4K4U
A VCS Demonstration released at BreakPoint 2008.
The story of this Demo
While working on "I Project" I thought about some graphical effects for the introduction screen. As there were more ideas than needed for that intro, I decided to work on a new demonstration program which I wanted to present at a demo party somewhen. According to the limited hardware of the VCS console I decided to keep the demo limited to 4 kilobytes and tried to put as many effects into it as possible. The final version of the demo contains seven parts and it restarts automatically when the end is reached.
What is a Demo?
A demo (abbr. for demonstration) is a non-interactive program which presents audio-visual
effects created by hobby programmers to show the abilities of a computer or
videogame system and the creativity of the programmer. Demos have got
a long tradition on disk-based systems as the C64, Amiga and PC as they were
directly created on the machine itself and could be easily and freely exchanged
with the copying of floppy disks or through online connections (BBS, Internet).
Cartridge based videogame systems didn't contain keyboards and development tools
so their games had to be created on dedicated development systems. The cartridges had
to be created and, due to the high production costs, had to be sold.
The effects of the Demo
The demo starts with playing the music and displaying an eye behind the grid of a barcode showing the year of the demo 2008. This part is called "Barcoded Eye".
Afterwards an upscrolling graphics part called "Upscrollzipper" puts the left and right halves of my name together.
The next part is called "Presented Split"... watch the demo and you know why.
The following part "Waved Title" shows the name of this demonstration. The waves are moving and change colors.
"Stars over 3D-Rasterbars" shows two rotating and moving stars in front of rotating rasterbars in 3D.
The following part is called "Transparent Rastertubes"...
The final part "The Rotating End" shows a rotating plate with THE on the one side and END on the other.
After some spins of The End, the demonstration automatically starts over again.
Please note that these pictures show some static frames of the demo. The real demo shows smooth animations and runs like a movie of course.
Technical Information
The demo consists of 4 kb (4096 bytes) of code and data - including all graphics and the music. The demo is running in PAL mode with constant 312 scanlines. The playing time of the demo is approx. 2 minutes. The development was performed on a Pentium-PC using a normal Text-Pad as editor and DASM V2.12 as compiler. Testing was done using the emulators z26 V1.58 and Stella 2.4.2 on PC and on the real console of course.
Download of the Demo
The demo was first released at the Console/Wild competition at the demo party BreakPoint in Bingen (Germany) on 2008-03-23. You can download the demo file here and watch it using a VCS emulator. Please note that you use the emulator and my demo at your own risk, I don't take any responsibilty for problems occuring to your computer when using an emulator.
You can also watch two videos of this demo at YouTube: This video shows a clean video stream of the demo while this video is filmed by the audience and does also contain applause.
Production of original Cartridges
As with the other demos I'm releasing this new demonstration on cartridge for play on the real machine, too. The limited production consists of 26 cartridges with color labels and certificate with serialnumber and signature in a plastic bag.
Cartridge with certificate and bag.
All 26 cartridges together.
Owners of the Demo Cartridges
| # |
Name |
Country |
| 01 |
Simon Quernhorst |
Germany |
| 02 |
Jose Artiles |
USA |
| 03 |
Walter Lauer |
Germany |
| 04 |
Richard Lecce |
USA |
| 05 |
Rafael Blanes |
USA |
| 06 |
Ingo Boyens |
Germany |
| 07 |
Marc Oberhäuser |
Germany |
| 08 |
Mat Allen |
England |
| 09 |
Kai Darius Kohl |
USA |
| 10 |
Carl Howard |
USA |
| 11 |
Rick Weis |
USA |
| 12 |
Matthias David |
Germany |
| 13 |
Jeff Rothkopf |
USA |
| 14 |
Gerald Müller-Bruhnke |
Germany |
| 15 |
r_type2600 |
Austria |
| 16 |
Hakan Kaya |
The Netherlands |
| 17 |
Michael Weiß |
Germany |
| 18 |
Rene Kamerbeek |
The Netherlands |
| 19 |
Andy Ryals |
England |
| 20 |
Cyril Denis |
France |
| 21 |
Marco Kerstens |
The Netherlands |
| 22 |
Stephan Freundorfer |
Germany |
| 23 |
Lee Chapman |
England |
| 24 |
Chris Austin |
USA |
| 25 |
Russ Perry jr. |
USA |
| 26 |
Falk Heinzelmann |
Germany |
Back to the menu page.