware of the fact that the scene is a game that has its players, set rules and rewards. What’s more, they confirm our intuition about the organized nature of this subculture.

28 

https://blogs.mhs.ox.ac.uk/insidemhs/tag/zx-spectrum/ (accessed on 16 December 2018).

THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE OR DECENTERING DIGITAL MEDIA

The East-West Divide or Decentering Digital Media Out of all 8-bit computers, and perhaps even all computers in general, the ZX Spectrum seems to be the platform that provides the most substance for a discussion about the differences between the East and the West and the problem of decentering digital media. This computer serves as a good example of the tension between the different approaches to technology, how each treated the platform and its uses. These differences are also relevant in the demoscene. This was noted by Factor6, who pointed to the uniqueness of the Russian ZX scene: “If we didn’t have a  Russian scene I  think the Spectrum would die. The Spectrum scene would die. .  .  . The whole demo scene comes from the West; it comes from the West through the middle. But the Spectrum scene… it came from the East to the West.” The uniqueness of the Spectrum lies in the fact that the East did not have to be inspired by the West, because similar phenomena on such a scale in the West simply didn’t exist there. It is easy to agree with the Czech scener. The first and basic difference between the world of the West and the reality behind the Iron Curtain was the level of access to computers and legal software. In the West, it was an affordable good that could be bought in stores for money. Equipment was advertised and treated like any other product. The situation was radically different in the countries behind the Iron Curtain, where the equipment was difficult to acquire and very expensive. The unavailability of software in stores was connected to the phenomenon of the electronics market, i.e. the place where both hardware and software were traded.29 Such exchanges took place in the second half of the 1980s and in the 1990s in the Eastern Bloc. What’s more, the markets exist to this day, but they are on the margin and have a mercantile-commercial quality with no relation to creative demoscene activity. In some cities, they served as computer clubs, that disseminated knowledge about computers or exchanged information (for example, they had the patronage of popular computer magazines and thus, an educational function). Most people participating in the markets were active on the

29  For more on the computer and electronics markets see: Patryk Wasiak, Strategie reklam­ owe polskich piratów komputerowych w okresie transformacji systemowej, https://www.academia. edu/24234108/Strategie_reklamowe_polskich_pirat%C3%B3w_komputerowych_w_okresie_ transformacji_systemowej (accessed on 5 December 2018).

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I. ZX Spectrum Demoscene

scene and did not treat computers only as equipment to play on. This situation, however, changed very quickly and the markets simply became a place to trade equipment (thus they also lost the support of computer magazines). In the iconic Bajtek magazine in Poland, the Warsaw market was described in this way: Slowly, the peddlers pour out into the school grounds. There’s no rush. They show their reservations at the entrance and walk with kilograms of equipment up the stairs, now hurrying to their stands. Once there, they set up their stalls. They set the equipment on benches, hang fancy signs, ads about games cut from Western magazines. DIY enthusiasts assemble sophisticated scaffolding with slats and vices or a dryer stand. On the scaffolding hang the effects of a week’s worth of copying, drawing on boards with titles and printouts of novelties. The stacks of cassettes with recorded games read COMPUTER STUDIO on the cover, occupying ordinary school benches. The cassettes are taped together with scotch tape. They also distribute catalogs, typed on the computer or printed on the printer.30

The press and TV media were very interested in the phenomenon, and they treated the market as a cluster of “computer youth” or “bit people.” Young people interested in computers (and thus mainly in Western goods) were treated as successors of generations fascinated by other phenomena from the West (like, jazz or punk). The markets were a must for all those interested in purchasing equipment and programs; they are a kind of generational experience for the first generation of personal computer owners in the Eastern Bloc. The author of the quoted article on the electronics market also described the development of supply and demand for programs and the way goods were propagated: Nobody is interested in where the NEW GAMES come from. If one has it, after a week everyone has it. A kid with Bajtek approaches a stand. He reads the titles of games that he does not have, and the trader notes them carefully. Then he records them on a bootleg tape, collects the money, counts the money, and so it goes.31

Bartłomiej Kluska (2015) Giełdy komputerowe: zlepek cwaniactwa i umiejętności, http://savethefloppy.com/2015/01/22/gieldy-komputerowe-zlepek-cwaniactwa-i-umiejetnosci.html (accessed on 5 December 2018). 31  Ibid. 30 

THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE OR DECENTERING DIGITAL MEDIA

Each of the protagonists in our book had a  similar experience with the exchange or purchase of programs on the market. Many sellers also tried to professionalize their work. The scale of the phenomenon was best described by one of the distributors: Most of my people dealing with copying had about 100 tape recorders connected simultaneously! Can you imagine it? I had about ten people to do the tape recording. Each of them had from 60 to 100 Commodore recorders connected to the C64, which allowed for the production of several thousand tapes a day!32

Similar procedures stalled, on the one hand, the introduction of copyright laws (for example in Poland in 1994), and on the other, the dissemination of the PC. It is worth adding that many people dealing with computers and leading computer companies came from these markets and exchanges. Similarly, the market is closely related to the scene; demos and magazines were distributed this way, and, most importantly, the first scene events were organized in proximity to the places where the markets were held. Another issue related to the East-West divide was hardware. Ralf stated: In Western and Central Europe, people had original Sinclair machines; in Russia and the post-Soviet countries, they had locally produced clones. Therefore, in Russia and Western countries, different computer models are considered the standard. In the West and in Poland, it will be the Spectrum 48KB and 128KB, and in Russia, the Pentagon with the TR-DOS disk system. TR-DOS is not very popular in the West and in Poland. In Poland, the Portuguese Timex FDD 3000 disk station gained some popularity, but it is not well-known in the West and Russia. The most uptight and kosher about copyrights are probably the English. In other countries (especially in Russia) people generally do not care.

Alone Coder sees things along the same lines: People in the West had a stock machine with few significant add-ons that were rarely used (such as disk drives and extra memory blocks). People in the East soldered their computers themselves and added things, and the scene was always tied to disk

32  Bartłomiej Kluska ([2011]), Opowieści z krypty: Pod piracką banderą, http://polygamia.pl/ opowie-ci-z-krypty-pod-piracka-bandera/ (accessed on 5 December 2018).

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drives. Disk requirements limited the number of sceners, but disk computers were more programmer friendly. They were not like game consoles. All our computers had RGB, and we were not familiar with PAL artifacts (however, everybody had to solder their computer to a TV or display in different ways, the same with the keyboard). AY sound was stereo. And most of our computers had extra memory, sometimes with even better graphics and sound capabilities.

Many Russian sceners admit that (despite the flame wars between the Spectrum-PC or Spectrum-Amiga), Sinclair’s original equipment was never seen. Another reason for the differences is the wealth discrepancy between western and eastern societies and the time when the platforms were used. More affluent societies switched to more advanced platforms (especially Amiga) sooner, while eastern ones were still discovering or expanding the Spectrum. This is confirmed by Busysoft: The main difference is the era in which most activities on the ZX Spectrum took place. In the West, it was possible to buy an inexpensive ZX Spectrum, but in the East, people did not have so much money, and the ZX Spectrum was very expensive for most. So this caused the ZX Spectrum to spread to the East later than in the West.

Paradoxically, this kind of technological backwardness and the development of equipment, which in the West was already considered obsolete, had an impact on the originality of the scene in the East. The Russian sceners started the impossible race, although it was often effective, which led to an extension of the Spectrum that would make it compete with more complicated computers (like the Amiga). Factor6 describes this competition as follows, It was in the early 1990s, so the demoscene on Amiga was very big also and they started to copy these effects, these demos. They tried to push the limits of the Spectrum, which nobody else had done before. What I think is that Russian sceners started to make such good demos because they wanted to be extraordinary, because they didn’t have many chances to be extraordinary in their normal lives.

There is another cultural nuance. In many eastern countries, popular culture and music influenced perceptions about the world, different from what was portrayed in the communist controlled media. In this respect, for example, rock or punk music in Poland had enormous significance. West-

THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE OR DECENTERING DIGITAL MEDIA

ern films unofficially distributed and circulated on video cassettes, also on the market, had a  similar effect. Games and digital media uncontrolled by the authorities had a political dimension. DC PAK explains: “It’s like that kid who played games and thought to himself about how cool things are in the West. So it must be cool and not as bad as they tell us it is on TV.” It is worth emphasizing the unique significance of demos that had political and opposition undertones on the Spectrum scene. The Spectrum demoscene actively accompanied the changes from the communist to the capitalist system. This subject was dealt with in a later production, created by Mikropol, about the overturning of a system. Other demos from this period include legendary politicians, oppositionists, revolutionaries sitting in prisons during the Polish People’s Republic [PRL], for example, the demo Solidarity: the first 500 days (Zoon Software, 1991).33 In Russian demos, ideology also played a big role; at the beginning of the 90s, we will find, for example, a demo showing and mixing two icons—the last leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Mickey Mouse.34 A separate phenomenon on the Russian scene is modern communist demos (one of them will be discussed later in the book). It is worth noting, however, that if Polish and Czechoslovakian sceners perceive the influence of computers in preparation for capitalist entry and the overthrow of communism, the Russian sceners report the votum separatum, which is associated with the later appearance of the most popular 8-bit platform in Russia. The attempt to sabotage the transmission of an official TV program by Poland’s ruling regime using the ZX Spectrum is also very well-known. It was the initiative of the underground Solidarity activists in the region of Toruń in 1985 and it happened during the broadcast of the official news program Dzie­ nnik Telewizyjny. Those responsible for the confusion prepared an electronic system capable of broadcasting television signals and synchronizing them with the frequency of the government transmitter. As a result, subtitles like “Enough with these price increases, lies and repression” and “A boycott of the elections is our duty” were displayed during the broadcast of the program. The phenomenon that distinguishes the Spectrum scene from other scenes is also the linguistic diversity of demos and other genres. While

http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/classic_demos.html (accessed on 5 December 2018). Belyaev, Rukavishnikov (1993) Coming Soon: Crazy Mix, https://demozoo.org/productions/12816/ (accessed on 16 December 2018). 33  34 

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platforms of greater importance in Western Europe operated programmatically in English, the ZX Spectrum demoscene, with its center in Russia, was also unique in this way. While English dominated other scenes, in the world of the Spectrum, Russian, but also Polish, Czech or Slovak, could be heard. A common practice on this scene were bilingual demos, written in both Russian and English, with the option of choosing the appropriate language version by the user. It should be added that text plays a special role in the Spectrum scene, especially due to the limitations of the platform. Sometimes sceners, unable to cope with the competition of other platforms in the race for better graphic effects, helped themselves with text, which was more visible in productions on the Speccy. Factor6 stated: This is because of the amount of Spectrum users in Russia. Russia is a rich country, and they don’t have a reason to use English. Why would they use it? They compete with each other, and I think they don’t need the rest of the world for this. So why use English? It’s boring for them; it’s hard for them. You always see Russian demos with bad English, if they are in English. It’s grammatically just bad, so it sticks out.

This scroll style, especially during the 1990s, is confirmed by Russian sceners. Scalesmann points out that most Russian sceners use English, but “if you speak English poorly, use your mother tongue. Now I sometimes watch a demo/intro written in the 1990s, and sometimes I cry out ‘to write in English in this way is a disaster.’” Alone Coder adds: Scrolls were usually written in English. Maybe because the first authors of disk releases used old fonts (even ROM font sometimes). Maybe they thought their disk release will spread overseas. There were more strange things like claiming copyrights for a crack :) So a standard appeared for disk releases with English text. However, music demos were written in Russian or English, or both. Diskzines and electronic papers from ex-USSR were written in Russian, rarely with English translation, and there was one diskzine in Latvian without any translation.

Alone Coder explains this situation of linguistic diversity in demos: “4% of Russians speak English, according to the census. Most people can’t read English. There were a  lot of Russian versions of games, and there were

THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE OR DECENTERING DIGITAL MEDIA

Ill. 7. Shock Megademo, 1992, ESI, UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Piotr Marecki

games that existed only in Russian. Also, some jokes and allusions can be understood only by people that know USSR culture.” Ralf points out that another distinctive feature of the Spectrum is “mixing languages—a part of a scroll is in English, another in Russian, Polish or Czech.” This can be explained by the fact that Slovak, Polish or Czech are Slavic languages, but written in Latin script and quite understandable in neighboring countries. It is worth noting that most of the sceners from the Eastern bloc knew Russian, or at least a bit, because Russian was the primary foreign language taught in primary schools in the 1980s. Factor6 states that “I know many demos in Czech or Slovak [on] the Spectrum, mostly old ones. They were made just by people who wanted to make the demo, and they didn’t know English. If they did know it, they would have made it English.” This statement makes it very clear that the phenomenon of old-school demos is connected to the use of national languages. Demos created in the 1980s and early 1990s were created by people who did not know English yet or knew it very poorly. DC PAK, whose productions belong to the

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old school, recalls: “We already had the texts in demos written in English since Exodus Megademo, because of accessibility to users, but also the trend at the time was to do so. And English sounded more ‘pro’ to teenagers than Polish.” English was also the basic language for communication even between sceners using Slavic languages: “I correspond with Poles in Polish, but with a German or Czech in English. Of course, with the English in English” (DC PAK). Another phenomenon was indicated by rdx: With early 8-bit computers, there was an interesting phenomenon in Poland. As there was very little software made by Polish people, anything that was written locally, or mentioned local subjects, was an instant success. There were famous cases of bad games, some written in Basic, with no real gameplay, that made huge sales just because they were related to Poland, i.e. a soccer manager game that had the list of the real Polish teams and players or a beat-them-up game that was lousy, but it took place in a real Polish city with Polish graffiti on the wall, Polish cars in the background etc. It may be that some demos also touched a much wider audience because they were in Polish. This was however limited to a narrow window of time and already in the mid-1990s, being “Polish” was no longer enough to guarantee success or popularity.

Demos usually took part in the compo during the party. During the event, the sceners do not have much time to read the scrolls, let alone the long ones often found on the ZX scene. It is no wonder that text demos are low in the scene hierarchy: Anyway, demos based on long texts are usually boring regardless of language unless they are specially targeted to you or your group or some local community. And in that case, the local language is the way to go. It feels stupid to write jokes about my friend in the language we both barely know. (SS)

And although demos filled with text other than the greetz, which you need to focus on, were not shown great respect, many of the demos on the ZX scene have a  distinct literary character. Sceners decide to perform poetic demos or demos that play with text. All the discussed phenomena, ranging from the East’s issue with copyright to linguistic diversity (and thus attempts to combat the dominance of English) and the social role of platforms in society (fighting the system), demonstrate the cultural uniqueness of the ZX Spectrum against other

Clones

platforms. To really understand these phenomena one should look at a narrative other than the dominant one, affirm otherness and not succumb to the influence of the center and the current poetics. This uniqueness also led to the most important feature of the Spectrum, i.e. the opening of the platform, which resulted in mass cloning of the equipment, a topic we will deal with in the next chapter.

Clones For the demoscene, the “pure platform” is important. Sceners are so advanced in hardware issues that during parties they usually present works on original equipment instead of showcasing them, for example, on a PC using emulators or as a video file. The demoscene is also sometimes called a  field in which the works are presented in real-time so recreating them from the original platform using original processors, graphics, and sound chips is a fundamental issue for the work. 35 In terms of purity of the platform, the ZX Spectrum is also a very specific scene. In Eastern Europe, where the Spectrum enjoyed a revival, most of the users have never seen the original Sinclair computer and called the computers built on the foundation of the British hardware something different. This is related to the phenomenon of mass cloning of the platform. The traditional use of platforms (not only 8-bit ones) is based on the consumption of content and the use of equipment and software officially provided by the manufacturer. And although narratives about platforms such as the C64 or Atari do not deviate from a creative or bottom-up approach, it is based on independent writing of programs. None of the platforms, in addition to the ZX Spectrum, resulted in such a level of creativity and on such a scale of hardware systems or clones. The machine’s uniqueness was based on its openness, which distinguishes it from corporate platforms, such as the C64, which users did not copy due to limited access to accessories. The reasons

35  Lassi Tasajärvi (ed.); Bent Stamnes, Mikael Schustin (2004) Demoscene: The Art of Real-Time, Even Lake Studios, Helsinki.

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for and the scale of cloning have already been discussed. This phenomenon consisted of both differences in the wealth of societies, as well as delays in access and the race between Spectrum improvements and newer platforms. When asked why the Spectrum was so often cloned, the sceners agree that the simplicity behind the platform was the reason. Just as certain human inventions, such as the circle, spoon or book, are simple and perfect, the Spectrum is great for followers of the platform and has been copied for these reasons. This approach is slightly modified by rdx: It is said that the main reason Bob Dylan’s songs are among the most common to cover by other artists is that they are creative and good, but imperfect. We can say the same about the ZX Spectrum. It was the first home microcomputer of its kind, easily programmable, with sufficient memory and graphic capabilities to perform tasks complex enough to capture the minds of an entire generation. Yet, it could be easily improved, especially in two areas—capabilities and reliability.

In his comment, rdx does not pay attention to the local aspect of cloning, which Scalesmann emphasizes. He says: Relatively easy reproducibility on the basis of native parts (the main problem was related to ULA, which was finally broken anyway), plus a huge number of programs, mainly games, but above all, specific features of the Russian mentality (especially interest in electronics and lack of awareness of copyright)… In the USSR, there were also Apple II clones and other related projects, but the Speccy won.

It seems that the large-scale interest in computer science and the desire to look under the computer casing, combined with the unavailability of the original platforms on store shelves, were also important reasons for massscale computer cloning. Again, Scalesmann articulates the following: In the USSR, it was so accepted. For example, look at the magazines Radio or Mod­ elist-Konstruktor. Schemes and proposals for exchanging programs were published, and given that at that time almost everyone was interested in technical things and modeling (as opposed to contemporary youth who have all caught a humanistic brain disease), the beginnings of computerization hit fertile ground. . . . This idea came from the fact that there was a desire to learn how something works from the inside and change something in it according to one’s own preferences. In addition, it gave you absolute proficiency in using the thing, which is very useful for fulfilling

Clones

big ambitions. The demoscene is a kind of evolution of hacking things when a person can’t only break in but also must think up and tinker. It’s no coincidence that the crack scene and demo scene go hand-in-hand.

As the chapter on the East-West divide indicates, the idea of cloning in the Eastern bloc was associated not so much with the desire to recreate the original 1:1, but with the improvement of the equipment. This is explained vividly by rdx: The original ZX Spectrum was prone to failure. It had poor video output and no “proper” sound as compared to computer that entered the 8-bit market later, especially in Poland, like the Commodore 64 and Atari XL/XE. Therefore, many modifications, “improvements,” and concepts were created that either enhanced the original ZX Spectrum (AY chip, disk drives, divIDE, etc.) or modified it in various ways (Timex 2048, Harlequin, Speccy 2010, Pentagon), still achieving good compatibility.

Cloning instructions with even more details about the periphery and specific equipment are provided by Alone Coder: That was because it had the simplest schematics (not counting ZX80 or ZX81, which were cloned in Yugoslavia as far as I know). The only custom chip of original Speccy contained just a few circuits that were easy to implement from off-the-shelf parts. Somewhere in 1991, its counterpart Т34ВГ1 (it also had other names) was developed in the USSR for Didaktik and local mass production. We imported a clone of Z80 CPU from DDR until 1991, then the same chip got produced here. Also in 1991, Russian floppy disks ГМД130 appeared. 27512 ROM could be replaced to smaller ROMs. The only part that had to be imported from the West was AY-3-8910 (or 8912, or YM2149F) sound generator.

Scalesmann speaks about the race to create more refined equipment. He thinks it is a form of showing off or demonstrating one’s abilities. And he also refers to local specificity: The basis of this idea is the uniqueness of the Soviet existence. Achieving scientific and technological progress by the nation was impossible to a large extent. It was expensive and not for everyday use by ordinary citizens. And the attitude was that if I can’t get it, I will do it myself or at least I will try. Accordingly, the demoscene developed the same way. They looked first. Later, they tried to understand how it works,

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including stealing other people’s software. Then they started writing and measuring their penises.

Russian sceners often did not have contact with the original Sinclair platforms, and all their adventures with computers are limited to clones. A specific race in the production of clones should also be noted in the names, parts, and materials from which modifications to the platform were built. Gasman: “It’s really impressive to see that sort of creativity. I feel that people build these cases with whatever material they had laying around, wood or solid metal, and 5-pin DIN connectors for everything because that was what they had. So it’s really impressive to see that sort of effort.” What clones were among the most popular, and which platforms did the ZX sceners have? Alone Coder says: The most widespread clones were those based on Т34ВГ1 chip, using tape-recorders, but they had no scene except in gaming. The Big Four of disk-based clones were (in order of appearance) Pentagon, Profi, ATM-Turbo (also Turbo2), and Scorpion (also KAY). They were mentioned together in the press and supported by operating systems and memory drivers in programs. I had all four.

Moroz also points to: “Pentagon and Scorpion. The ZX Evolution has now joined them.” Even more names are mentioned by Semizarov, “ZX: Leningrad, Moscow, Kharkov, Pentagon, ATM, Scorpion, Profi, KAY.” And Golubtsov put forth, “Leningrad 48, Pentagon 128, Delta-C, ZX Scorpion 256.” The most important ones for Scalesmann were those from the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, i.e. Leningrad and Moscow (from which the Pentagon later developed). “As far as contemporary ones are concerned, Pentevo is almost the absolute leader,” he adds. From this short summary one can see an abundance of choice and locality (Kharkov, Leningrad, Moscow). Sceners agree also that currently the computer that is central to the image of the Russian world Speccy, is the ZX Evolution (also called Pentevo). The situation is different in countries located to the west of Russia, in which ZX clones were also used. SS mentions Didaktik M and Didaktik Gama, which were popular and produced in Czechoslovakia, but at the same time, he points out that Timex was famous. Busysoft also grew up on local clones Didaktik Gama, Didaktik M, and Didaktik Kompakt. He lists how they differed from the originals:

Clones

Didaktik Gama has 80KB of RAM instead of 48KB as in the original ZX Spectrum. Didaktik M has the original ULA replaced by programmable logic array (lack of original ULAs). Didaktik Kompakt has a built-in floppy disk unit D80, so it is not necessary to use slow cassettes or connect external units.

In Poland, in turn, the most popular clone was imported from Portugal, called Timex, but local clones Elwro 800 and Unipolbrit were also very popular. Czech scener Factor6 has and uses several clones: I have an Evolution, that’s a Russian clone. I have the Reverse-U16, which is a small Raspberry Pi-sized board Spectrum clone, also from Russia. I have a Harlequin Spectrum. This is from Germany, from Ingo Truppel. I also have a Spanish ZX-Uno computer, which is also a RasPi sized clone, but more compatible with the Spectrum. I think that’s all from the clones. Another good Spectrum clone is Speccy 2010, but I don’t own it.

Characteristically, sceners from Western countries pay attention to completely different clones than the Russians. “In Western Europe, Speccy 2010 is quite popular as it is portable and has all the modern ports (VGA, keyboard)” (Gasman). But for rdx, the Harlequin is more significant for the Western user (“for reverse engineering ULA and replacing it with modern hardware”) and the ZX Spectrum Vega from 2016 (“for commercializing the nostalgia and selling the emulator prepacked with game ROMs as a  new edition of the computer”). We can add to the mix the ZX-Uno, or the Spectrum in Raspberry Pi packaging and size, and the ZX Spectrum Vega Plus portable console. In 2017, the new ZX Spectrum Next project was launched. Gasman, living in the country where the original ZX was created, argues that clones were useful for this reason: I imported the Speccy 2010, the FPGA based model. In fact, it was interesting to me, because when I’m travelling around to different parties, I’m looking for the most convenient way of taking the Spectrum there. Because this is very small in form, and because it’s FPGA-based, it’s possible to program it with new capabilities. It has a TurboSound extension, which gives you two AY sound chips, so you can do more interesting things with music performances.

Clone makers were creative not only in the names they came up with for the clones but also for their appearance and diverse functions. For example, the

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Poles built their version of the Spectrum, or Elwro, in a case for electronic devices. Russian sceners point to Nafania computers as an “absolutely crazy form, even taking into account its doubtful usability. Compliance with the original version was very moderate” (Scalesmann). “Clone boards are arranged in the shape of a pentagon” (Wasiljew). Alone Coder possessed a rich collection of clones, which he used for creative purposes. This long list also shows the creativity of the platforms: Q I had a version of Pentagon 48K where a single PCB contained two unconnected (!) parts: the main circuit and a disk controller. You should connect them with wires. Q  There were computers that had a cheap 2KB ROM and loaded the OS from tape. For example, according to its schematics the ATM-Turbo allowed for this. Q  Profi was designed as two boards. When you assemble your Profi, you first debug the motherboard, then insert the peripheral board with the disk controller, Covox, and extra ports. Q  ZX-Next had video output controlled by another Z80 CPU. It ran some sophisticated program from protected ROM (with floating bits), so this board was reverse engineered only recently with the help of the original author. Q  There was a popular keyboard with ЦУКЕНГ layout written atop of QWERTY. The “Й” letter was missing!!! I failed to find out who produced it. It was supported by the iS-DOS version distributed by SLOT Ltd (ZX-Next authors) and possibly nowhere else. But there were also reports that the first databases about privatization that started in 1991 were typed without “Й.” Q  Our hardware man Vladimir Makarov (Tot/Invader8) made a SounDrive device using 5 chips on top of each other and surrounded with resistors that looked like wings :) Q  There were people (for example, U#74 from Samara) that used old PC boards as a motherboard for their Spectrums. For this, they cut unnecessary connections and left only the connections between ISA slots.

For example, the creative platform based on the Pentagon by Alone Coder reminds one of, in the words of the same author, spaghetti, and has 1MB RAM, Turbo mode, cache memory, Covox, 384  ×  304 gfx mode, color-perpixel gfx mode, HDD and CD-ROM. Alone Coder was not the only one with hardware boosters. Sceners from other countries also couldn’t boast of platform purity. DC PAK describes his equipment,

Clones

Not only was Timex a clone, but my Timex was a clone after modifications. First of all, I bought an AY sound chip from 128K computers as an attachment that gets put on to the side. Secondly, I expanded my memory to 128KB, just like in the ZX Spectrum 128K. And finally, I bought an FDD station, but with 5.25” drives.

Frugal Russians were also known for placing parts purchased on the electronics market into the equipment. Alone Coder explains: In cities where there was a radio market, it was the first place you should visit (computers were usually sold as separate boards, but you could contract a hardware guy to assemble one). Somewhere there were even computer shops with boxed computers. Or you could find ads in magazines such as Radio and order a computer by mail. Scorpion were produced prolifically, so Scorpions can be found anywhere in Russia, unlike other clones.

As mentioned by rdx: “In the 1990s, people used to create groups and buy hardware together with one mail order to save on shipping costs. This was particularly popular in Poland for Russian clones.” Nowadays, clones are still being produced. Most often, they can be ordered online or through auction stores, such as eBay, or on websites dedicated to retro computer equipment. Here you can buy a Pentevo, Phoenix, Speccy 2010. A separate category is dedicated to the legendary hardware creator (about whom there are demos made on various platforms), Lotharek, who designs and sells peripherals for retro equipment. He supplies the whole ZX world with Wonder AY and DivIDE 2k14.36 And although the appearance of clones is currently standardized, and the producers even offer boxes sometimes, it often depended on the buyer what the computer would look like. Again, we will refer to the equipment used by Alone Coder to emphasize the difference between the packed carton bought in the store and what the young Speccy user in Russia received in the early 1990s: During these times there were empty PCBs sold at the radio market, and radio amateurs soldered them with chips. For example, my cousin did so. Some of the PCBs were defective. I had one such board with broken wires. Anyway, Pentagons required tuning even with good PCBs—mostly placing capacitors in random places. The Ryazan radio market existed since 1990. There was a time around 1994 when it

36 

https://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=71 (accessed on 5 December 2018).

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had an entrance fee. Moscow Mitino radio market also had paid entrance then (Mitino market was originally held in Tushino before 1993, then in Opalikha, then in Malinovka, and finally in Mitino; in Moscow there was also the Tsaritsyno radio market). Initially the computer was opened and placed in half of a chess board (the neighbor did the same). The keyboards of my father’s computers were made from a set produced at my father’s job (“Ryazan Plant of Metallo-Ceramic Devices”). These keys were possibly for cash machines produced at “SAM,” I don’t know. A key consisted of 8 parts (including a spring, a magnet, and a hermetically sealed contact), and you marked it yourself with a piece of paper. I used these keyboards until my last homemade Spectrum broke. Later my father glued a case of plastic blocks he found at his job. Other computers he made (the mentioned Radio-86RK, then a disk version of the Pentagon 48K, then a Pentagon 128K) were also placed in opened half chess boards.

The local mentality of clone creators never raised the issue of copyright as a problem. Only Gasman, the British scener, commented on this issue: I think there was some official word from the Amstrad in the 1990s, when they said “What do you think about illegal clones?” Cliff Lawson gave a direct response. He said, “I think, that people who copy hardware should be strangled,” or that they should be hanged or something terrible [laughs]. I’m not sure if that was based on extensive information. I think over time… I think Sinclair has to acknowledge that that has been a large part of the Spectrum’s legacy. I know he’s returned with the Spectrum Vega. I think it’s been mentioned that Spectrum has been revived.

When asked about what stands behind their passion for DIY in the production of computers, sceners responded by saying that: “hobby, saving money, and creativity. And sometimes it was simply the only option” (Alone Coder), and “the ability to do so, economic necessity, or curiosity” (rdx).

Creative Programming The demoscene brings together people who wish to demonstrate their capabilities in programming, creating music and graphics on a given platform. And although the parties are open to the public, who can have fun during

Creative Programming

the compo, many demonstration programs are only appreciated by a handful of people with programming skills. Due to the fact that the sceners want to dazzle other sceners with their capabilities and the possibilities of the platforms, they have to climb to the top in terms of programming skills. Only in this way can they push the boundaries and develop effects that nobody has yet created on the platform. In this sense, the sceners are standout programmers, thinking outside of the box in comparison to people who have mastered this work, but who do not go beyond routine. They are also different from regular programmers because they can appreciate the beauty of algorithms. And although they rarely compare their work to art, this uniqueness and transgression of boundaries in programming, makes us appreciate their creativity. Many of the sceners perceive their activity as a hobby, fun, or pleasure. For such (and therefore not necessarily useful) reasons, they also learned to program. This is confirmed by LCD, who stated that he started programming for fun. He says, “I wanted to prove to myself that I can do such things. I started with very simple, even primitive games.” The scene is probably the most important field in digital cultural production, in which programs are designed for creative, entertainment and ludic purposes. In this respect, it is difficult to compare it with any other area of creativity in digital media, where it is mainly programmed for utility or profit (like, games) or the transmission of content (as in the case of electronic liter­ ature or media art). Of course, there are exceptions in these areas and there are programming artists, for whom programming is the goal in it of itself, the most important element, the most appreciated and the least transparent. When the scene started in the 1980s, programming was only for advanced users. Developers were not able to immediately check information, learn, or inspect solutions to given problems. Such possibilities appeared only with the development of the Internet. Therefore, ZX sceners (as well as other 8-bit sceners) were forced to undertake many efforts and efforts to acquire the necessary knowledge. They could be divided into at least two groups: formal and informal. In the former, the current and common computer clubs in the countries of the Soviet bloc as well as magazines and books were important. The latter was all about the informal contacts, market, reading diskmags, analyzing and modifying programs or just talking with colleagues. This was of great importance because as the elite of the elite, the sceners implemented things that were not written in books on the topic of popular platforms or programming languages.

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Gasman claims that the use of the Spectrum was particularly encouraging for learning to program. On the one hand, BASIC starts up when the computer is turned on. On the other hand the basic commands of this programming language are printed on the keys, which obviously encourages independent learning. It’s like a collector mentality, I need to learn what these keywords do. For a long time, as a child, that was SIN, COS and TAN. I just wanted to do math at school so that I could learn what these things meant. I think that’s how I got into programming, in BASIC at first. There were always programs that I wrote that you could kind of recognize as a demo. They were just programs to play music with a long stream of BEEP statements.

Busysoft’s statement exemplifies the characteristic approach to learning how to program. He claims that it was by trial and error “and by disassembling other programs. . . . mostly at home, then [those received] from friends. Computer club was mainly about sharing programs and friendly banter. And school… when I went to school, I knew programming.” Alone Coder learned programming at home. He says, “My father brought magazines and books, but he didn’t code himself. IT classes at school came too late. 10th grade is for 15-year-old kids (however I was a 13-year-old then). You must learn programming when you are 10 or so.” Both sceners, like others, emphasize that when they came into contact with places where they were officially taught, they already had this ability thanks to their private efforts. Depending on different cultural contexts, the sceners point to various textbooks or mags from the 1980s that inspired them. Rdx states, “[I was] scavenging for any knowledge in magazines, books, etc. . . . A lot of help was actually coming from magazines like Bajtek where they sometimes published quite complex code.” Besides Bajtek, which published fragments of codes (with mistakes) to rewrite and launch, you could learn from several other sources in Poland. DC PAK remembers his first steps: However, I learned real programming, or Assembler, from Everything about the Com­ puter, which was recommended by Roger. Thirteen books were published, of which the first three presented the BASIC course, and in the subsequent ones, the Assembler was also included. Hence, the basis of my programming knowledge used in making demos. Invaluable help came also from the Guide to ZX Spectrum by Kuryłowicz,

Creative Programming

Madej and Marasek. So far, I have two copies, one has been read, with handwritten notes, heavily used; the other is in pristine condition, like from the printing house.

In Britain, Your Sinclair was regularly read (Gasman). In Czechoslovakia, the ZX Magazine, which published “Assembler language tutorials” and new programs (Factor6). Still other books were an inspiration in Russia: During these times, I was reading code snippets for programmable calculators in Science and Life magazine, collected by professors Ochkov and Puhnachev. Their book 128 Advices to a Beginner Programmer (1991) also gave me creative ideas. However, their advice runs counter to professional programming practices (Alone Coder).

In the tutorials, the same thing was repeated about the game codes, checking its operation and transforming it, which eventually led the sceners to their first individual programming attempts. In the case of Alone Coder, it was a demo for his mother’s birthday. Factor6, on the other hand, describes his first attempt in this way written in Basic for Radio-86RK: It was then that I saw the Commodore 64 for the first time, and I saw the demo “X.O.F.” on it. It was a picture of X.O.F. from the film [with] Eddie Murphy and the melody. I wanted to make it on Spectrum, so I made it. It was very shitty. I made it on a beeper, because I didn’t have the 128k Spectrum. Nobody had this kind of Spectrum here. So I made this, and maybe this was the first one. It was in 1990.

A relatively small role in the education of the programming elite was played by computer clubs. Sceners say that due to the amount of people attending the classes a few people sat around the computer and did simple tasks (“the basic of BASIC”) or had classes on the basics of computer use. Often, classes were limited to playing games or, worse, watching how older people play games (DC PAK). This is also confirmed by SS, who says that: When I finally had a computer at home, this was the best. We had a computer lab in school. I also visited a few computer clubs, but children were just playing games there. I could sit behind the computer for only a limited amount of time, so there was no chance to really learn something.

From these and other statements, it appears that the most important factor for learning programming was the informal circulation of knowledge. The

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first attempts immediately triggered the desire to establish contacts and share knowledge. In this way, for example, Gasman developed his skills: Once I started my first demo, it was an absolute mess. It wasn’t very good, with some bad music. But I realized that I was able to start contacting other groups and swapping my releases. At first it was Bogie from Extacy-3, a UK-based group. They were very helpful, sending me lots of tools, assemblers. That really got me started on taking my demo coding and writing code skills to the next level. My next demo felt more like a real demo with a soundtrack all the way through and scroll messages.

Establishing contacts and developing the coders’ skills over time turned into a willingness to cooperate but also to show their abilities and compete. This is the genesis of parties. Sceners were asked if they associate programming with creativity. They compare this process to the idea of “flow” described in psychology, or an inspiration that causes one to forget about the world and devote oneself completely to the task. I will say more about writing amateur games, but I think it works similarly. Yes, you really need to get some inspiration and enter into some kind of trance that you want to write, your hands do not break away from the keyboard. It’s fun. It does not bore you. You don’t get tired. You do not know when the hours pass (Ralf).

Such inspiration is also described by DC PAK: Some effects were created at night, some when I had the house to myself for the weekend. That’s where both Twin Worlds came from. Here I did not ask my friends for graphics or music. I took what I had at hand, unused graphics and songs until now . . . If it was necessary, I drafted an image myself, and on Sunday in the evening, there was a demo about which nobody even thought about on Friday.

Creators—just like representatives of other disciplines—have very different approaches to the creation process and each of them individually defines what creation is, how ideas for demos and effects are created. rdx stated: There are two basic ways, if we want to simplify it. I may call them top-down and bot­ tom-up. The second one is something like, I figured out a neat code, let’s try to make something cool with it. Example: you just figured out how to quickly rotate a 3D view, so you make an effect with some quickly rotating objects. The first one would be the

Creative Programming

other way round, I imagine a cool effect, so how can I code it? This way you figure out how to code something you want to see. Or, if we substitute I imagine with I saw some­ where, we come to an inspiration. This is the way effects are ported to different computers. There are also legends about coders who saw some amazing effect and a couple of days later were able to produce it, or even an improved one, in their release.

Busysoft, on the other hand, translates ideas into new productions: Sometimes I have an idea about how to realize some effect, or sometimes I see an effect (maybe on another platform) and I figure out how it can be realized on the ZX Spectrum. And sometimes I create some “routine” and then I solve what effect can be created in this way. Sometimes it is about imagination mainly, and sometimes it is about calculation.

LCD claims that coding is the simplest part of creating a demo, the biggest challenge is design and landing a trial. “Creating effects began with sketches in a notebook, then transforming the effect into an algorithm, so implementation and evaluation. The visual aspect is very important, more so than coding.” SS reflects on similar attempts to measure one’s abilities against that of the computer. Due to the hardware limitations of the ZX, not everything that is invented in one’s head can be realized: Sometimes there is inspiration, and from the first moment I know what I want to achieve. Then during the process, there are some bugs… something must be cut, because it is too expensive (I mean memory or cpu). The result often looks different, but if I like it, then I will keep it. And if not, then I leave it. Maybe one day I will find a use for it, maybe not.

goblinish has other inspirations: “Ideas based on old school effects or artists’ GIFs”. Alone Coder begins by visualizing the demo. He still has specifics visions in mind all these years later. Like many other sceners, he previews some of the effects on higher platforms and tries to implement them on Speccy. The creative process itself goes like this: Then you write inner loops to calculate possible timings and limitations. You can also model the math in Pascal or C. Then you try to count timings for different versions of inner and outer loops. When you are 100% sure of your algorithm, you code it. Sadly

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most effects are unfinished because you don’t have the necessary images, 3D models, textures, etc. There can be another failure—insufficiently low or slow memory.

DC PAK emphasizes that it is useful to cultivate technical and mathematical knowledge as well as abstract thinking. His recipe for the demo starts from the visual elements. And so all the effects were born from observation. Most often it was some distant memory. It was not like “if you add 20 points and hide it under some top layer” or “and if the stripes were replaced with balls and moved then…” Thanks to my imagination, I just saw animated bubbles reflecting on the surface of a lake, it will be so nice!

It should be remembered that the very process of creating on the demoscene is very different from many other cultural fields. There are not many artists who know advanced mathematics or physics and use these fields of knowledge as starting points for artistic expression. Some say, with a pinch of salt, “I think it depends on what department of mathematics. Integrals and derivatives are not useful, but trigonometry (solids, sines, perspectives) probably” (Ralf ). Busysoft also points to particular specializations as important for expression, “Many of my effects use very complex calculations, including trigonometric functions, matrix transformations and simulating physics features.” Jordan’s statement is also that “to create 3D engines or 2D transformations, then [mathematics] is indispensable. In other cases, math at the secondary level was sufficient.” Alone Coder states, there were people who wrote effects with complex mathematics at school. However, if you want to implement the optimal algorithm for something, you must be aware of the existing algorithms. That’s years of study. As for physics, they are still not used in Speccy demos but possible. They can appear if fake effects would be banned at democompos.

Semizatrov adds, “I think that mathematics is essential for writing really nice and complicated effects. Physics will also be useful for realism.” Busy­ soft pays special attention to the use of mathematics to tackle ZX Spectrum constraints: Next, good application of math can help to accelerate computations. For example, multiplication of numbers. Since the Z80 has no multiplication instruction, multiplication

Creative Programming

is simulated by a set of conditional additions. But it takes too much time, and in some cases, it is not acceptable. So I get math, and math says: A*B = EXP(LOG A + LOG B). So instead of slow and clumsy multiplication, I can do two logarithms, one addition and one exponentiation. Addition is trivial (Z80 has direct instruction for it) and logarithm and exponentiation can be realized with simple and short tables. And that’s it.

Inspiration for the demo can, therefore, come from the effects from other platforms, television, nature, science, and above all, geometry. The greatest praise a scener can receive is appreciation from the community for his/ her contribution to the platform and the astonishment felt because of the selected effects. Then come the assumptions from the scene about how it was achieved. Having asked sceners about impressive effects, we wanted to specify a few and discuss those that are repeated in the statements of several people. Several of the interviewees pointed to “the famous single-pixel fullscreen raster in Shock Megademo” (rdx, Jordan of Exodus, and DC PAK). SS was impressed by the effect using many colors and 3D in high resolution (Echology, demos by 3SC). Still other effects were indicated by DC PAK, like point animations in Podpersons from Mars37by Scrunk, the scroll on the border in NMI 3 by Mez, the flaming logo in the game Space Crusade38, animated dots in Dies Irae39 by Jordan of Exodus. SS explains very convincingly what makes a given effect work: The best effects are those that have visuals related to sounds. It doesn’t have to be a direct or very visible connection. The best experience is when you just say “wow!” and you have no idea why it worked for you. But tastes do change. Before I was a big fan of colorful 2D effects. At the end of the 1990s, I was extremely happy with Russian demos full of 3D effects. A few years later I was sick of them. They were slow and in low resolution, and now I prefer fluent movement in as high resolution as possible. Who knows what will be next. And yes, the best effects are those where the calculation is fast and your imagination can fill in the missing details without even realizing it.

37  38  39 

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek.cgi (accessed on 5 December 2018). http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0004660 (accessed on 5 December 2018). http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek.cgi (accessed on 5 December 2018).

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For Busysoft, the real test of programming capabilities are attempts to transfer complex effects from more advanced platforms to Speccy. Only such activity can be treated as a test of skills: Rotozoomer on PCs and Amigas—when a picture rotates and zooms in on the screen. I worked hard on it for some time, and I succeeded. I did it on ZX Spectrum too! And then I presented this effect as the third part of the Echologia demo in 1995. The next example is the above-mentioned intro 80 rectangles on Atari. Normally, it is not possible on another 8-bit platform because Atari uses special features of its video processor for displaying this effect. But I again worked hard, and I succeeded. And my ZX Spectrum intro 80 rectangles, with the same amount of moving rectangles, was presented at the Forever party in 2015. It should also be added that on the contemporary ZX scene many effects do not come from coding, but from animation conversions, which according to coders disqualify the work. It is said that similar activities could not have happened in the 1980s or 1990s.

The Archive Due to the fact that the scene organizes a lot of parties (some very local, others just ephemeral), during which a large number of works are pres­ented in the competitions only once, one of the most important issues for the scene is the way these works are archived and made public. In times before the Internet, the demoscene products were distributed by swappers. After sending out and disseminating the website after the presentation at the party, they go to catalogs that are published online. But a common trend was that sceners archived productions offline. Alone Coder also claims that if in recent years a  new important function appeared in the world of the demoscene, it will be that of the archivist. The issue of archiving is therefore important due to the scale of the phenomenon (countless parties, thousands of works) and the nature of the scene (voluntary activities, treating creativity as a hobby). rdx points to three ways of archiving this vast volume of creative work, both historical and new: “I’d call them private, semi-private

The Archive

and public, which can be explained as a private collection at home, a private server with limited access, and public scene servers.” Despite the efforts of the archivists, a significant part of the demoscene production was lost. There are many reasons for this. Alone Coder states, When people leave the scene, they generally think all their stuff was child’s play. They even refuse to give the stuff away. So the releases by Sergey Galishnikov, Nikolay Medvedev, Miheevs, Alexey Bugrov, Igor Moiseev, and some other works from our city (I also remember Dmitry Privalov and Pavel Panteleev) were lost.

It can be assumed that similar stories, where the earliest productions were lost, took place in every city, not only in Ryazan, which Alone Coder mentions. On the other hand, there are also sceners who programmatically do not archive their work. Factor 6, widely recognized as one of the most important characters on the ZX scene, says: I don’t do anything to preserve my works. I don’t care. I don’t know if you could find it online. I don’t store it anywhere. Maybe there are some works that I lost; I don’t remember everything I did. So it would be a really interesting attempt for me, as well as you, to find some of my works. I have some of my works on my old discs, on Spectrum discs. Maybe there is something there that is not on the Internet, I don’t know. Preserving it could be important for me, but I don’t have time for it.

The statement above is typical for these creators. On the opposite end are sceners who create individual pages devoted to their productions (Busy­ soft), which is not a common phenomenon. In terms of archiving, the history of the demoscene is also something alive and growing. Every year, there are demos considered lost, whether it’s when you rip old media, or randomly win an auction and other accidental events. “Once, when I won a collection of cassettes on Allegro, which included a few missing Polish demos, I sent them to ZXAAA and Speccy.pl” (Ralf). Not only are individual productions lost. In the history of the ZX scene, there are lost archives of individual parties. Sceners point to the RST#0, organized in the city of Cheboksary in Russia, as an example. From it, only one graphic entitled Skull Chaser survived.40

40 

https://zxart.ee/eng/authors/s/skull-chaser/ (accessed on 5 December 2018).

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It is impossible to list all the missing works. Many of them are surrounded by legend. The sceners create narratives to preserve their memory. The craziness and carnival of the scene have various effects. We must be meticulous and also note the actions of deliberate destruction of works of which there was only one version. But there are also stories about disks that had gone missing: The “Worms” game demoversion by Real Masters shown at Chaos Constructions is lost. The disk was stolen at the party, and that was their only copy. I also mentioned a couple of games by Nikolay Medvedev that he removed from his disks before copy­ing them. If I remember correctly, these were a snake clone and a fighting game. The latter was released at a local “Hacker competition” in 1995 and even won the prize. (Alone Coder)

A couple of sceners also name Exception as a missing work on the ZX, which was realized by the Czech scener Omega: “Only a low-quality video recording of this demo and music survived” (A. Golubtsov—Diver). 41 As an example, Russian sceners also name Microhobby, the Spanish magazine, as a lost work, which for five years organized extremely popular graphic arts competitions. As pointed out by A. Golutbsov, “about 1,900 works were submitted. Of these, only 376 have been published in the magazine, the rest will never be seen again.” A separate phenomenon, important from the point of view of archiving and archeology of digital media, are the infinite, unfinished, and bugged works. This phenomenon is related to the fact that the sceners often give their works up to the contest at the last moment during parties and do not finish the works; they finish them only a few days or a few months later, and sometimes not at all. The archives are, therefore, composed of productions that have several working or raw versions, as well as the final version that is free from errors. SS states, Demos are often created and finalized on a particular computer. Even if it is not finished at the party, it is often that a problem comes up, for example compatibility with a clone, something that is more visible on the big screen, or some last-minute change that actually broke something. Shit happens. The final version is about improvement. Sometimes it is just about fixes, sometimes there are additional optimizations, or it

41 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDk3S8oCWZA (accessed on 5 December 2018).

The Archive

is better compressed. Personally I download final versions when I can. An archived version doesn’t have to be final, it depends on both the archivist and person/group who released the final version of the work and if they replaced it or not.

Some demos, even in the name, retain this provisional character: I’ve seen cases where a party version of a demo was named Demoname 75%, and the full release appeared long after. Post-party versions are usually the final version but not always because of possible fixes for future hardware/OS configurations without changing the audiovisual sequence. (Alone Coder)

Another phenomenon on the scene, which is completely missing from archives storing productions, are demos with secrets and slogans. DC PAK claims that none of the public websites pay any attention to this, and they do not publish instructions on how to run such add-ons: I do not know about other people, but in Schizophrenia there was a bit of it. For example, in the first part with the scroll, you can enter the famous phrase “drink me” from Alice in Wonderland and see the subsequent changes. In another part, by holding down the V key while decompressing you can see how the map is drawn in the background. There are also passwords to view all the saved layouts for effects that appear randomly in each order. In Lazarus, in turn, if the Caps Shift and Symbol Shift are held down when the demo starts, you can try entering your own access password. After entering “alternative story,” a reassembled version of the demo starts, using the same effects for different music.

Archiving looks different in different countries; the older versions are maintained differently, in ways that relate to old school aesthetics. Ralf: In my opinion, unfortunately, this is done poorly in Poland. When one is a teenager, he/she generally does not care enough to keep something for the future. So people had some demos on floppy disks, but as soon as they saw it, they then without hesitation removed them from the floppy disk to make room for something new. There were also cases of throwing things into the trash; unfortunately, I myself threw away my collection of cassettes for the Spectrum, when I got a PC. :( Later on, people often regret it. Some have their cassettes / floppy disks somewhere in the attic, untouched for 20 years, and unfortunately, they do not do anything to save it and share it with others. It is sitting somewhere on a shelf till it rots or demagnetizes.

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The ephemerality, randomness, and lack of planning for archiving are also underlined by Scalesmann: I think that a significant number of demos is lost forever. Too much time has passed. There are examples, however, when absolutely unexpectedly, for example, a game based on the film Dredd, which was found recently, about a year and a half ago. Everyone thought it never existed.42

The demoscene has both fans and archivists. Private individuals running the ZX Spectrum archives are an extremely interesting case to study. Many sceners or party organizers are giving addresses to the servers on which they store their achievements, but on the other hand, they list individual people to whom they send each production. Admittedly, it doesn’t happen often that the owner of a collection makes it available to the public (such a person is called “a dog in the hay,” which comes from the Russian proverb). I oppose holding onto demos like this, because a production, which is in the hands of one person without access to others has a very good chance of disappearing without a trace (Scalesmann).

Alone Coder describes the local situation in Russia, emphasizing the special role in creating an offline archive of a certain vBv (Vladimir Bogdanovich), who completed most of the Speccy’s production archive: He collected it since 1989. He constantly adds software from group archives. In the past, vBv’s archive was distributed by snail-mail, but now you should contact vBv to get a specific part. He can’t keep it online because of the enormous size (4 DVDs not counting the printed magazines).

The same scener describes the process through which the productions go through before they reach the archiver: Generally, sceners copy their working disks to HDDs as early as they buy a computer that allows Spectrum emulation. Older disks generally remain on floppies. After

See: Bartłomiej Nagórski (2017) ZX Not Dead, czyli spektrumowe gry w nowym millenium, https://polygamia.pl/zx-not-dead-czyli-spektrumowe-gry-w-nowym-millenium/ (accessed on 5 December 2018). 42 

The Archive

some time, the “last man standing” of a city collects the floppies from local ex-sceners and tries to copy them to HDD. This was relatively easy before the mid-2000s when computers and OSes changed. Today, most floppies in Russia are sent to AAA who copies them all. After that, the local collection goes to Tiboh, and he recovers unique programs and data from the disks (see his interview in Info Guide #11). The demos go to the ZXAAA website, the press, games and utilities go to Virtual TR-DOS, and the music to ZX-Tunes (sadly there hasn’t been an update in a long time). Newart, the keeper of ZX-Tunes, also maintains ZX-Press where he recovers text from the press. AAA also collects scene videos, so does vBv. (Alone Coder)

Similar functions are also present in Poland: I dare say most of classic demos are in somebody’s storage, but they are not easily accessible. You need to know who to ask. There are still people who do collect Spectrum stuff. There are attempts to create online archives (i.e. speccy.pl), but this is far from perfect and complete at the moment (rdx).

In addition to semi-private archives, there are also generally available ones, which you sometimes need to log in to, but you can often download these sources without any registration. Sceners who think about establishing themselves for posterity, upload their works there. Russian scener Moroz jokes about archiving forever: “I’ve heard about archiving authentic tape recordings in a solution that preserves their properties. But only collectors are interested in physical media, and everything is being moved (or even initially created) on a PC and stored in web-archives.” The most popular ZX scene archives online according to sceners include worldofspectrum.org, zxtunes.com, bbb.retroscene.org, zxaaa.net, zxart.ee, trd.speccy.cz, spectrum4ever.org, zxpress.ru, zxdemo.org. Some of the archives are dedicated to special areas of the scene: demos, music, and the press. The lack of pouet.net amongst these sites is significant. It is the most directly associated with the demoscene archive, known for the large number of active participants, comments and rankings. A. Golubtsov comments on this: If we are talking about demos, then old demos ZX Spectrum are rarely published on pouet.net. This is mainly because of the small amount of spectrumists on pouet. It’s the same situation with Commodore C64. In my opinion, if there are separate, more complete archives of works from a given platform, it does not make sense to

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publish all the old works on pouet.net. Pouet.net is not a tool for archiving, there is no hosting. It is rather a way to promote the work.

Sceners making music often use modern Soundcloud tools that do not necessarily connect to the scene. Factor6 or the Russian scener, MMcM, have accounts on this platform. Not only are the flagship productions of the scene, such as demos or intros, treated as worthy of being archived. Diskmags, a digital genre that accompanies the scene, are also archived. They include stories from parties, reviews of equipment or programs, poems and all peri-musical works that were also documented and published. Electronic magazines are stored both in the form of digital releases and texts. There is a large project dedicated to the ZX Spectrum press, called zxpress.ru. The authors of the project publish articles in a convenient format for reading, and on the page there are source files for ZX Spectrum (A. Golubtsov).

The least known aspect of the scene, which may never see the light of day, are productions and private documents. “There are also cases of demos that were only for private use and several people in the world have such documents. . . . I have private collections of a few souvenirs. A large collection of letters, some notes from the times of demos, a few photos” (DC PAK). An interesting area, especially from the point of view of lexicography or platform wars, are archives of conversations or electronic letters, also largely lost. Although, there are exceptions. Golubtsov states, “I do not see any special value in this. Although, I also store irc-logs of my party’s (3bm openair) channels from all the past years on my hard drive.” One of the most important driving forces (especially within the 8-bit scene) is nostalgia and the desire to get back to the 1980s and 1990s thanks to computers. Hence the archive can be a kind of time capsule. But archiving also has other functions: The scene legacy is important for the culture of the demoscene and serves as a source of knowledge for new sceners. Watching demos from different years is an interesting journey. You can see the evolution of art, code, and style. We need to remember that one of the key factors in the demoscene is admiration, so archiving works is in a way similar to immortality in the real world (rdx).

II. D  IGITAL GENRES OF ZX SPECTRUM DEMOSCENE

Texts on the Scene In the chapter below, we’ll take a look at the demoscene genres of the ZX Spectrum.

Demos It is widely believed that the most important genre created on the demoscene is the demo, or a coded audio-visual presentation, in which the image, graphics, design, and music are front and center. Demosceners write demos to showcase the platform’s capabilities. Hence, effects are necessary, and they are achieved thanks to graphics and music. Among the sceners, there is the conviction that music that is bad or poorly adapted to graphic effects can kill the demo. In the demos, there is less room for text; moreover, they rarely have a specific message. Most often they are just effects, that is, a message about what has been achieved in the program. The demo is also a kind of pure computer art, a genre in which the possibilities of a computer are being problematized.

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Ill. 8. A glitch style demo USSR 2185, 2005, Skrju, UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Piotr Marecki

In terms of these works, the ZX Spectrum scene differs from other scenes because of the use of text. The discussed platform is a computer with technical limitations, hence the sceners often decide to use the text as a visual element that helps to attract attention and compete with the effects of other platforms. Demos with lyrics are also characteristic of the Russian scene, although they also feature in demos from other countries. Demos with text are called scene poetry, although sceners themselves rarely treat their productions in terms of art or poetry.43 The goal of the demo is to dazzle the audience. The demoscene and demoparties are based on competition. Graphic artists and coders therefore try to get the best possible results. It is different on the ZX Spectrum, where the productions are often glitched, unspectacular, unappealing. This type of

43  A set of such demos has been developed for UBU lab in Kraków, and they are available on the website: http://ubulab.edu.pl/projects/scene-poetry/ (accessed on 5 December 2018).

Texts on the Scene

scene poetry prevails in Russia. Perhaps the Russian sceners want to discuss the country’s situation, the problems of capitalism, longing for communism. We outline in detail an old school and a new school demo. In old school works, there are demos with text flowing (in the basic version) from one side of the screen to the other (i.e. a scroll), an image, and music plus an effect. New school demos are programs in the form of music videos or video clips with a greater amount of effects. Especially in the old school demos, there is a lot of text, and it is mainly in the scroll. The authors of demos on the ZX Spectrum (or other computers) were usually teenagers when they were programming. In their texts, they included stories from everyday life (e.g. like the “fucks” sent to their ex-girlfriends), jokes, invectives addressed to users of other competing platforms (sometimes very fancy and elaborate, even short stories) or ones with which there was conflict, even within their own platform. Currently, due to the age of the members of the scene, the types of demo-obituaries or productions created in tribute of a member of the demoscene that have died have appeared more often. Greetings (or greetz) were usually placed in the scroll for other sceners, mainly from one’s own platform, though not only. Greetz are fundamental to the scroll. Almost everyone has them, and some are only made up of them. In demos, there may also be an additional narrative text, if the demo tells a particular story44. Then the text and visualizations complement each other (e.g. Condommed by E-Mag from 1997). A short story or a real-time recording of an alcoholic libation taking place during the creation of a demo was also inserted sometimes (e.g. in the production of the Ethanol Soft Inc or Hooy-Program groups), so the scroll was repeatedly written by many people. Not infrequently, there were notes about the various solutions used in the demo. An interesting example of such a text is Kaz’s demo, the 1990 Fifth Demo, which created a kind of a story about the author’s imagined struggles with the computer and efforts to tame it. This is “illustrated” by fluctuations and strange scroll behaviors said to be caused by a “faulty computer” and the author’s attempts to fix it. This demo has a graphic effect. It is a rotating 3D “KAZ” logo and an effect contained in the text (the whole action “takes place” in the scroll). The

44  For further reading on this topic, see also Piotr Marecki (2015) Textual Demoscene, https:// dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/95704 and Piotr Marecki, Yerzmyey (in print) ZX Spectrum Scene Po­ etry. Genre, Platform, Localness.

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Ill. 9. Kaz Demo 5 (also known as The Fifth Demo), 1990, Kaz, UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Piotr Marecki

idea of the scener was to discuss the rhythm and tempo of the scroll’s content. The text, therefore, either drags on, for which the author apologizes, or accelerates and moves so fast that the audience finds it difficult to keep up with the content. This text-based demo resembles a literary work so much so that it was also presented 2015 in Norway at the Decentering: Global Electron­ ic Literature exhibition as an example of local electronic literature and as part of the Pan Turbo Cogito exhibition presenting literary works made for 8-bit computers during the 2018 Night of Poetry celebrated in Kraków, Poland45. While most demos are usually limited to greetings, Fifth Demo has a large amount of text with many sceners written into it, which is characteristic for the genre. Included are insults flung at enemy platforms (C64) or the corre-

45  To read more about both events, go to http://www.uib.no/en/rg/electronicliterature/90332/ decentering-global-electronic-literature and http://ubulab.edu.pl/resources/ (accessed on 16 December 2018).

Texts on the Scene

spondence address of the creator of the demo. It is also an interactive demo (a phenomenon very typical for the old school Spectrum scene), in which the sound changes when the keyboard keys are pressed. The title is in English, while the entire scroll is written in Polish:46 HEY! HERE’S KAZ WITH HIS “FIFTH DEMO”!!! TO START I WANT TO APOLOGIZE FOR THE FAST SCROLL, BUT IT’S ACTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE IT GO SLOWER… OR MAYBE IF… OH! SHIT! I FLIPPED THE SWITCH THE WRONG WAY… BUT I CAN STILL FIX THIS… WHAT?! WHAT’S UP WITH THAT! HOW CAN HE (Z-80) DO IT… LIKE THAT, BEHIND MY BACK… I SWITCH THE LEVER TO X-837 AND HE JUST SWITCHES IT BACK… BASTARD… ANYWAY, NEVERMIND. WHAT, AGAIN? NEVERMIND. I DON’T CARE ABOUT HIM. HE DOES HIS THING, I’LL JUST DO MINE. TIME FOR A MENU: IF YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO SOME TUNES, PRESS THE FOLLOWING: 1 TO 3—DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH, 4-D—RENEGADE, E-M—UNTOUCHABLES AND N-S—HOT ROD… HE STILL DOES IT, DOESN’T HE? ANYWAY, TIME FOR GREETINGS… GREETINGS TO: MAT (CODE THAT GAME), WISE MEN (HMMM…), ANDYSOFT, BROMBA, GEN MARTINEZ, SEAN ADAMS, KASSOFT, RAFFII, JOHN DALTHON AND EVERYONE ELSE I FORGOT ABOUT NOW… I DID NOT FORGET ABOUT THE CATS… RECENTLY THERE’S BEEN A LOT OF THEM AROUND. IT’S MAYBE TIME TO SET SOME CAT TRAPS… YEAH, YEAH, CAT-MAN, IT’S ON! THE GUY COMES WITH HIS SHITTY C-64 (HONESTLY, IT’S ALMOST LIKE ATARI—SOLDER SOMETHING IN, DESOLDER SOMETHING ELSE, SOME SPIT-SHINING, JUMP ON IT A LITTLE AND YOU GET AN ATARI, LIKE NEW!) AND IT STARTS TO DISCUSS THE SPEED OF MY SCROLLS!… THAT’S JUST… NOT NICE. HERE’S A NEW RULE FOR Y’ALL: CATS AND CHILDREN SHOULD BE SEEN AND NOT HEARD! AS YOU CAN SEE, NOW YOU DON’T HAVE A CHANCE TO TALK SHIT ABOUT ME… BUT DON’T WORRY CAT-MAN! YOU WON’T HAVE TO SIT SILENT ALONE… THERE’S ONE MORE GENERALLY LIKED AND RESPECTED KITTEN OUT THERE… BUT ENOUGH OF DEALING WITH THAT FOR NOW. TIME FOR SOME REMORSE… THIS IS MY LAST DEMO… SINCE NO ONE EVEN LIKES THEM… YOU CAN PREVENT IT! IF YOU WANT MY NEW KAZ DEMOS TO APPEAR, WRITE TO ME. MY ADDRESS: KAZIMIERZ BIELACKI, UL. CHROBREGO 43/6, 87-100 TORUŃ. AND THAT’S ALL, FOLKS! BYE!

References to the current political situation in a  given country also came up in scrolls and the graphics. Examples can include the demo Solidarność –

46  Nowadays, the text in demos is mainly in English, although there are also other languages represented (e.g. Russian demos, where poems appear, philosophical proclamations and other subtitles that can’t always be translated or just do not sound good in a foreign language).

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500 pierwszych dni (Solidarity—the first 500 days) from 1991 (Zbigniew N.) or Dowcipy (Jokes) from 1990 (Rajsoft & Bazooka). In new school demos, the scroll usually does not appear at all or just temporarily. It may list greetings or end with the credits. However, the text is still present in such demos, mainly in the form of key words or whole sentences wandering the screen. On the ZX Spectrum, it’s not uncommon to find whole poems. These can also be political manifestations, mainly communist ones (written by Russian groups), expressing a longing for the Soviet Union, social equality and justice, as well as proclaiming hatred for capitalism, the rat race, dehumanization, etc. An example of this is the demo BrightPast by the group thesuper which had political overtones or the British production of Losing Victoria by Gasman/HOOY-PROGRAM, an example of a poetic demo. The demo BrightPast analyzed below was published in 2011 at The Alternative Party in Helsinki. It received second place in the category of alternative demo. What is worth emphasizing is that first place was given to a demo for the modern, powerful PC/Windows platform, and the rest, from third to eleventh, also included productions for powerful contemporary platforms (PC/Windows, PC/Linux, Java, Intel/macOS X). So the production for an 8-bit computer from 1985 placed extremely high and testifies to the uniqueness of the work. Another interesting fact is that it was only the third demo in the careers of the group and it came after 40% from 2010 and MCMXCVII from 2011. It seems like a great achievement (usually new groups need years to “polish the form” and achieve such a high level) and this may suggest that the collective is not made up of novices and that this is a project made by Spectrum veterans, who decided to hide their identity. It is known that the group is of Russian origin, and its members use the pseudonyms: drwho, nick roll, shugababe and lovebeam. The title BrightPast (actually БЯIGHTPДST) is a play on words referring to the term bright future, and in this perverse way it expresses the conviction that nowadays everything that was bright is only in the past. In this case, however, this does not refer to the nostalgia for classic computer equipment. It is an expression of the deep conviction of the citizens of the former Soviet Union, also young people who were born in a country called the Russian Federation, that the best times for Russia and its inhabitants were in the past, when the socialist system predominated. The demo promotes the past epoch. And although such a trend on the ZX Spectrum platform was already noticeable, the previous demos had this

Texts on the Scene

Ill. 10. The BrightPast demo, 2011, thesuper, UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Piotr Marecki

very strong overtone in the text, referring to the struggle, overcoming capitalism by force, toppling the bourgeoisie and empowering the working people. In the visual layer, these were very raw productions, intended to be almost avant-garde, futuristic or glitchy, mainly monochromatic (in black and white or black-red). The musical component was either experimental or industrial (industrial to the point that the 4-bit triple-channel sound chip General Instrument AY-3-8910 / AY-3-8912 allows). Meanwhile, BrightPast was eye-catching from the very beginning. It is true that the ZX Spectrum has only 15 colors in both palettes, but these are based on primary colors, so that combining them effectively creates the impression of a vivid, colorful image. Of the typical visual icons of communism, only two actually appear in the demo. The first is in the title screen, as if taken out of a socialist realist art piece. On a white, uniform background we see a raw sketch of the red silhouettes of three hammers and sickles underneath the title of the demo, which was

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written in the Latin alphabet, but with stylized fonts. This is very similar to Communist propaganda posters, both in subject matter (Proletarians moan in the claws of the white eagle47 or We will not give up land to landowners48) and visually (exemplified by Włodzimierz Zakrzewski’s The Party49). The second icon appearing at the end of production is the likeness of Włodzimierz Ilicz’s Leader of the Revolution, also in the socialist realist style (reminiscent of poster art such as that with Mayakovski’s words “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will always live!”50). Among the recognizable symbols one could add the image of a raised fist against the background of a star that decorates the outro in the discussed demo, although this type of iconography is more common in contemporary communist and anarcho-communist movements. Other pictures are very colorful and refer to peace, happiness, and prosperity, as well as to the technical developments during the Soviet Union (including the conquest of space), which are understood here as the quintessence of socialism. The text in the demo (strongly related to the graphic image described above, which is of course very common in the demoscene, especially Spectrum works) can be divided into three parts. The first includes the traditional keywords, which in this case also include the title of the production: BrightPast. The others are: peace, happiness, kindness, Lenin, sputnik (being, as already mentioned, a reference to the achievements of the Soviet Union in the field of astronautics), reflecting what the socialist system meant to the authors of the demo. The mere juxtaposition of these words, which is very intentional, helps to reflect on the differences between the East and West, i.e. for the great majority of the latter combining the words peace, happiness and kindness with the name Lenin would be unthinkable. The second part is composed of more developed messages, appearing (in accordance with the tradition of the genre) in the scroll and greetings. And so, a slightly more extensive description of the USSR by the authors of the work appears in the scroll: “A long time ago in a country far away …” as

http://www.stalin.tv/grafika/plakat1.jpg (accessed on 16 December 2018). http://www.krzysztofhabich.pl/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/kapitalistom.jpg (accessed on 16 December 2018). 49  http://www.ank.gov.pl/sites/default/files/02_4.jpg (accessed on 16 December 2018). 50  https://www.etsy.com/pl/listing/167982839/sovet-plakat-polityczny-lenin-y-lenin (accessed on 16 December 2018). 47  48 

Texts on the Scene

well as words in Finnish that refer to May 1st, namely Workers of the world, unite!” In the greetings, the message has a humoristic undertone, because the greeted groups are called “comrades,” and the list ends with the words “and to all who keep communism alive,” although it is obvious that the groups mentioned, as well as the demo creators, are not necessarily communists and sometimes may have extremely different views. The last textual part is the end scroll, which is the most extensive part. In addition to the credits, this is an intensely ideological part of the demo: We are the voice of the oppressed generation. Artists who want to show a different way of thinking and reflecting on the inner world. We believe that culture without a social component is a lie. In other words, fuck capitalism, fuck the banks, fuck corrupt governments. It is time to regain dignity, and there is only one solution: communism.

The effects used in the demo combine styles called the old school and new school. At the beginning, animation was used (enlarging elements in the shape of a star along with the change of attributes from darkest to lightest) to clear the screen, scroll the group name and scroll to reveal the first image with the name of the demo. The first proper effect is the so-called rotozoomer, consisting of rotation and enlargement of the static pattern. The effect is achievable through the use of appropriate transformation matrices. In addition, the gigascreen mode was used (a fast continuous change of two specially prepared screens with 50 Hz frequency to achieve a greater range of colors, possible only on 128K computers in a full-screen mode). The speed of the effect indicates pre-calculated transformations. The second effect is a combination of a scroll and a “particle system” that performs a certain periodic movement in addition to a motion blur effect (usually a slow partial clearing of the screen). As for the third effect, it is not possible to say whether it is an animation or a real-time effect without reverse engineering the code. It could be an animation; however, it can also be a well-designed effect with fast line drawing. The next effect is based on sprites that move in three-dimensional space together with a calculated perspective projection. It can be seen that sprites are masked (at the moment when they overlap, one can observe the boundary) and Z-buffer emulation techniques are used here (objects that are closer “overlap” with objects that are further away).

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Watching the fifth effect, it is difficult to say, just like in the case of the third effect, whether it is only a visually attractive animation or a pre-calculated drawing on two screens. If it is actually an effect, then the image blur and interpolations of the two screens were again used here. The next part contains greetings, an integral and indispensable part of every demo. As a base effect, the image and zoom of the chessboard and the sine function with a dither were used. Two effects are combined in gigascreen mode, where greetz and the sine effect are rendered on one screen and the chessboard on the other. The next effect was performed only on attributes in gigascreen mode. It presents the application of colors of an extended palette (three-point light sources, integrating with the inscription “BRIGHTPAST”). Probably it was about getting the bump mapping effect (showing the three-dimensional structure of the object being lit up). The eighth part is devoted to effects based on the pre-calculated movement of particles in closed trajectories. Additionally, the movement of the particles is followed by the attributes. Motion blur has also been added as in the second effect. It is the same engine, which can be determined by observing the final effect of this part, where it is clearly visible on what trajectories the drawn points move. The last effect of the demo is flight simulation over the landscape. In this effect, the gigascreen was used to enlarge the color palette and to better distinguish the voxel level of the generated map. The terrain map and pattern for the sky is usually generated by the corresponding trigonometric functions with the addition of a pseudo-random noise. Projection of the voxel on the screen requires the use of the Z-buffer or another technique that will allow the correct presentation of the 3D map on a two-dimensional screen. The outro is just an animation and a scroll of the final subtitles. What’s interesting is that the animation is in two frames, just like the scrolling text, and each screen is in a different color (white and light blue), which additionally adds the motion blur effect to both the scroll and animation. The soundtrack of the demo is a rhythmic and quite dynamic song in the style of electronic music. It is not heavy, it is not experimental, but it is still an ambitious composition and a very good fit for the whole demo, because the creators took care of the design, which is a very important feature of productions on the computer scene. In the final part, the song quite smoothly transforms into a kind of funk.

Texts on the Scene

It seems that BrightPast, unlike other communist spectrum demos, is not meant to frighten, warn or call to arms. It is supposed to be subdued and help audiences to realize that there are different approaches to the world, civilization, society, building community, economics and private interpersonal relations. The end of the demo and its emphatic transmission gives the production a slightly stronger tone, which makes the viewer and reader realize that these relations will not improve spontaneously; indeed, they cannot be changed in a gentle, soft way, but one should put in the right energy, strength and conviction to do so.

Magazines Disk magazines are another digital genre prevalent on the scene, developed in pre-Internet times. Diskmags contained articles, music, graphics, stories, poems, and information about parties, and they were originally distributed in the form of floppy disks or cassettes. In the era of the Internet, they are available on websites. In Poland, two titles appeared on the ZX Spectrum, ZX-Land and Hooy. The articles in them concerned mainly the demoscene and hardware. There was also information about games, programming courses and “charts,” that is the result of readers’ votes for the best demo, group, music, graphics, coder and so on. On Spectrum scene, most magazines were created in Russian language, in the Soviet Union, and later in the countries that earned independence from it. About 328 titles appeared on this scene (including ephemeris, which came out in only one edition). In total, there were approximately 2688 of all these magazines’ issues.51 The longest-appearing magazines on this scene were the Russian Nicron and the lesser-known Fantastic (both with 132 issues). The Russian magazines were most prolific. The British Alch News with its 38 issues came in 15th place.

51  The most complete catalog of magazines for the ZX Spectrum is available at https://vtrd.in/ press.php (accessed on 16 December 2018).

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Ill. 11. ODDY disk magazine, UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Piotr Marecki

There are magazines that are exceptionally technically and artistically advanced. There are also electronic “newspapers,” which have a partial graphic frame, completely without sound and containing only text, based on the same, unchangeable engine. Magazines usually have a short introductory demo, an intro, at the beginning. Greetz (for friends or esteemed demoscene creators) and fucks (for enemies, competitors, opponents) appeared in the magazines as well. There were also reports from the parties that were published. Electronic magazines also sometimes come out in the form of TXT files, PDF files (e.g. the Russian ABZAC or the PDF version of the Zarulem magazine), and less frequently, in paper form, such as MONOCHROME on the ZX81 / ZX80 scene.

Texts on the Scene

Electronic Books A characteristic phenomenon for the ZX Spectrum scene are electronic books. Such works were created only in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union (so in Russian). They began to appear in the 1990s and were not e-books, but programs, or digital literary works with music and graphics. The specific effects of these digital books are complex ornaments. An example may be The Book by the group Excess from 1997, in which, there are many illustrations in addition to the traditional graphics and sound. On the screen, we can see a book with animated “turning pages” when we press the spacebar. In addition to the collections of short stories or scene poetry, there were the unexpected releases, including the Russian translation of The Witcher [Wieď (U+010F) mak] by Andrzej Sapkowski, which was released on the ZX Spectrum scene in the disk version by the Russian scener Eye-Q (2000). The book has a code (of course), menu graphics, music, and even a screensaver. It also has a classic design straight from Spectrum disk magazines with a black background and multi-colored fonts. There is also a Russian-language Spectrum adaptation of the LaVey Sa­ tanic Bible, which appeared as an addition to the diskmag Heresy in 1999. The program was prepared by sceners Demiurge Ash and Slider. Moreover, sceners also produced collections of fairy tales, poems, humorous stories, and even film scripts, as well as many other literary works.

Real-time Text It is customary that there to be a computer with a text editor at every meeting of the users of a given platform or a multiplatform party, which is specially designated so that party participants can write down their impressions, thoughts and feelings in real-time. This is real-time text. These types of works are then published in the form of an ordinary TXT file or in a much more decorative form, bearing a code and music (sometimes there are also graphics or photos from the party). Such a text is not a report, nor is it a stream of consciousness (unless we half-jokingly mean a manifestation of the collective consciousness). It is simply

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a pure, unprocessed form of a text with collective authorship. It is interesting that these works do not follow a previously established plan or a pre-developed structure. It is simply the impressions and remarks of the participants of the party, sometimes decorated with ASCII text graphics.

Text Games Text games, also known as interactive fiction, on 8-bit computers made up a big portion of activity on the scene. A significant part were commercial productions sold by producers.52 On the ZX Spectrum and ZX81/ZX80 these are mostly works in English, but you can find several Polish works with a demoscene-like character. In more recent times, there were more “literary” role-playing games of this type (comedy-SF and comedy-fantasy), such as Droga do Duplandu (released on the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Atari XL/XE in 2003) or Ucieczka ze spejs-szipu53 (published on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 in 2004), written originally in the 1990s but coming out in this century. 54, 55 However, the most important combination between textual interactive games and the demoscene would be the game In hihilum reverteris made by the co-authors of this book in 2018 in the Kraków UBU lab with effects characteristic of the demoscene.56 These and many other digital projects realized on the ZX Spectrum since the 1980s are evidence that amateurs from Central and Eastern Europe created, despite the limitations of the platform (or maybe thanks to them?), many works for which they used the Spectrum as a tool of non-trivial literary expression by treating the medium both playfully and seriously.

Thomas A. Christie (2016) The Spectrum of Adventure: A Brief History of Interactive Fiction on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Extremis Publishing Ltd., Castle House. 53  http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=11446 (accessed on 16 December 2018). 54  http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=9811 (accessed on 16 December 2018). 55  http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=11446 (accessed on 16 December 2018). 56  http://ubulab.edu.pl/projects/in-nihilum-reverteris/ (accessed on 16 December 2018). 52 

1-bit Sound

Ill. 12. Droga do Duplandu (The voyage to Assland), the text-game, UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Piotr Marecki

1-bit Sound There exists a  whole series of iconic music chips of computers from the 1980s in which fans can hear the chiptune sound and be fascinated by the aesthetics of lo-fi / micromusic / 8-bit. The most popular is the SID chip from the Commodore 64. It is well-known that this is the most advanced sound chip among all the others, being a  3-channel analogue synthesizer with 4-bit sound quality. Other popular chips are AY / YM, known from computers such as the ZX Spectrum 128K, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC and others; Pokey, a four-channel chip from Atari XL/XE series computers; Philips SAA featured in the SAM Coupé machine; TED, a two-channel chip in the Commodore 264 series.

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However, not only did the most developed configuration gain a lot of fans, and not only did the most technically advanced computers or individual systems attract multitudes of supporters. On the contrary, the challenge that actually attracted creators was the limitation of the computer. This was the case with the ZX Spectrum 48K and the beeper57 to which this chapter is dedicated. The computer was equipped with the simplest method of generating sound of 1-bit quality (it can be described as generator turned on or off, nothing more), only one sound channel, a square wave, 10 octaves, no modulation, no envelopes (resonance), and no volume levels.58 One can imagine that such sound equipped office computers, which needed it to generate short signals in office or other utility programs. However, the ZX Spectrum was intended as a home computer for family, education, and entertainment purposes. It is no wonder that the first music in the Spectrum games was, in fact, just a simple series of tones triggered by the BEEP command. It is understandable that this could have been disappointing for users and programmers who decided to bypass the hardware limitations of the computer. The sound in the ZX Spectrum computer is generated by means of a processor and through the ULA Ferranti chip. The processor in the Spectrum is the Zilog Z80 chip with a very high—for its time—speed of operation of 3.5 MHz. For comparison, the European C64 model uses the MOS 6510 processor, operating at a speed of only 985 kHz, and the Atari XL/XE is based on the related MOS 6502 1.77 MHz processor, also in the PAL version. This meant that users had to deal with limitations that could be circumvented using ingenuity and programming skills. Developers and composers wanting to create on the ZX Spectrum assumed that if the sound is generated by the processor, and the processor can be programmed, then you can

Kenneth B. McAlpine (2017) wrote on the subject of 1-bit music among others: The Sound of 1-bit: Technical Constraint and Musical Creativity on the 48k Sinclair ZX Spectrum GAME 6, https:// www.gamejournal.it/the-sound-of-1-bit-technical-constraint-as-a-driver-for-musical-creativity-onthe-48k-sinclair-zx-spectrum/ (accessed on 16 December 2018); see also: Victor Adán (2010) Dis­ crete Time 1-Bit Music: Foundations and Models, PhD thesis, Columbia University, https://victoradan. github.io/pdfs/va_phdthesis.pdf (accessed on 16 December 2018). This work is also discussed as a  subgenre of chiptune music. A  selected bibliography about chiptune is available here: https:// chipflip.wordpress.com/chipmusic/ (accessed on 16 December 2018) and in the book: Kenneth B. McAlpine (2019) Bits and Pieces. A History of Chiptunes, Oxford University Press, New York. 58  See [Robee Shepherd] (2012) Pulse Width Modulation and How 1-bit Music Works (2012). http://www.robeesworld.com/blog/58/pulse-width-modulation-how-1-bit-music-works (accessed on 16 December 2018). 57 

1-bit Sound

also program your own sound. And programmed procedures for playing music can developed further than with hardware solutions (one channel, square wave, etc.). Besides that, the ZX Spectrum was the only home microcomputer that at that time had a standard sound output that could be connected to an amplifier or a stereo (using the jack port). Other computers had a sound output “sewn into” the monitor connectors, because all producers assumed that users would only use TV speakers. No producers were interested in facilitating the recording of music from computers. No one probably even thought that after years of musical creation the chiptune scene would see renewed interest. Sinclair, for some reason, however, introduced the jack port (in the Spectrum, it was the so-called MIC). Hence on the ZX Spectrum, the first sound multichannel engines were created. At first, they were only two channels of a square wave (software mixing) with a programmed noise generator used for drums. This is how the program Wham! The Music Box appeared on the market in 1985. Such a solution could not compete with the Atari XL/XE or C64, but it was already comparable to the sound of the two-channel TED chip from the Commodore 264 series launched in 1984 (C = Plus / 4, C = 16 and C = 116). The program aroused great interest, and there were many games and demos with music written using this engine. What’s more, Wham! The Music Box is very popular even decades after its creation. There are still composers who use this very engine to create sound for their programs. This spurred a race to see who will program a better, more developed 1-bit sound engine on the ZX Spectrum. Developers outdid themselves in order to design more channels, envelopes, volume, and digital samples. Of course, one also need to be aware of the characteristics and multiple pathways of developing the IT market in that period. Progress did not consist of immediately rejecting computers of previous generations. There was much more time to develop a thorough knowledge of a given device. In the second half of the 1980s, new multi-channel engines were created in Western Europe, but they were mainly intended for making music in games. They were not only a commercial product, but were also covered by a kind of “trade secret,” because publishing companies did not want to publish and share them. Game producers competed for better sound. This is how the multi-channel engines of Tim Follin, Lyndon Sharp, and other engines like Special FX or Savage were created. Engines differed from each other. Their creators introduced from 3 to 5 channels, complicated synthesis, envelopes,

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several volume levels, and even digital samples. The authors coded the music directly in Assembler, and if there were any editors, then, as mentioned, they were not published.59 Meanwhile, the demoscene started to make an appearance in Europe (in Eastern and Central Europe on the ZX Spectrum). The first demosceners started to create demos, which in the early stages of the scene were more “old school” (picture + effect + scroll + music). Demosceners regularly used music from games in early works. The hackers would rip the music, then put it into their own programs. At the same time, however, they learned how to create such engines. It should be added that thanks to Music Box, the earliest known ZX-demos with original music were created starting in 1987. Thanks to this, programmers from Central and Eastern Europe could finally create their own multi-channel complex music engines, place them in specially designed editors and make them available on the scene or in the form of commercial programs, but sold in the Eastern Bloc. In this way, more engines and entire editors were created and made available to individual users, not only to companies that publish games. It was a very important element in the development of musical creativity on this computer. Music Box was a very limited engine with no envelopes, with two volume levels, only square wave and noise. In addition, the drums occupied both channels, meaning that no tone could be played along with the drums. Therefore, in 1988 another program was created in Eastern Europe, but this time, it was already a fully dual-channel and it was called The Music Studio. Still without the volume and the envelopes, but with a much more interesting synthesis, the drums could be played together with the tone, which made composition much easier. In 1988, the ZX-7 Polyphonic Musical Instrument was also created. It was a Slovak engine and music editor for the Spectrum 48, and it was created by Jan Deak. It was the most powerful beeper engine on the Spectrum for years, because despite the lack of drums, it gave the composer all eight sound channels. It was also characterized by an interesting sound, although there were no envelopes or volume control. The Czech program Orfeus Music Assembler was created two years later and focused not so much on the pursuit of as many channels as possible but

59  A list of engines used to create 1-bit music can be found here: http://randomflux.info/1bit/ viewtopic.php?id=25 (accessed on 16 December 2018).

1-bit Sound

on the most comprehensive set of tools for creating a song. The program had three channels of sound (two tones plus drums with a variety of drum tones) and offered several envelope types. It was based on the Special FX engine from the Firefly game from 1988. The Czechoslovak version has been modified to have a softer synth sound and slightly different drums. Special FX and Orfeus are still—apart from Music Box—the most classic engines, with the most characteristic sound associated with the ZX Spectrum (despite the appearance of numerous engines since that time). The only significant equivalent of these editors in the West came about in 1989, but it was only released in 1993 by the British magazine Your Sinclair. It was the program 3 Channel Synthesizer, also known as The Music Synth. It had features similar to Orfeus, also a slightly similar sound, but although it had an envelope editor and volume control, it also had tuning problems and the songs written on it often suffered from out of tune sound. It seems that the last important engine and editor from the original, classic period of the ZX Spectrum software development was the Czech Sample Tracker program from 1993. Although the samples had already appeared on the ZX Spectrum 48K, it was only the Czechs who managed to write the engine, which featured three independent sample channels, thanks to which you could finally create completely digital music on the Spectrum 48. Until then it was only possible on the Amiga and Atari STE (possibly on a PC with Covox or music cards). Apart from playing the sample music from the beeper, the program could also use the AY interface (the quality was up to 4-bit) or the Covox variant (which allowed to obtain 8-bit quality). In 1985 (the premiere in Spain) and 1986 (the premiere around the world), another model from the Sinclair line, the ZX Spectrum 128K, was introduced to the market, which in addition to the beeper already had a 4-bit 3-channel AY sound generator. At the same time the 16-bit computers, the Amiga 1000 and Atari ST, appeared. Therefore, the creation of software on the Spectrum 48 began to have a slowly defined character and finally a niche. Fewer and fewer people saw the sense in writing, publishing and even using software for a machine from 1982, since even in 8-bit line new stronger models of computers appeared. Ultimately, 8-bit computers began to fall into oblivion in favor of the mentioned 16-bit ones (at least until their renaissance along with retro trends). A small number of die-hard fans stayed with the ZX Spectrum 48K and the beeper. Since the mid-1990s they could no longer count on the creation of new 1-bit songs. The phenomenon existed only shortly and sporadically.

97

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It functioned as an exception to the rule. From the turn of the 1990s such unique works appeared as the demos ANTARES II, Tim Follin Music, Orfeus Music Demo, which were all from Eastern Europe. Also, the external AY interface was introduced to the ZX Spectrum 48 computer. A separate group to consider were demos with digital music that was created in the 1990s, where you could switch the sound from AY or Covox to the beeper, although these were not specially dedicated beeper programs, like the Polish Ravers’ Paradise from 1996, the Slovakian Magic Show Intro from 1996, among others.

The Return of 1-bit Aesthetics: MISTER BEEP The Sputnik demo from 2000, prepared by an international squad for the Polish meeting called ZX Party that took place in Wrocław on August 25–27, can be regarded as an agent of change. It seems that it was the first timid attempt to revive the beeper/1-bit scene on the ZX Spectrum (long-mastered by AY, Covox, music cards like GeneralSound and others). Unexpectedly, a demo was created with songs for the beeper. The breakthrough and return to the aesthetics of 1-bit music (also known as the beeper trend) is considered to be MISTER BEEP from 2006.60 In its initial phase this project consisted in finding the largest possible amount of classic ZX Spectrum software used to generate 1-bit sound and to compose music with it. It should be emphasized MISTER BEEP was not about archiving, but about composing new, diverse works on the ZX48. Although the project’s activities began in January 2006, for a long time entire albums were not released, but rather individual compositions that were distributed online via Internet radio stations (chiptune, lo-fi, demoscene), portals, chiptune and retrocomputer forums, as well as websites that strictly promote music (e.g. Soundcloud).61

This is confirmed, for example, by the statement: “Then I discovered the creative works of MISTER BEEP, at that time the only active 1-bit musician. That must have been around 2008–2009,” quote from: Nikita Braguinski (2018) What is 1-bit-music?, Ludomusicology, Videogame Music Research Group, https://www.ludomusicology.org/2018/12/09/what-is-1-bit-music/ (accessed on 16 December 2018). 61  Ibid. 60 

1-bit Sound

The first full album was released in 2009 by the German independent label B-HACK / BERLIN Micromusic HQ, specializing in similar genres.62 It was entitled MONOPHONIC GENERATOR and it contained only covers of well-known artists from classical electronic music such as Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Marek Biliński and Vangelis. In addition to this, there was MISTER BEEP’s cover of a song by the artist SLL, who created work on the Amiga computer. The album also features two bonus recordings: one is a guest song composed by a Czech musician with the pseudonym Factor6 (also a cover of the band Kraftwerk), and the second is the only original work of the MISTER BEEP project. In the explanation provided with the album, there is a lot of technical information about the creation of individual songs. The author explains the idea of 1-bit music: It’s like a 1-bit picture. One can only turn the pixels “on” or “off.” One can “simulate” grey scale by using dithering. ZX48K music is a kind of sonic dithering. My weapon of choice has only one channel with only one volume level (sound turned on) or silence (sound turned off). One bit. However, thanks to some brilliant programmers, you can hear many channels and volume levels. Because of “sonic dithering.”

To emphasize the minimalist style of the album, the cover is extremely severe. It is black and white (also 1-bit), and it refers to the cover of Radioac­ tivity, the Kraftwerk album from 1976, although the font used on the cover comes from ZX Spectrum. The second album of the project was entitled The LOwest FIdelity, and it was released in 2010, also by the German B-HACK/BERLIN Micromusic HQ.63 The footnotes read Micromusic in 2 channels. This time it was about imposing even more creative restrictions, and although the ZX Spectrum at that time could play from 3 to 8 sound channels thanks to a variety of beeper engines, the author used only 2-channel engines here. It was equally important to use only engines and editors from the 1980s. The main software used was The Music Studio (1989) and The Music Box (1985). In the instructions, the artist writes about the simplicity of the mentioned programs: Only notation, only linear editing, no copying, no patterns, no nothing. ;) Intros to songs were made on other sound editors from the 1980s, like the NoiseFX

62  63 

http://berlin_hq.micromusic.net/bhack.html (accessed on 16 December 2018). Ibid.

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Ill. 13. ZX Spectrum 1-bit music composers: MISTER BEEP and Zilog in UBU lab. Photo by Piotr Marecki

Machine Code Sound Effects, Percy The Rhythm Interpreter, Albert Einstein Drums, Sonido 48K, Loop Synthesizer, Sintetizador De Voz and Orfeus Music Assembler. The mentioned 1-bit programs are sound synthesizers, drum machines and speech synthesizers. The LOwest FIdelity album contained original compositions of the MISTER BEEP project, and their titles referred to a subculture of retro games (e.g. Hor­ ace’s Adventure, The Game is Over, Pacman Will Eat You Alive and others) or to nostalgia for the 1980s (e.g. The 90s Have Never Come Here!). Other works bear auto-thematic titles related to equipment and sound (Romantic Central Process­ ing Unit, One Bit Sound) or the classic spectrum 1-bit editor Wham! The Music Box (like Press the Corresponding Number, this phrase is a quote from the program known to all its users). Again, there are two bonus-tracks, both guest. This time they are by the German composer and programmer the Irrlicht Project.64

64 

More at: http://www.irrlichtproject.de/ (accessed on 16 December 2018).

1-bit Sound

The third album of the project, A Thousand Furious Bees, was released in 2011 by the Italian independent music label COUCOU.65 There were completely different challenges with it than in the previous ones. There is no minimalism here in the technical, musical, and visual sense. The artist wanted to avoid hardware limitations using two computers simultaneously, but also during the work on the album, programs appeared that helped to achieve the intended effects using only one computer. This collaboration between the composer and programmer is described in the accompanying manual: The original idea was to make 6-channel chiptunes playing from 2 synchronized Spectrums (3 channels from each ZX, using Special FX engine). I managed to make four such songs, but in the meantime, Shiru programmed several totally new beeper engines. They were highly powerful and capable of playing even NINE channels from a single ZX Spectrum 48K.

The music is made using multi-channel techniques. Programs created on the wave of popularity of the 1-bit sound initiated by the MISTER BEEP project were used. The Octode engine, which has 9 channels, and the QChan engine, which has five, were also used. Technically experimental pieces, including the mentioned 6 channels played simultaneously on two Spectrums with each loaded with “half” of a song, played on a standard 3 channel old school engine. Typically, the album contains extremely complicated compositions referring to styles such as art rock and progressive rock (Emerson Lake & Palmer, ArsNova, others), art metal (Dream Theater, Haken and others), power metal (DragonForce, Avantasia, etc.) and black metal (Bal-Sagoth, Equilibrium etc.). Undoubtedly, this music was also influenced by music from classic games on the ZX Spectrum 48K, because unlike other platforms, the art-rock style was very popular in the 1980s (e.g. in the compositions of Tim Follin, Jason C. Brook and Ben Daglish). Both the cover made by Habib/H-PRG and the content of the album are far from the chiptune aesthetics. It is rather serious electronic music, but played on a computer from 1982. The author of the work tries to “race” with much more advanced platforms, such as the Commodore 64 or Atari XL/XE.

65  https://coucounetlabel.bandcamp.com/album/mister-beep-a-thousand-furious-bees-coucou013 (accessed on 16 December 2018).

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The fourth album of the project is the Z80 from 2012. It was put out by the British independent music label Kittenrock. Its goal was mainly to show off the extremely varied sound of the beeper. With the above-mentioned popularity of beeper music, to the 1-bit movement coders also joined in the creation of new music engines. This album was based on the latest engines that were created. The album also contains songs that were used in games and demos. As MISTER BEEP writes: The “Noise” series songs, for instance, have been made on the Huby engine, constructed especially for ZX game designers. The outcome file is very small and doesn’t take too much of RAM. This one makes, indeed, a lot of noise, which is audible on recordings. ;) Anyways. Most of these songs actually come from numerous games I made music for. Yes, people still make new ZX-games. :) You can also find my tunes in computer scene demos.

Another project from MISTER BEEP is a work entitled Chromospheric Flares from 2014, released by the Polish Z80 Music Portal.66 This album can be treated as a  continuation of the previous one (using the newest engines, connections with the demoscene and the gamedev scene).

Development of the Scene Each computer has its own characteristic sound, which is associated with having a specific sound chip. The ZX Spectrum 48K does not have such a layout, because it is a computer that, colloquially speaking, “plays” music with the processor, so each engine, and hence each song, may sound different. It is, in addition to the limitations of the machine itself, a challenge for lofi musicians. The MISTER BEEP website has a selected list of programs that have been created on the Spectrum 48 since the 1980s and that have been used to generate sound and compose music. The list includes synthesizers (tone/noise generators), sound effect generators, drum machines, various speech synthesizers, trackers, music editors, and even programs for playing live 1-bit sound from a computer keyboard.

66  https://soundcloud.com/mister_beep/mister-beep-chromospheric (accessed on 16 December 2018).

1-bit Sound

As a result of the intense activities of the project, more and more people in Western and Eastern Europe were interested in this type of artistic and programming activity. First, new tools began to be created, like beeper trackers on the ZX Spectrum. Starting from 2009, coders established cooperation with the project, including Shiru from Russia and Ccowley from Great Britain. There were various forms of new software. On the one hand, they were classic engines, but in a new, more accessible and contemporary form, e.g. Music Synth 48K T.E. from 2009, written by Shiru for the ZX Spectrum. These were also new engines that offered new possibilities, such as the Phaser1 tracker of the same programmer, from 2010, which not only had an outstanding—for the beeper—synthesis, but also completely digital percussion. In the following years, a whole new series of beeper engines appeared. They were programmed by coders related to the MISTER BEEP project and with portals such as the 1-Bit Forum (http://randomflux.info/1bit/, http:// z80.i-demo.pl/ or http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/). The engines were mainly programmed by the Russians (Shiru and Alone Coder) and the German coder Irrlicht Project. Later, the Russian programmer Introspec also took on cracking and improving parts of these programs. These were engines such as Huby, Octode, Phaser 1, Phaser 2, Qchan, Tritone and others. Meanwhile, in the West, thanks to this increased beeper activity more and more games returned to the 1-bit musical setting, and Ccowley collected the majority of existing engines (new and classic) and placed them all in the BEEPOLA cross-platform tracker. There is also 1tracker by Shiru allowing to add virtually any beeper engine. An interesting example of software for composing directly on the ZX Spectrum, without the use of a PC, is open-source Beep Tracker with two specific sound engines included. As a result of the MISTER BEEP project and the 1-Bit Forum users, activity, more people from all over Europe appeared on the beeper scene (Poland, Czech Republic, Russia, England, France, Germany, Greece, etc.). Interestingly, due to the fact that BEEPOLA was not only a convenient program for PC/ Windows, but also had the ability to export music to a *.WAV file, musicians who had never before come across the ZX Spectrum became more interested in lo-fi/chiptune and recruited from micro-music community portals such as https://chipmusic.org/ and http://battleofthebits.org/ (as well as sources from Europe, America, and Asia). So, paradoxically, there was a mass of 1-bit songs destined for the ZX Spectrum, which had never been in contact with this computer, just like their creators. The songs were made entirely on a PC, which also had their WAV recordings rendered.

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One can put forth the thesis that the phenomenon described is an unexpected renaissance of a music scene dedicated to the ZX Spectrum 48K computer. Since 2006, new albums of artists from the West and the East started to appear in Europe, such as Voxel (Russia), AER (Russia), Tufty (Great Britain), MISTER BEEP (Poland), Irrlicht Project (Germany). Compilations with beeper music were published (such as the international 1-Bit Wizards—The Journey Begins from 2013). There are concerts of 1-bit ZX48 music (e.g. the mentioned Irrlicht Project) as well we a whole series of “new wave” beeper demos on the ZX Spectrum 48K.67 At music compos, beeper/1-bit returned to parties organized by demosceners. One of the most important micromusic portals, Battle of the Bits, introduced a separate category for this chiptune variety. There were also separate competitions dedicated to this music. On the wave of the popularity of 1-bit music, a short comedy film Fishing for Disaster (2011) directed by Derrick Hackman was created, and it dealt with the history of computer development and gamedev in particular. The entire soundtrack was written by MISTER BEEP using only the computer ZX Spectrum 48K and beeper.68 Another interesting feature of this scene is the EBM/Industrial German music project called Tronimal. The vocalist sang to music created on the ZX48. Yet another is the creation of mobile applications and VST plugins simulating the beeper sound for PC musicians and their professional music editors. Around 2015, the activity of the MISTER BEEP project significantly declined, resulting in an apogee of interest in 1-bit music performed on the ZX Spectrum series computers. Nevertheless, it continues to develop. New games are created with beeper sounds. There are still contests for the best 1-bit song, and more albums are appearing. Internet radio stations present them on the air. There are also new demos, engines and editors not only on the Spectrum, but also on other machines. 1-bit music was initially created mainly for computers of the Sinclair series (Spectrum/Timex), but the creators from other platforms became interested in 1-bit sound as well. Cooperation with XXL, who is a Polish coder from the Atari 8-bit scene was established and he joined in the activity by converting Spectrum-based beeper engines to Atari, and he created his own demos on Atari XL/XE. These are also available on the MISTER BEEP website. Engines and editors were also created for

67  68 

http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/beeper_demos.html (accessed on 5 December 2018). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjkEz_9zMvU (accessed on 5 December 2018).

Homebrew Games on the ZX Spectrum

other platforms with 1-bit sound, such as Texas Instruments, Arduino calculators, or Apple computers. Thanks to such long and intense activity of the mentioned project, the ZX Spectrum 48K finally gained its place on the micromusic/chiptune scene and among the musical output created on 8-bit computers in general (especially in combination with machines and scenes in the C64 genre, Atari XL/ XE, ZX Spectrum 128K and others). To sum up, the ZX Spectrum, one of the most hardware-limited platforms, entered its fourth decade of existence, and without any hardware modification it gained completely new software-driven capabilities, including 16 channels maximum, complicated synthesis methods, modulations and envelopes, volume levels, digital samples, speech synthesizers and more. The ZX Spectrum music scene is also characterized by a large number of engines and editors tirelessly invented, developed, and programed by demoscene coders from different parts of the world.69 The 1-bit movement, created thanks to the activities of the MISTER BEEP project discussed here, is a phenomenon at the intersection of art and programming. The aesthetics of minimalism dominate these works. If not compositional, it is always technical due to the ZX Spectrum sound transducer. Interestingly, this kind of renaissance (if you can call compositions of a genre that was not too popular even in the 1980s in Great Britain, aka the homeland of the ZX Spectrum that) just started in Poland.

Homebrew Games on the ZX Spectrum It is well known that Sir Sinclair, when launching his latest product in 1982, the ZX Spectrum 16/48K, was inclined to dedicate the computer to educational and utilitarian purposes. He did not have much respect for the gaming industry, so much so that he was genuinely dissatisfied when it turned out that the Spectrum became a hit among players in the 1980s.

69  Important links: http://mister_beep.republika.pl/, http://z80.i-demo.pl/, http://zxspectrum48.i -demo.pl/, http://shiru.untergrund.net/1bit/, http://randomflux.info/1bit/ (accessed on 5 December 2018).

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In the initial stage, the games (with some appearing already in 1982) were extremely simple, audio-visually unattractive. This was due to a variety of factors. First of all, both the creators and players only knew about the productions from earlier machines, e.g. the Atari 2600, Commodore Vic-20, and ZX81. They were usually simple arcade games with elementary graphics and an unrefined soundtrack. As a result, players were used to a certain standard, not realizing that it is low, while developers only just had discovered the capabilities of new devices, such as the Spectrum 48 or Commodore 64. At the same time, they wanted to fill their platforms’ markets as soon as possible with their games. Games from those first Spectrum years were crude, primitive, and they make a very oldschool impression, especially as compared to the later products from the 1980s and 1990s, as well as in comparison to modern games on this platform. The ZX Spectrum has 1-bit graphics with color map added, so the graphic artist did not immediately grasp how to draw effectively on this computer. The graphic design was very simple (Deathchase/1983/Micromega, Mag­ got/1983/Your Computer, Mage Cage/1983/Micro Adventurer, Heathrow Air Traffic Control/1983/Hewson Consultants Ltd.). Of course, there were some exceptions, which, in truth, cannot be compared to the quality of later productions, although these games did stand out positively against the background of dozens from a similar period. Despite the notable severity of the graphics, they became cult classics for thousands of players from around the world who grew up on them: Jetpac/1983/ Ultimate Play The Game, Manic Miner/1983/Bug-Byte Software Ltd, Chuckie Egg/1984/A’n’F Software, Boulder Dash/1984/Front Runner. However, from 1984, the high-level productions (in terms of graphics, good 1-bit shading by dithering, better layout and use of colors, but also sound with more interesting synthesis, multichannel songs) and more developed gameplay, began to appear, including isometric games characteristic for ZX Spectrum. Knight Lore/1984/Ultimate Play The Game, Sabre Wulf/1984/ Ultimate Play The Game, Robin of the Wood/1985/Odin Computer Graphics Ltd, Cobra/1986/Ocean Software Ltd. It may seem that, paradoxically, in the development of Spectrum games (and other 8-bit platforms) helped the emergence and development of competitive 16-bit platforms, such as Amiga 500 and Atari ST. The authors of 16bit games had better technical capabilities and readily used them, while setting new trends and styles and discovering some new possibilities that no

Homebrew Games on the ZX Spectrum

one had ever considered or even imagined before. This is both in reference to the level of complexity of the story / game plots as well as the graphic and audio solutions (e.g. the use of samples). Game developers at ZX Spectrum were trying to catch up with leaders in the field, doing everything (with success, we might add) to make their work resemble games from 16-bit computers. They were both conversions/ports and original or inspired games. This took place in the last period of the classic Spectrum, i.e. at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, with the last commercial items appearing in the mid-1990s. We are talking about such titles as R-Type / 1988 / Electric Dreams Software, Rex / 1988 / Martech Games Ltd, Rick Danger­ ous / 1989 / Firebird Software Ltd, Myth: History in the Making / 1989 / System 3 Software Ltd, Rick Dangerous 2 / 1990 / Micro Style, Dan Dare III: The Escape / 1990 / Virgin Games Ltd, and The Addams Family / 1992 / Ocean Software Ltd. It is also worth noting the importance of the Spanish-speaking market, because the productions that appear there (e.g. companies such as Spanish Topo-Soft or Opera Soft S.A.) were not only numerous, but also of very good quality. Examples include: Stardust / 1987 / Topo Soft, Wells & Fargo / 1988 / Topo Soft, Viaje al Centro de la Tierra / 1989 / Topo Soft, La Espada Sagrada / 1990 / Topo Soft, and Tour 91 / 1991 / Topo Soft.

Homebrew Games—The Modern Period When the classic period of the ZX Spectrum as the platform, which was treated seriously by software and hardware producers, ended around the mid-1990s, it continued to be developed, but it became more of a hobby or “retro” activity. As we will see in the following text, the center of Spectrum-related activity, including games, both in terms of development and production of hardware and software, moved to the East, mainly to Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. A large number of games also appeared in Czechoslovakia, also after the Dissolution. Although for the last ten years, from around 2010, the West is again the leader in terms of the number of Spectrum games created. Other, unofficial parts of existing commercial games (continuations) were actually done quite early, sometimes with better or worse results and often using elements of the original graphics mixed with their own. Examples

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include: R-Type III / 1992 / Tlauli-ran (Czech Republic), Jet Set Willy: Lord of the Rings / 2000 / Broadsoft (UK), and Myth II: Return to Hell / 2008 / Denis Kuznetsov (Russia). In the later period, from the mid-1990s to the 2000s, the most interesting games were released by the Russians. Sometimes they were like the classics, but with every last detail accounted for. Sometimes they were quite innovative games, often conversions from “big” platforms, like PCs, or productions that no one would have attempted on ZX Spectrum before. Either way, they were often programs that could boldly compete with former commercial ones, and sometimes they were even better than them. Some games came out in truncated or demo versions, but they were always playable and had at least one full level. Still, most often, full versions appeared. НЛО 1 Враг Неизвестен (UFO 1) / 1995 / Copper Feet, Dina Blast­ er / 1995 / Legion of Steel Warriors, Worms / 1997 / Silicon Brains Software LTD, Черный Ворон 1 (Black Raven) (equivalent of WarCraft) / 1997 / Copper Feet, DOOM Pre-release / 1997 / Digital Reality & Hyper-Soft, Homer Simpson в России / 1998 / Mr.Gluk & Co, Pussy: Love Story from Titanic / 2000 / Fatality & Razzlers, and Wolfenstein 3D / 2004 / Alone Coder. Another important place for the development of games on the platform is Czechoslovakia and its member states after the Dissolution. Lots of games were written there in the 1980s and 1990s. Later in this period, they were homebrew programs, which means that they were sometimes even better than commercial ones. At the time, many more games were coming out of there than Poland, which was more focused on demoscene activity (demos were mainly written and released, then mega demos, and finally trackmos, also called music video demos, as well as new school demos). The Česko-Slovenský Speccy Archiv portal (https://cs.speccy.cz/) states that from 1982 to 2018, total of 364 games for the ZX Spectrum series computers (both 48K and 128K) were created. These included commercial and demoscene productions. Members of demoscene groups also released or published games commercially sometimes. Of course, in the Internet age, some of the software is created in cooperation with foreign partners (e.g. Slovak-Polish collaborations). In the discussed region, games of all types were created, including arcade, text, gambling, logic, platform, labyrinth, strategy, adventure, simulators, space-shooters and others. There were groups and creators of the demoscene who also released games, including 7 Gods, ZeroTeam, SinDiKat, Busysoft (Slovakia), E.S.A, MQM Team, Factor6 (Czech Republic) and many others. Of the classic game

Homebrew Games on the ZX Spectrum

Ill. 14. DOOM Pre-release (1997), Digital Reality & Hyper-Soft, UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Piotr Marecki

developers and publishers, one should mention: Fuxoft, Cybexlab, Ultrasoft, Proxima, Rumatisoft. Examples of titles are: Firewolf / 1986 / Cybexlab Software (Czechoslovakia), F.I.R.E. / 1988 / Fuxoft (Czechoslovakia), Tetris 2 / 1990 / Fuxoft (Czechoslovakia), Jet-Story / 1992 / Ultrasoft (Czechoslovakia), Cesta bojovníka / 1992 / Ultrasoft (Czechoslovakia), Kliatba Noci / 1993 / Ultrasoft (Slovakia), Boovie 2 / 1999 / E.S.A. Productions (Czech Republic), Pariboro / 2012 / ZeroTeam & MISTER BEEP (Slovakia / Poland), Game About Squares / 2014 / SinDiKat (Slovakia), and Stepping Stones / 2017–2018 / SinDiKat (Slovakia).70 In Poland, and mainly in the 1980s, games on the ZX Spectrum appeared in smaller numbers (often on the computer market, also through magazines like Bajtek). A few from the early 1990s are products derived from the demoscene, and besides that, the majority was written for the platform related

70  This trend is discussed by Jaroslav Švelch (2018) Gaming the Iron Curtain. How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games, MIT Press, Cambridge.

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with Spectrum—the SAM Coupé computer. Games released on Spectrum were mainly text games. Mózg Procesor (1989), Metropolis 1 (1987), Hibernatus (1987), Smok (1993) and the like are considered classics. Other types of games were usually very simple, such as Kółko i krzyżyk (1987). Sometimes interesting ideas came about, such as the game Hexan (1987) where you could move around in a three-dimensional maze (both of the above-mentioned games were issued by KAW / National Agency Publishing). Economic games were also very frequent and not only conversions, e.g. Hammurabi (1988), but also more original ones, such as Euro Biznes / 1988 / Juza, or EkoBiznes / 1987 / Elkor, ZHP. Sometimes more complex arcade games appeared, often conversions, of which the outstanding Wiking / 1987 / Konczakowski deserves special attention. As already mentioned, in the 1990s the Polish ZX scene moved gradually over to the SAM Coupé platform and other computers (like the Amiga), and the majority of people simply left the scene definitively. At the turn of the 1990s and 2000s, only two groups, Claw and H-PRG, remained active in the demoscene, and two games from the early 2000s can be distinguished: Droga do Duplandu from 2003, which also came on Atari XL/XE and Commodore 64 at the same time, and Ucieczka ze spejs-szipu (2004), which also appeared on the C64. Since the late 2000s, dozens of new games have been released all over the world. The West dominates especially when it comes to the quantity of games (although the quality is comparable or sometimes much better than commercial productions from the classic period). The creators mainly revolved around the WOS / World of Spectrum portal, and later also around the Spectrum Computing Forums. Among contemporary Polish productions, it is worth mentioning the programs of the most prolific ZX Spectrum game author, Rafał Miazga (Ralf), as well as the demo-group H-PRG, who also deals with the creation and release of games (including on the ZX Spectrum) and Tygrys. From this period, we have Pamela the Zombie Hunter / 2005 / Rafał Miazga (Ralf), Phaeton / 2010 / Rafał Miazga and MISTER BEEP, Necrospermia / 2012 / Rafał Miazga (Ralf), Wun­ derwaffe / 2017 / Rafał Miazga (Ralf), Zbylut Owrzodzień / 2012 / H-PRG, Dead­ ly Labyrinth of Lord Xyrx / 2013 / H-PRG, Mysterious Dimensions / 2016 / H-PRG, In nihilum reverteris / 2018 / H-PRG, Dziurak / 2012 / Tygrys, Cat-man, Voyager, Krunel / 2013 / Tygrys, Cat-man, Voyager, Atom, Slayer, Ziutek. The rest of the productions came from all over the world, also from Russia, but this time they were not even head-to-head with Western games but

Homebrew Games on the ZX Spectrum

they were simply overwhelmed. This was due to the fact that new authors or entire gamedev groups appeared in the West, specializing in productions on ZX Spectrum, and even generally in productions on retro platforms, where Spectrum was just one of the targets. An example of this can be a Polish creator, Ralf, and the shiniest example of a group of creators is probably the Spanish The Mojon Twins / Ubhres Productions, which in 2009 alone released seven new games on the ZX Spectrum. Selected titles are: Nanako Descends to Hell / 2009 / Ubhres Productions, Zombie Calavera Prologue / 2010 / Ubhres Productions, Fundamentally Loathsome / 2011 / Ubhres Productions, Maritrini, Freelance Monster Slayer / 2012 / Ubhres Productions, Sgt. Helmet Training Day / 2013 / Ubhres Productions, and Sir Ababol DX / 2014 / Ubhres Productions. Another very strong impulse for this influx of new games was the creation of a set of graphic editors in 2008 with a separate new language created specifically for game development, called Arcade Game Designer, written by one of the classic Spectrum creators, Jonathan Cauldwell. He also created the Platform Game Designer program and Shoot-Em-Up-Designer. The Arcade Game Designer turned out to be a useful tool for the Spectrum’s gamedev scene on many levels. It not only enabled the creation of fullfledged games for people who had no idea about the process or how to code. The existence and the products of the program generally caused ferment in the scene and caused some to return to creating games after years, while others, developers or demosceners, focused on the phenomenon and the possibilities of creating games on ZX, not only seeing it as a new way of expression, but also a way to reach a large and grateful audience with their works. Contemporarily, new games are written in various programming languages, like​Assembler and BASIC. Others, many of them, have been made with AGD. They are released in large numbers and come from various regions of the world. Their execution are quality usually are at a good or very good level. Coding solutions have been pushed by demoscene programmers to the very limits of the hardware, or maybe they have already crossed them a long time ago. Multicolor games, for example, are quite common nowadays. The games are usually free, although sometimes commercial. A mixed phenomenon isn’t rare, i.e. in the form of TAP / TRD files the games are available for download from the Internet, while cassette versions, professionally made with covers for collectors or more orthodox retro fans are sold on the Internet. We are talking about such works as: Teodoro Can’t Fly / 2010 / Retro­Works, Cray 5 / 2011 / RetroWorks, More Tea, Vicar? / 2012 / Cronosoft, Ossuary / 2013 / Cyningstan, Land of Mire Mare / 2014 / Luca Bordoni, MISTER

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BEEP, BiNMaN Metal Man Reloaded / 2014 / Oleg Origin, Stella Aragonskaya, Castlevania: Spectral Interlude / 2015 / SaNchez, diver4d, darkman007, Wan­ derers. Chained in the Dark / 2015 / SAM Style, SCL, Sand, Riskej, Fist-RO Fight­ er / 2016 / Retrobytes, The Dark / version from 2016 / Oleg Origin, Foggy’s Quest: To Narg and Back Again! / 2017 / Rucksack Games, The Sword of Ianna / 2017 / RetroWorks, Impossabubble / 2018 / Dave Clarke, David Saphier, Castle of Sorrow / 2018 / ZXMan48k, Parachute / 2018 / Miguel Ángel Tejedor López, Gimmick! Yumetaro Odyssey / 2018 / Antonio Perez, Errazking, Ninja Gaiden Shadow Warriors / 2018 / Jerri, DaRkHoRaCe, Diver, Gandalf / 2018 / Cristian M. Gonzalez, Alvin Albrecht, Hikaru, Bobby Carrot / 2018 / Diver, Quiet, Kyv, Zorba, The Adventures of Jane Jelly: The Egg Diamond / 2018 / Bumfun Software, Harbinger 2: The Void / 2018 / APSIS, Mighty Final Fight / 2018 / SaNchez, and Eugene Rogulin, Nik-O. There is also a big ZX Spectrum homebrew gamemaking scene games written specifically for advanced Russian clones. Some notable games: Prince of Persia / 1993 / Honey Soft, Gobliiins / 1994 / Honey Soft, Страна Мифов / 1995 / Fantasy, Kings Valley / 1996 / Jokers Alliance, Walker: last edition / 2000 / Alien Factory, Imperia 2 / 2003 / Action, Atomic / 2004) / Looker, Ball Quest / 2006 / Alone Coder, Shiru, John Silver, XNX / 2012 / Shiru, Edge Grinder / 2014 / Blade, SpaceMerc: Prologue / 2015 / Hippiman, Nomad / 2016 / Conscience, Конёк-Горбунок (2018) / Skazka Entertainment. This proves that constraints serve as an interesting challenge for creators and can even be a catalyst for new ideas and solutions. These inspired changes were huge, especially in graphics, music, gameplay, as well as the complexity of the game narratives.

III. THE PLATFORM

ZX Spectrum—Official Models Below, we present our original perspective on the official ZX Spectrum models, its clones as well as the main programming languages. The history of the computer has been the subject of many studies, but we believe that this narrative will prove to be a  fresh approach because it is was developed from the perspective of its users, who used the computer for creative purposes. Thus, in discussing the subsequent models, we look at all the possibilities related to graphics, music, and games on a given platform. In addition, the purpose of this study is also to organize the research about the computer to date. The first computer named Spectrum was presented in Great Britain on April 23, 198271, but considering its code name (ZX82) and the name that was used in the design phase (ZX81 Colour) we probably ought to begin by mentioning the first two home computers designed and sold by Sinclair Research Ltd, the ZX80 and ZX81. These machines came out, as their names suggest, in 1980 and 1981. Both had only one kilobyte of RAM and black-and-white, one-bit graphics. Though they were equipped with microchips analogous to the ZX Spectrum—the

71  https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/23/retro_week_sinclair_zx_spectrum_at_30/ cessed on 5 December 2018).

(ac-

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Z80 and ULA—and could generate sound with those, the output amplification from the MIC port was so weak that both computers, in fact, were totally devoid of audio capabilities. While the ZX80 was not even capable of displaying an animated image (in recent years, a method has been invented for creating an animated image on the ZX80, which has led to the creation of a handful of games), the ZX81 was a fully-fledged, though truly bare-bones, home computer. It could be used for working on utility programs, but it was also a machine that provided entertainment thanks to a large number of games dedicated to the platform. These computers, like the subsequent ZX Spectrum, had modular constructions, i.e. depending on the user’s needs (and financial capacities) he/ she could purchase modules, like additional RAM (a maximum of 64KB, with capacity to use 56KB, though the standard became 16KB), audio interface with an AY sound chip, and even a graphic module, enhancing the capabilities of the ZX81 with color display. Both machines were equipped with a touch keyboard and a modulator with an antenna port for a television. The processor was the above-mentioned Z80, clocked at a frequency of 3.25 MHz. It generally displayed graphics only in text mode, with a low resolution of 64 × 48 pixels; however, after the application of a relevant program, you could get hi-res display, usually 256 × 192 pixels (programmers have achieved a maximum resolution of 320 × 240, but only in recent years). Although the ZX81 was produced until 1984, it was in 1982 that Sinclair released its successor, the ZX Spectrum (the name was meant to emphasize the introduction of color). The original 16KB version was swiftly replaced with the 48KB RAM, and it was this configuration that became the standard platform for many years. The touch keyboard was replaced by a rubber one, the MIC port signal was enhanced, giving the computer one-bit sound. A builtin speaker, the so-called beeper, was also introduced. The graphics were enhanced with hi-res (256 × 192 pixels) equipment and fifteen colors in a “color map,” providing color resolution of 32 × 24 attributes. The processor worked at a speed of 3.5 MHz. Like its predecessors, the computer had a built-in interpreter of the BASIC programing language (but the Spectrum Sinclair Basic is considered one of the best and fastest BASICs among 8-bit computers). The ZX Spectrum 48 inherited many traits from its predecessor, the ZX81, including the modular construction. There were modules that could be purchased for the central unit, such as an AY sound interface, a joystick interface, as well as peripherals like printers or disk drives. Some of these devices were

ZX Spectrum—Official Models

available on the market prior to the appearance of the ZX Spectrum, because after the application of a twister-board you could add on peripherals and modules originally designed for ZX81. In 1984 Sinclair released another version of the 48 computer, the ZX Spectrum+, though these changes were primarily aesthetic and mechanical, i.e. the computer was equipped with a reset button and installed in a new case, now entirely plastic, with a plastic keyboard, which was more durable than the rubber one (whose letters and digits quickly rubbed off, unfortunately). But considering that it had been one of the main platforms for computer games (there were numerous native ones, but also many Spectrum versions of games from the 16-bit machines, like Amiga and Atari ST), the more durable keyboard was of major significance for gamers. Just about every country had its local version of the ZX Spectrum. Sinclair officially collaborated with some companies that produced the clones. Such was the case with the Spanish Investronica. Indeed, we could say that the Spaniards designed the next Spectrum model, which set the standard for the platform’s further development: the ZX Spectrum+ 128K. In any case, this meant that the premiere of the Spanish Spectrum 128+ took place a year earlier (in 1985) than the British premiere (1986). The design was essentially the same as the 48+, only some inscription details were altered and a radiator was also added on the right-hand side. In terms of the external differences, we ought to mention that a numerical keyboard could be added to the 128+. It’s safe to say that the ZX Spectrum 128+ is entirely backward compatible; though, still this is a different model, i.e. adding RAM memory to the Spectrum 48 would not give you the 128+. In this model the AY chip was finally implemented into the motherboard, something which had heretofore been added to the Spectrum 48 as a module; and so a 4-bit digital synthesizer with 3 channels was added to the 1-bit sound from the beeper. Interestingly, this was also to the advantage of the 48K model, because the modules sold prior to this were not standardized, and, generally speaking, each one was connected to different ports. As a result, the owner of a module (e.g. the Fuller Box) often was surprised to find utter silence upon loading a game that was meant to have AY music; in other cases, the problems could manifest themselves in a whole series of unexpected noises instead of the proper music or sound effects. After the introduction of the 128K model, all the new AY modules for the Spectrum 48 attached this chip to the ports to which they were connected in the 128 model.

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Ill. 15. Sinclair ZX81 computer, the ZX80 successor, released by Sinclair in 1981. 1KB of RAM, monochromatic screen, no sound. Nonetheless it became a big success and—along with the latter ZX Spectrum—it “computerized” Great Britain—and other countries, UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Iwona Grabska-Gradzińska

Ill. 16. Sinclair ZX Spectrum+, the improved model of Spectrum 48K, released by Sinclair in 1984. It is characterized mainly by a new design of the case, stronger keyboard, reset button. UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Iwona Grabska-Gradzińska

ZX Spectrum—Official Models

Although the Spectrum 128 has the same Z80 processor in the motherboard that is present in Spectrum 48, also at the frequency of 3.5 MHz, it was faster than the 48K (as is evident in the majority of cases) because of the larger number of clock signals/tacts. The 48K operates at a speed of 69,880 tacts per frame, while the Spectrum 128 has 70,900 tacts per frame, with a processor of equal power. The computer also has a monitor port, MIDI compatibility, and a RS-232 serial port. Another special attribute of the 128K was the addition of the second video-RAM. This significantly improved color mixing, and thus, it improved graphics. The ZX Spectrum as such was equipped with primary colors, which the constructors intended to be later mixed by programmers and graphic artists in order to gain more colors visible on the screen. While this was done through dithering on the vast majority of 48K series computers, the Spectrum 128 let you prepare two similar graphics. Each displayed a slightly different set of basic colors. With a very fast alternating display of the two video-RAMs, one after another, there was the effect of a larger number of colors on screen than the ZX Spectrum actually possessed. This mode of graphics display is called GigaScreen, and it expands the palette of the 128K up to around 127 visible colors. These modes could also be joined with dithering and multicolor (reducing the attributes, that is, making attributes smaller than standard squares of 8 × 8 pixels, thanks to the processor). Yet another graphics mode that expanded the capabilities of the 128K model is RGB, also known as “3-color” (after the number of layered colors) or “8-color” (after the number of colors displayed). And so, despite the fact that this mode displays only eight colors, it entirely eliminates attributes (i.e. the separation of colors into 8 × 8 pixel squares), and every pixel has its own color, which, with the computer’s high resolution, greatly enhances the visual appeal of the graphics, allowing for nearly a realistic quality. We ought to stress that this particular mode uses not two, but three screens, and so every time the computer has to spend time copying an additional screen from the RAM memory to the video-RAM memory, this slows down the display process and causes a more intense and bothersome flickering of the screen. These graphics modes, involving the quick change of screens, might be theoretically possible to obtain also on the 48K series computers, but it did not catch on, because there was no point in using it with those machines. Firstly, they were slower. Secondly, they had only one video-RAM, which would have made the image display even slower. Instead of switching between two

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screens, the Spectrum 48 would have had to copy one extra image from the ordinary RAM to the video-RAM every time, and the final effect would have been useless, certainly in full-screen mode. In 1986, Sinclair’s company suffered financial problems and abandoned the design and production of computers; the whole branch, along with the “Sinclair” brand, was sold to Amstrad for five million pounds.72 The only exception was the release of the Cambridge Z88 palmtop, under the altered name “Cambridge Computer Ltd,” in 1988. From then on the ZX Spectrum computers were produced by the British Amstrad company. The first Amstrad ZX to see the light of day was the ZX Spectrum 128+2. This was basically the 128+ with a slightly altered ROM in a new case and with a more professional keyboard and a built-in tape deck. The change in the ROM caused a minor incompatibility with the earlier models, but this was so insignificant and occurred so infrequently that the issue can be ignored. A year later, in 1987, Amstrad released another version of the 128K, this time the ZX Spectrum 128K +3. With this one there were bigger changes: a redesign of the motherboard, modifications in the ROM, which serviced an added built-in disk drive in place of the tape deck (instead of the popular 3.5” drive, the manufacturer inserted the 3” standard it was promoting). The Spectrum +3 remained compatible with the previous computers, but here we have no trouble finding programs that had certain operating difficulties. There were also timing differences, some lines from the ZX-bus port were removed, and other smaller changes were made, all affecting the compatibility not only in terms of software, but also for some peripheral equipment. Amstrad ceased production of the ZX Spectrum with the +2A and +2B models, which, to avoid going into superfluous detail, were merely versions of the Spectrum +3 in the casing of the ZX Spectrum +2 (i.e. with a tape deck instead of a disk drive). The last ZX Spectrum computers came off the production line in 1992. Altogether, over five million units were sold from this series, not counting a vast number of clones produced all over the world. The history of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum brand continued on starting in 2015 when Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega, the British game console, appeared

72  http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/7/newsid_2472000/2472345.stm (accessed on 5 December 2018).

ZX Spectrum—Official Models

Ill. 17. Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2, despite the name—it was being produced already by the Amstrad company—it was an official continuation of ZX Spectrum 128+. Released in 1986, after buying the Sinclair brand. A newly designed case, new better keyboard, on-board tape-recorder—those are the main distinguishing features of this model. UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Iwona Grabska-Gradzińska

on the market. This was a contemporary redesign of the classic computer, in most cases backward compatible, officially supported by Clive Sinclair, who is endorsing it with his name and figures as one of its investors (which is interesting in that Sinclair was always opposed to his equipment being used for gaming). The console has been prepared by Retro Computers, and produced by SMS Electronics. ZX Vega turned out to be a commercial success to the extent that another version of the device was announced for 2016, the ZX Spectrum Vega +, this time in the form of a handheld console (with a built-in LCD screen). The design of the console was prepared by Rick Dickinson, who in the 1980s designed the look of ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum computers. It turned out that on April 8, 2016, Managing Director Paul Andrews and Chief Technical Officer Chris Smith resigned from cooperation with Retro Computers Limited. Numerous delays forced the company to postpone the announced release date for 2017, and later 2018. As of the publication of this text, the fate of the planned console is still unknown.

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Ill. 18. Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega, the modern game-console—the official new model of ZX Spectrum, released in 2015 by Retro Computers company, with the rights to use the “Sinclair” brand (sir Sinclair himself supported this project). It is a board with an emulator, it has only a few keys that are necessary for playing games, optionally the virtual keyboard; the Vega is compatible with ZX Spectrum 48K and 128K, but to the extent that only allows playing games—the hardware is too weak to properly run demos. UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Iwona Grabska-Gradzińska

Soviet and Post-Soviet ZX Spectrum Computer Clones Clones and domestic versions of the ZX Spectrum computer were created en masse all around the world (including in Poland). There were Spectrums from Argentina (CZ Czerweny), Brazil (TK Microdigital), Spain (Inves), Czecho­slovakia (Didaktik), Romania (Electromagnetica Jet, for instance), Poland (Elwro 800 Junior and Unipolrbit 2086), the USA, and Portugal (Timex), as well as many other countries. Yet, it was in the Soviet Union (and later in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine) that most of these computers were built; they also saw the most intensive technological development and, curiously enough, some are still being produced and sold to this day. In the Soviet Union clones of the ZX Spectrum computer were produced fairly early, as far back as the 1980s. The model was probably chosen for its

Soviet and Post-Soviet ZX Spectrum Computer Clones

Ill. 19. ZX-UNO, a modern Spanish clone of ZX Spectrum, entirely based on FPGA technology (implementation); the computer has been developed in 2013. In 2016 its crowdfunding began and its sales began the same year. Compatible with Pentagon, British ZX Spectrum and other machines—depending on what core you load. UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Iwona Grabska-Gradzińska

relatively simple construction—it was only a motherboard with a RAM and a processor. On the one hand, this facilitated things for the builders and the producers; on the other, it caused difficulties for the programmers, who had to try all the harder to overcome the platform’s numerous limitations. Some models were factory-produced, others were manufactured as a cottage industry, but even the latter could be quite popular (with practically no promotion, advertising campaigns, etc.). One example might be the most famous case, also known in the Western world, of the Russian Pentagon 128 computer, which became the benchmark for both hardware solutions and programming (it had only minor differences from the ZX Spectrum—to the Pentagon’s advantage, we might add—which meant that if a program was to run with 100% efficiency, mainly in terms of timing, then a program had to be specially written for a given model). When it comes to demoscene production, the Pentagon was second only to the ZX Spectrum 128+, if not the world’s most important machine, first in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, and then, through the spread of the Internet and the improving emulators on PCs, available practically everywhere.

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A very characteristic attribute for all Soviet and post-Soviet models was the use of the TR-DOS disk system and Betadisk interface, also cloned from the original British version designed by Technology Research Ltd (the 48KB model was released in 1985, while today’s most popular model, 128KB, came out in 1987). It is a curious fact that in Great Britain itself this disk system never took off, while it became a key element of the Spectrum world in the East— to such an extent that, after some time, the whole was permanently implemented for subsequent clones, no longer as a separate device. The Russians designed for TR-DOS and the ZX Spectrum a boundless quantity of programs, from file commanders to graphic browsers (some in PC formats), synthetic and digital music players, all kinds of editors (text, font, sprite, sound, graphic, music), assemblers (and other programming languages), debuggers, data packers, converters, data copying programs,

Ill. 20. Timex Computer 2048. The official licensed clone of ZX Spectrum 48K, released in 1984 by Timex North American Lda, a branch of American Timex Corporation. Unlike the American Timex Sinclair 2068—the Portuguese TC-2048 was highly compatible with ZX Spectrum 48, although it had a number of improvements (more durable keyboard, built-in Kempston joystick port, monitor output, additional video modes—and more). Timex Portugal was selling TC-2048 in Portugal and Poland, and its NTSC version was sold in Chile. UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Iwona Grabska-Gradzińska

Soviet and Post-Soviet ZX Spectrum Computer Clones

system testers, disk drive utilities, net programs (Internet, Fidonet, there was even a net devoted to the Spectrum: ZXNet—and others)… And apart from this, of course, there were games, demos, disk magazines, and even electronic books. The first Russian ZX Spectrum clones were more or less exact copies of the 48KB model, and later, clones of the 128KB model became widespread. The Russians did not stop at this, however, and the memory was increased in subsequent models. For example, the Scorpion ZS-256 (256KB RAM), Pentagon 512 (512KB RAM), and Kay 1024 (1MB RAM) were developed, and then computers like the Sprinter and the ZX Evolution (4MB RAM). Later models were released only in the form of motherboards, designed to install in “custom” cases or traditional PC cases (AT, ATX); they could be attached to widely available PC keyboards, mice, monitors, and FDD drives (and later IDE disks, and finally, SD cards). An enormous number of modifications, adapters, interfaces, and expansion cards also emerged for computers compatible with ZX Spectrum. Some were ultimately implemented in their entirety in the motherboards of later machines. Some of these are described below. The SMUC interface for hard disk was mainly designed for the Scorpion. It let you attach two IDE disks to the Spectrum. You could also install a real-time clock in the Dallas DS1287 chip and attach other PC equipment to the SMUC, such as a modem. In its present version, the SMUC uses a CD/DVD drive, Winchester disk drive, and Compact Flash cards (with the right adapter). It is mainly used in Spectrums like the Scorpion, ZXM-Phoenix, KAY-1024, and Pentagon 1024. The Nemo IDE Controller was originally designed for the Kay-1024 clone. It is now used with the majority of existing Russian Spectrums (ZXM Phoenix, Profi, Scorpion, Pentagon etc.). With help of Nemo IDE Controller one can connect to ZX Spectrum hard disks and CD-ROM drives. The Z-Controller is a very universal interface, through which we gain a slot for SD cards for the Eastern version of the ZX Spectrum, as well as a hard disk (or CD-ROM) IDE connector, and two PS/2 connectors for hooking up keyboards and mice from PCs, which the ZX Spectrum treats as Kempston mice and regular Spectrum keyboards. Some of the later clones have the Z-Controller integrated into the motherboard (e.g. the ZX Evolution and the Pentagon 1024 SL). The ZX Multi Card lets you hook up PC mice and PS/2 keyboards to the ZX Spectrum; you can also install a real time clock. Interestingly, there is also

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a modem on the board of the card. The card can also be expanded with an SD slot or a MIDI OUT connector. The ProfROM was originally designed for the Scorpion. Later versions allowed for expansion with other ZX platform machines. This is a ROM expansion card, serving to expand the preexisting Scorpion memory capacity. This ROM has an original size of from 16KB to a maximum of 64KB, while the card appears in versions from 128KB to 512KB and contains a range of tools and test programs, other utilities, debuggers, etc. Before the PS/2 standards arrived, two Russian companies, Scorpion and D.K., co-developed IBM PC Keyboard Controller cards and the IBM PC Mouse Controller for connecting to XT/AT-standard Spectrum keyboards and PC mice. The Russians developed a whole range of Covox and Soundrive sound adapters for the ZX Spectrum. These facilitated 8-bit audio quality (usually with 4 channels of sound), which meant users could enhance new or preexisting games with digital sound effects, and also write and play MOD music on the Spectrum (a music format coming originally from Amiga computers). In many of today’s clones, Covox is integrated into the computer motherboards. These adapters are simple digital-analogue converters that came out in various versions, depending on the number of transducer per channel. The most basic Covox mixes four channels on a single transducer, which leads to loss of audio quality, obviously; meanwhile, the most advanced Covox type—the SounDrive—has four separate sound transducers for the four audio channels. It is essential to note that to playback sounds and music the Covox/SounDrive requires a ZX Spectrum processor, so these adapters are not grouped with the sound cards. There remains a large number of programs using the above-mentioned adapters; these are tools, demos, and games. Where the last-named are concerned, the general procedure was cracking existing games to provide them with digital music and special effects on the Covox, SounDrive, or GeneralSound (which we will discuss later). A serious, authentic music card for the ZX Spectrum was the GeneralSound, designed and released in the 1990s. Although it is still available for purchase, a new and more powerful version has emerged—the Neo General­ Sound. The GS card is based on a separate Z80 processor with a frequency of 12 MHz; it also has its own RAM (from 128KB to 512KB, depending on the model). This means that, after loading digital samples/music (Amiga four-channels MODs) the card made no use of the computer’s resources, while remaining controlled by it.

Soviet and Post-Soviet ZX Spectrum Computer Clones

Over ten years later, in 2008, another version of the above-named card, now called the Neo GeneralSound, was released by NedoPC. The card is totally backward compatible, but far more powerful. It is based on a Z84 24 MHz processor, has 2MB RAM, its own SD slot, and can play MP3 files, Amiga MOD (four-channels) files, and MOD eight-channels files. Many tools, demos, and games were made for both cards, as with the case of the Covox. A large number of specially-adapted pre-existing games were also released. Interestingly enough, when the ZX Spectrum is playing music through other equipment (e.g. through AY) or is not playing music at all, the programmer can use GS/NGS power to perform calculations not connected to the audio, accessing it as a fast co-processor. Such programs exist, though these are mainly demos. The TurboSound and TurboSound FM were other ways to expand the audio/musical capabilities of the ZX Spectrum platform, created in the 1990s. In general, the original British versions of this computer used the General Instrument AY-3-8910 / General Instrument AY-3-8912 chips (first in the form of a module attachment, then a circuit that was integrated into the motherboard, beginning with the 128K). Meanwhile, the Russians decided that instead of the single standard AY audio chip, they could link up two such chips at once (or their Japanese equivalents, the YM2149, which are far more popular in the East and easily accessible), thus gaining six audio channels. This yielded the TurboSound, which gained quite a big number of software pieces dedicated for it, and was popular for years on the Spectrum demoscene. Apart from demos, of course, a range of tools was also created—six-channels trackers, and not only for the Spectrum. There were also cross-platform programs for PC (based on sound emulators) capable of exporting music files to the real platform. The same, in fact, goes for the later standard of the TurboSound FM, where two YM (or AY) chips were replaced by two later Yamaha chips—the YM2203—each with six channels, making twelve audio tracks. The Yamaha 2203 has three FM synthesis channels, and implementation of the standard YM2149. Because of the use of the FM synthesis, the sound might resemble the AdLib known from PC computers. At present, unfortunately, there is no tracker that uses the full expansion capabilities (6 FM channels + 6 PSG channels). Thus, the most popular method is composing music partly on the FM— with TFM Music Maker and partly on the VortexTracker II (the PSG parts). Both programs are on PC, and can export the data onto the ZX Spectrum. We also ought to mention the related ZXM-SoundCard designed—as the name suggests—for the ZXM Phoenix, though it is compatible with

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Ill. 21. DELTA (the Russian computer). A Russian clone of ZX Spectrum+, produced in 1991, in a former military power plant near the city of Zelenograd. Fully compatible with ZX Spectrum+, it has 48KB of RAM, video-output port, cassette player input and output ports, two joystick ports (Kempston and Sinclair)—all ports along with expansion-bus are in Russian, in own standard. UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Iwona Grabska-Gradzińska

most Russian Spectrum clones. It is very advanced, possessing not only two YM2203 chips (twelve-channels), but also a six-track Philips SAA1099 chip borrowed from a Western clone (the SAM Coupé). The Pentagon was and remains the standard platform for demos and games (at least in the East), and the fact that it was made as a cottage industry did not prevent even owners of such factory-made products as the Scorpion from striving for greater compatibility. This was the function of the Scorpion GMX (Graphics Memory eXpander) add-on. It ensured compatibility between the Scorpion and the Pentagon. We might find it interesting that this set-up was apparently more stable than the original Pentagon alone. The GMX could also work in other compatibility modes, as a Profi clone, for instance. It also had 2MB RAM and a seven-megahertz turbo processor. The ZXKit1 VGA&PAL Board is another piece of equipment for the ZX Spectrum platform. It serves to transfer an image to the VGA monitor, or to

Soviet and Post-Soviet ZX Spectrum Computer Clones

Ill. 22. ZX Evolution (another name: The Pentevo = Pentagon Evolution). Probably the most developed Russian clone of ZX Spectrum computer, compatible with the 128K standard, but with a lot of extensions and improvements. Created in 2009 by the NedoPC group-members: Vadim Akimov (LVD), Roman Chunin (CHRV) and Dmitry Dmitriev (DDp). The motherboard was first presented at the Chaos Constructions 2009 party in Russia. 4Mb of RAM, SD card support, video output on RGB and VGA, IDE port and many more. Extended graphics to the capabilities of the ATM Turbo clone, 20 MHz Z84C0020PEC CPU (here: it works at the maximum frequency of 14 MHz). Compatible with ATM Turbo, Pentagon, British ZX Spectrum computers. UBU lab, Jagiellonian University. Photo by Iwona Grabska-Gradzińska

an RGB television / monitor through an S-Video connector or an RGB Composite. This add-on can be connected to the Pentagon 48/128, Scorpion, Leningrad, ZXM-Phoenix, ZX-Next, Speccy2007, or Robik… It can also be connected to such computers as the Profi, Specialist, or Orion, but it requires firmware changes. The ZXM-VideoCard serves a similar function. Of course, there is no way to cover all the Eastern models of the ZX Spectrum; there were too many. Nor can we describe all the equipment and programing. However, this text should serve to introduce the subject to the reader. Below is a list (albeit incomplete) of the ZX Spectrum clones created in the Soviet Union, and later in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

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III. The platform 1. Aeon 2. AF TV Game (a game-console) 3. Anbelo/C 4. Ant-1024HD 5. Argo 6. Arus 7. Aspect 128 AVR ZX Spectrum 8. Atas 9. ATM Turbo 10. AZX-Monstrum 11. Baltik Russian 12. Bayt 13. Beysik (Basic) 14. Briz 15. Byte 16. Composite Personal Computer 17. Computer Constructor 18. Contact 64 19. Contact 128 20. Contact CPS-128 21. Delta-N 22. Delta-S 23. Delta-SA 24. Dik 25. Dubna 48K 26. Duet 27. Dynael 28. Elbrus 29. Elektronika-KP05 30. Elikon-050 31. ETON ZX 48K 32. Fanny 33. Forum BK 34. Gamma 35. GrandRomMax 36. Harkov 37. Himak 48 38. Himak 128 39. Hobbit 40. Ikar 64 41. Impuls

42. Inter 43. ITC Spectrum 44. Karat 45. Kay-1024 46. Kay-256 47. Kometa-01 48. Kompanion 49. Kompanion 2 50. Kompozit-48 51. Kompozit-128 52. KR-05 53. Krasnogorsk 54. Kvant 55. Kvant-BK 56. Kvorum 57. Kvorum 64 58. Kvorum 128 59. Kvorum 128+ 60. Leningrad-1 61. Leningrad-2 62. Leningrad-3 63. Leningrad-2010 64. Leningrad-2012 65. Lik 66. Liliya 67. Lvov 68. Magic Computer 69. Magic-05 70. Master 71. Master 2 72. Miko-Best 73. Moskva-48K 74. Moskva-128K 75. Nafanya 76. Neis 77. Novosibirsk 54 78. Olimpik-S 79. Orel BK-08 80. Orizon-Micro 81. Parus 82. Patisonic 48

ZX Spectrum Programming Languages 83. Patisonic 48ST 84. Pentagon 48 85. Pentagon 128 86. Pentagon SL 87. Pentagon 1024SL v2. 666 88. Peters 89. Pik 90. PLM Avtomatika 91. PLM Ekspress 92. Poligon 93. Profi 94. Radon Plus 95. Raduga-001 96. Raton-9003 97. ReVerSE 98. Rita 99. Robi 100. Robik 101. Santaka-002 102. Scorpion ZS-256 103. Scorpion ZS-1024 Turbo 104. Sever-48/002 Spectrum-ZX 105. Sibstar 106. Simbol 107. Sintez

108. Spark-128 109. Speccy2007 110. Speccy2010 111. Spektr 112. Sprinter 113. ST Sirius 114. Sunkar 115. Sura-S 116. Taganrog-128 117. TOKK PC48G 118. Ural 8/64 K 119. Vega-64 120. Vega-128 121. Vesta IK-30 122. Vesta IK-30M 123. Vesta IK-31 124. Yauza 125. Yulduz 126. Zvezda 127. ZX Evolution / Pentevo 128. ZX Next 129. ZXM-777 130. ZXM-Phoenix 131. ZXM-Zephyr 132. ZX-Poly

ZX Spectrum Programming Languages The programming languages used on the ZX Spectrum to develop games and demoscene-related stuff are limited to BASIC and Assembler languages, with the latter being the most used. 73 There were some games and “joke” demos written partly or entirely in BASIC, however all serious productions were developed right in Assembler. Apart from these two languages, other more or less known languages had their compilers or at least interpreters

73 

BASIC is short for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

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on the ZX Spectrum, e.g. C, PASCAL and FORTH. Another interesting phenomenon was the presence of various software extending BASIC possibilities even allowing for compilation of BASIC to machine code and thus faster execution of the programs written in BASIC. We start with BASIC as it is an integral part of the ZX Spectrum and resides in the 16KB ROM, where it is readily available for the user when the computer starts. We discuss compilers of BASIC and coding possibilities in the machine code directly from BASIC. Next we take a look at several assemblers, disassemblers and monitors to finish off with other languages that appeared on the ZX Spectrum.

BASIC BASIC74 for the 48K model was an improved version of the ZX80 BASIC. The original version for the ZX80 computer was developed by the Nine Tiles Networks Ltd.75 The developers were John Grant and Steve Vickers. This version took up to 4KB of RAM, and it was later extended by Vickers to the 8KB version used in the ZX81—the successor of the ZX80. The 16KB version emerged from the 8KB version, and it was used in the 16K and 48K models. All improvements were made by the same programmers and consist of adding floating point operations and other commands controlling input and output. A total of 88 keywords were present in the 16/48K version with 51 command keywords, 32 logic operators and functions and five other keywords.76 The 128K model BASIC contains a few new keywords, related to the control of the sound chip, memory model and disc drive(+3 model only). Keywords were entered by the pressing of one key only (a unique approach among 8-bit computers) and also stored as one byte in the RAM. This allows for considerable saving of the memory and also typing time. The 128K model offers an interpreter with letter by letter input. The listing with the

By BASIC, we mean BASIC interpreter. Simon Garfield (2010) Sir Clive Sinclair: “I don’t use a computer at all,” The Guardian Media Group, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/feb/28/clive-sinclair-interview-simon-garfield (accessed on 5 December 2018). 76  Steven Vickers (1983) Sinclair ZX Spectrum BASIC Programming (2nd ed.), Sinclair Research. 74  75 

ZX Spectrum Programming Languages

rather iconic Hello World program for the ZX Spectrum BASIC together with its output is given below.

Fig. 1. The listing of the Hello World program in the BASIC language (left) and the result after its execution (right)

The keyword PRINT is entered by simply pressing the key P. The example of the game and demo written in BASIC are shown in the following figures. In order to speed up BASIC programs or to equip them in new commands and features, the so-called compilers were used. Some of them are available on the World of Spectrum website, including Hisoft’s COLT Compiler and BASIC Compiler, MCODER 2, ZIP 1.5, SOFTEK IS & FP, and a few others.

Fig. 2. The game Labyrinth (left) and the demo A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse or a Scotchman on a horse (right) both written entirely in the BASIC language

Another approach was to use machine codes inserted directly to the RAM by means of the command POKE address, value and then execution of the code by USR address command. Below is an example which insert the machine code to the RAM, this code is used for loading a headless block with screen data from the tape to the VRAM:

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Fig. 3. The listing of a program in the BASIC that contains a machine code (left), the same code in the assembler (right)

The listings of BASIC programs were very popular in the magazines published in Europe, and there were also entire journal series with printed BASIC listings (e.g. in Czechoslovakia it was journal “Robik”).

Assembler Assembler was used to develop games, utilities, demos and intros, i.e. where one needs maximum speed and control. Apart from the possibility to code directly in the machine code using BASIC, there were a lot of commercial editors with Assembler, but some authors also wrote their own. We have to mention HiSoft’s Devpac with GENS and MONS, the editor/assembler and monitor/debugger respectively. These two were well-known, well-documented and spread across Central Europe. It was also quite expensive as it cost 12 GBP back in 1983.77 We also have to mention the Memory Resident System (MRS), developed by Slovak programmers in 1992. It was widespread software in Czechoslovakia and consisted of four modules: assembler, linker, disassembler and debugger. One of the outstanding features was the 64 columns editor and advanced debugger. Another well-known and used assembler was the Prometheus by Universum, which was popular among Czech and Slovak demo makers as it was released as public domain.

77 

“Your Computer” (May 1983).

ZX Spectrum Programming Languages

Fig. 4. Screenshots with programs GENS (left) and MONS (right)

Fig. 5. Screenshots with the program MRS, an editor module (left) and a debugger module (right)

Many other assemblers, monitors and debuggers existed, apart from them there were also tracing programs or memory monitors. These were used to track execution of the loaded programs, thus they had to be as small as possible. Some of them were located in the VRAM to not interfere with the RAM—like the DevastAce monitor which was released in two versions, one resided in memory and the second in VRAM.

Fig. 6. Screenshots with the program DevastAce, a RAM version (left) and a VRAM version (right)

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Nowadays, with massive use of the PC, cross-compiling is almost always used and the final binary is then executed in emulators in order to check and debug the codes. Below is the gnome-vi-enhanced editor and the output from the PASMO compiler.

Other Languages Other languages for which there were interpreters or even compilers can be found listed on the WOS.78 We should mention C, PASCAL, FORTH, LOGO and FORTRAN but other rather exotic ones were developed for the ZX Spectrum too, including COMAL, Karel, Modula-2, Prolog and LISP. Especially FORTH and LOGO interpreters were numerous. However their use was educational as we are not aware of any demo or intro written in those languages.

78 

www.worldofspectrum.org (accessed on 5 December 2018).

Fig. 7. A gVim editor with a source code in the z80 assembler (top), a BASH shell with the result of the cross-compilation of the source code for the z80 CPU with the PASMO compilator (bottom)

CONCLUSIONS

The subject of our study was the ZX Spectrum platform in light of the research and theories on platforms proposed by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost. When writing a computer monograph, we were interested not only in the technical specification of the equipment, but first and foremost in the cultural aspect surrounding the object. In this sense, our monograph differs from many technical books devoted to the computer. We have examined both the community of people identifying with the platform and the works created on it. We also proposed a  narrative about the computer and its clones from the perspective of the demoscene, situated on the margins of the official history of the platform. We have limited it to the countries where the demoscene on the ZX Spectrum—Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia—has developed the most. Our research was guided by the intuitions of media archeology, a discipline affirming the departure from objective, standardizing and chronological approaches. We have therefore tried to build a computer micro-history that will allow us to write our own narrative, based on our logic and to establish unofficial beginnings. In this perspective, we agree with Siegfried Zielinski that “order is a sign of lack, not excess.”79 We propose an approach that addresses the peculiarities and atypical story of the ZX Spectrum. We present a story that is not taken up by media historians or theoreticians and does not fit into the linear understanding of computer development. The understanding of “an-archeology of media” described by Zieliński is for this reason shared by us:

79  Siegfried Zielinski (2010) Archeologia mediów. O głębokim czasie technicznie zapośredniczone­ go słuchania i widzenia, translated by Krystyna Krzemieniowa, Oficyna Wydawnicza, Warszawa, p. 38.

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Conclusions

The main rule underlying my thinking became the conviction that there are no common, single-origin, beginnings, that is why I prefer to say that I am undertaking the “an-archeology of media” instead of “archeology of media.” An-archeology stands in opposition to the idea of linear development.80

Therefore, our narrative eludes scientific standardization as well as uniform academic argumentation (we give voice to the surveyed members of the community), and it constructs a history of the computer not from the perspective of the producer but the sceners who took over the platform (without the knowledge and consent of the producer) for creative purposes. Our narrative is based on the demoscene. Both the computer itself, peripherals and clones are presented from such an approach that interests creators, who on given equipment create and often show off in terms of their capability to code, design graphics or sound. Therefore, the ZX Spectrum did not interest us as a platform intended for utility, entertainment or commercial purposes. Instead we try to understand how it was a platform for creating digital art and breaking past hardware limitations. The history of the computer we present is not entangled in the marketplace. In our view, the ZX Spectrum computer is not a product that should be consumed according to patterns set by the equipment and program manufacturers, but a tool for hacking and engaging in creative expression. The presented history of the ZX Spectrum computer affirms the concept of diversity, and it is also part of the wild technology category, which can be compared to the life of wild animals. Just as it develops according to its own rules, and it is not controlled by the logic of a human being, so the ZX Spectrum in our narrative becomes a computer based precisely on the idea of diversity, a platform based on the standards set by the sceners. We have specifically analyzed the phenomenon of computer domestication in Russia, related to mass cloning of the platform, that is, the practice of creating your own equipment based on the ZX Spectrum and the lack of the official model. If you compare this strategy to known solutions in the world of technology, the ZX Spectrum from behind the Iron Curtain will be something different from the offer of Apple Corporation, which offers a standardized platform

80  Arkadiusz Półtorak (2016) Teraźniejszość znika. Rozmowa z Siegfriedem Zielinskim, Dwuty­ godnik, nr 198, https://www.dwutygodnik.com/artykul/6848-terazniejszosc-znika.html (accessed on 16 December 2018).

Conclusions

and a product that can’t be changed by its owner. In the case of the ZX Spectrum, the resulting solutions and approaches to the computer are based on its open concept, equipment improvement at home, new solutions, extensions, peripherals, personalization. As a result, it is often impossible to run advanced demoscene productions based on the platform’s capabilities on original British equipment. What’s more, most of the protagonists in the book, despite identifying themselves with the ZX Spectrum brand, have never used or even touched the original equipment. Another factor that distinguishes the ZX Spectrum is its “life” over time. The phenomenon we have explored is evidence that fans, experts, demosceners keep the platform alive for a few decades after its commercial death. They oppose planned aging of equipment (one of the most important practices of capitalism), which makes it necessary to regularly exchange equipment for a new one. Good knowledge of the computer and its peripheries leads to the possibility of producing much more advanced work than the classic commercial productions of the 1980s. Also, contemporary works that use refinements created over the years are often incomparable qualitatively to those written on the original platform created by the manufacturer. The demoscene of the ZX Spectrum computer has not been studied before, and our project fills a gap in this area. The narrative focuses on giving voice to the community and on ethnographic research. The voices of demosceners and their works are for us the data for research and analysis. Our key findings reflect the importance of the identification of the demosceners with the computer. It is thanks to it that the sceners create, overcome the limitations of the equipment, and continuously revive the commercially dead computer. The information obtained from the interviews allow us to venture the claim that users do not do it for their own fame, but for the platform. The use of the computer for creative activities was due to the significant hardware limitations. As we have already pointed out, the ZX Spectrum has many limitations compared not only to higher-level computers (16-bit or 32-bit), but also other 8-bit platforms (Atari, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC). However, this does not prevent users from creating original ZX-specific phenomena that use these limitations (like 1-bit music, text-based demos, demoscene poetry, or homebrew game development). We extract creative phenomena specific to ZX Spectrum. However, we do not discuss them in depth. They all deserve separate analysis, monographs. We wanted to present these phenomena for the full narrative of the ZX Spectrum in light of the theory of platform research. We also analyze to a small

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extent individual works (demos, musical activity of the MISTER BEEP project or the phenomenon of the demoscene poetry). On the ZX Spectrum scene, of course, there is a great amount of creative work that is a challenge for researchers involved in digital programming. In the spirit of the demoscene we analyze the BrightPast demo, detailing the applied effects and scope of the code. However, in several works that were analyzed we point to the direct dependence of the development of programs or peripheries on aesthetic choices (games, 1-bit music). We also tried to pay attention to works in which the message is important (poetry of demoscenes), which is not a standard for the demoscene as it typically counts on graphic and music effects. We also frame our narrative in the ongoing discussions on the decentralization of ​​digital media, i.e. searching for original creative uses of digital media other than those from the hegemonic center. The ZX Spectrum demoscene is for advanced computer users, strongly emphasizing the creative approach to the platform in both hardware and programming. In many places of the monograph, we emphasize the elitism of the demoscene, based on a high level of knowledge, both in terms of the equipment itself and programs. The demoscene elite does not use the computer passively, for entertainment, but for advanced creativity, based on the possibilities of technology. Most of the produced works on the scene are demos or intros aimed at “describing the platform” and demonstrating its possibilities. Let us add, however, that the demoscene does not avoid games or application programs, but these are often not used, for example, for commercial purposes, but to achieve greater capabilities of the computer (we explain this extensively, discussing the phenomenon for example of 1-bit music). The games on the scene can be created for entertainment purposes, but we also remember that games focus on effects, on overcoming the limitations of the platform (characteristic of the homebrew trend). It should be added that this approach to the platform and creativity is born from a specific understanding of copyright in countries behind the Iron Curtain (diametrically different from the approach to restrictions in the computer’s homeland). This creative boom is an expression of a philosophy that implies an ignorance of the creators’ limitations due to copyright. In this approach, available programs can be hacked, remixed, but also added to their productions. Or elements of available programs can be used in their own productions (mainly in the early period of the demoscene). Distribution and use are not punishable or disgraceful. This is a natural condition for sceners on this platform (this rule also dominates till today). The

Conclusions

widespread access to the works and programs turned into in-depth knowledge, but also creativity and the phenomenon of freely sharing creativity. Under these specific conditions—the hacking approach to the platform, the non-use of original programs issued by the equipment’s producers, the domination of demonstration programs, cloning of the original computer— the creativity of the ZX Spectrum scene has grown. The phenomenon is very characteristic for the region, but it also proves the thesis that there isn’t one story or hegemonic approach to the use of the equipment. The proposed narrative overturns the widespread view of the culture created by the first home computers (such as Atari, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC etc.). Although we are writing about a computer from the early 1980s, most of the phenomena described are from the 21st century. Therefore, we were not interested only in the history of the computer, but above all the ZX Spectrum as a modern cultural phenomenon and the contemporary works produced on it. When we started working on the monograph, the computer boom began again due to the appearance of the ZX Vega console; when we finished work on the book, another wave of interest took place due to the popularity of the interactive Black Mirror: Bandersnatch thriller, which is watched and clicked on by millions of viewers around the world. In this Netflix special, the ZX Spectrum does not leave the screen. These trends, however, appear on the wave of retro interest, nostalgia for the equipment and mainly the aesthetics of games from the 1980s. Our monograph also emphasizes the vitality and culture-forming nature of the computer, but it does so from a completely different perspective.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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INDEX

+Gama 38

BiNMaN 112

7 Gods 108

Black Team 38 Bloombecker Buck

AAA 77

Bogdanovich Vladimir (vBv) 76–77

Adán Victor 94

Bogie 68

Aer 104

Bogost Ian 137

Agent-X 25

Bordoni Luca 111

Akimov Vadim 127

Botz Daniel 23

Albrecht Alvin 112

Braguinski Nikita 98

Alone Coder 19, 20–22, 25, 26, 29, 30, 37,

Bromba 83

39–40, 44–47, 51, 54, 59, 60, 62–64, 66,

Brook Jason C.101

67, 69, 70, 72–77, 103, 108

Bugrov Alexey 73

Anderson Chris 19, 20

Bukovjan Michal 34

Andrews Paul 119

Bumfun Software 112

Andysoft 83 Anubis/SS 26

Cat-man 83, 110

APSIS 112

Cauldwell Jonathan 111

Aragonskaya Stella 112

Ccowley 103

Atom 110

Chaser Skull 73 Christie Thomas A. 92

Bachtin Michaił 24

Chrysagon 38

Bazooka 84

Chunin Roman 127

Belyaev Rukavishnikv 53

C-Jeff 26

Bielacki Kazimierz (Kaz) 81, 82, 83

Clarke Dave 112

Biliński Marek 99

Collins Steven 15

148

INDEX

Cronosoft 111 Cyningstan 111

Golubtsov Aleksey (Diver) 60, 74, 77, 78, 112 Gonzalez Cristian M. 112

Daglish Ben 101

Goreń Andrzej 24

Dalthon John 83

Goreń Anna 24

DaRkHoRaCe 112

Grabska-Gradzińska Iwona 13, 116, 119,

darkman007 112 DC PAK 20, 21, 24–26, 29, 36, 39, 45, 46, 47,

120, 121, 122, 126, 127 Grant John 130

53, 55–56, 62, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 75, 78 Deak Jan 96

Habib/H-PRG 101

Demiurge Ash 91

Hacker Kicia 28

Dickinson Rick 119

Hackman Derrick 104

diver4d 112

Hikaru 112

DjIK 37

Hlavsoft 38

Dmitriev Dmitry 127 Drobik Daniel 30

Illusion 38

Dylan Bob 58

Irrlicht Project 100, 103, 104

E.S.A 108, 109

Jerri 112

Emerson Keith 101

Jordan Michael 25

Errazking 112

Jordan of Exodus 36, 48, 71

ESA 38

Juza 110

Expirt 26 Eye-Q 91

K3L 38 Kassoft 83

Factor6 25, 26, 34, 37, 38, 40, 44, 46, 49, 52, 54, 55, 61, 67, 78, 99, 108

Kent Clark 24 Kluska Bartłomiej 50, 51

Faon 31

Konczakowski 110

Follin Tim 95, 98, 101

Krzemieniowa Krystyna 137 Kuryłowicz Krzysztof 66

Galishnikov Sergey 73

Kuznetsov Denis 108

Garfield Simon 130

Kyv 112

Gasman 24, 26, 27, 36,38, 40, 44, 46, 48, 60, 61, 64, 66, 67, 68, 84

Lake Greg 57, 101

Gates Bill 29, 30

Lamer1 26

Gemrot Rostislav 34

Lamer2 26

Gen Martinez 83

Laser 38

Goblin/Goblinish 24, 26, 69

LaVey 91

INDEX

Lawson Cliff 64

Palmer Carl 101

LCD 29, 30, 37, 39, 44, 46, 65, 69

Panteleev Pavel 73

Lenin Vladimir (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) 86

Perez Antonio 112

López Miguel Ángel Tejedor 112

Półtorak Arkadiusz 138 Privalov Dmitry 73

Macros 37

Puhnachev 67

Madej Dariusz 67

Pylak Paweł 30

Mahler Gustav 48 Mayakovski Vladimir 86

Quiet 112

Makarov Vladimir 62 Marasek Krzysztof 67 Marecki Piotr 9, 22, 31, 38, 42, 55, 80, 81, 82, 85, 90, 93, 100, 109

Radxcell (rdx) 19, 20, 22, 25, 30, 35, 39, 43, 45, 46, 56, 58, 59, 61, 63, 64, 66, 68, 71, 72, 77, 78

Mark 31

Raffii 83

McAlpine Kenneth B. 94

Rajsoft 84

Miazga Rafał (Ralf ) 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 44,

Retrobytes 112

45, 48, 51, 55, 68, 70, 73, 75, 110, 111

Retrospect 103

Medvedev Nikolaj 73, 74

RetroWorks 111, 112

Mikropol 53

Reunanen Markku 8, 23

MISTER BEEP 26, 98–102, 103, 104, 105,

Riskej 112

109, 110, 111, 140

Roger 36, 66

MMcM 40, 78

Rogulin Eugene 112

Moiseev Igor 73

Rucksack Games 112

Montfort Nick 137 Moroz 30, 60, 77

SAM Style 112

Mr. Incognito 26

SaNchez 112

Mr. Gluk 108

Sand 112

Murphy Eddie 67

Saphier David 112 Sapkowski Andrzej 91

N1k-O 37 Nagórski Bartłomiej 76

Scalesmann 25–26, 35, 54, 58, 59, 60, 62, 76

Naughty Crew 38

Schiva 38,

Nik-O 112

Schustin Mikael 57

Noro 38

SCL 25, 112 Sean Adams 83

Ochkov 67

Semizarov Alexey 60, 70

Origin Oleg 112

Sharp Lyndon 95

149

150

INDEX

Shepherd Robee 94

Tufty 104

Shiru 101, 103

Tygrys 110

Silver John 37 Sinclair Clive Marles 7, 13, 15, 25, 52, 64, 105, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 130 SinDiKat 108, 109 Slayer 110 Slider 91 SLL 99 SMAN 26 Smith Chris 119 Speccy Boyz 38 Stamnes Bent 57 Starsoft 38 Steel Dragon 38 Superman 24 Švelch Jaroslav 109 Tangerine Dream 99 Tasajärvi Lassi 57

Ulyanov Vladimir Ilyich, see Lenin Vladimir Unbelievables, the 38 Vangelis 99 Vickers Steve 130 Voxel 104 Voyager 110 Wasiak Patryk 23, 49 Wasiljew 62 Wilde Oscar 26 Wise Men 83 Yerzmyey 81 Zakrzewski Włodzimierz 86 Zbigniew N. 84 ZeroTeam 108, 109

TDM 38

Zielinski Siegfried 137

Tiboh 77

Zilog 94, 100

Tomcio Paluch International 31

Ziutek 110

Tramiel Jacek 32, 33

Zorba 112

Trix 25

ZXDN 26

Truppel Ingo 61

ZXMan48k 112

EDITOR Zofia Sajdek PROOFREADER Tomasz P. Bocheński TYPESETTER Hanna Wiechecka Jagiellonian University Press Editorial Offices: ul. Michałowskiego 9/2, 31-126 Kraków Phone: 12 663 23 80, Fax: 12 663 23 83