Eurocon2005
The official convention demo.
The story of the Demo
Eurocon is the european convention for classic videogame collectors. After 2004's show in Scheveningen/NL some friends decided to organize the Eurocon 2005 meeting in Bochum, Germany. To contribute to the event I decided to create an official convention demonstration as cartridge for the VCS system.
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.
And producing and selling something unplayable for a game system is very ironic, I think. :-)
The effects of the Demo
The demo starts with music and a moving diagonal pattern fading in.
Afterwards a logo scrolls left and right through the screen and the pattern changes style and priority over the logo
according to the bass of the music. Additionally the whole screen moves vertically up and down.
After some seconds the first part disappears and a 2005 logo is presented. It flashes to the music
and after some seconds a band with a Germany scrolltext appears over the logo, moves in all directions and
changes colors and priority over the 2005 logo to the bass of the music.
After the 2005 part the demo restarts with the next of the four alternative passes and loops unlimited.
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 - the music being the biggest part using about 2,5 kb and the graphics and coding using the remaining 1,5 kb. The demo is running in PAL mode with constant 312 scanlines.
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 emulator z26 V1.58 on PC and on the real console of course.
The cartridge presents a hardware novelty on the Atari VCS as it contains a
LED which is blinking while the cartridge is running. The assembly of the EPROMs, cartridge
boards and LEDs was done by Christian Keller of RetroGames e.V..
The LED is blinking while the demo is running.
Picture of the cartridges in Bochum
33 cartridges of the demo were produced. Only
these contain the LED, labels, serialnumber and signature. Serialnumber 01 has got a yellow,
#02 a green and the others a red LED.
All 33 cartridges in line.
Download of the Demo
You can download the demo file
here and watch it using a VCS emulator. Please notice 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.
Owners of the demo cartridges
| # |
Name |
Country |
| 01 |
Simon Quernhorst |
Germany |
| 02 |
Chris Keller |
Germany |
| 03 |
Mat Allen |
England |
| 04 |
Jörg Lennhof |
Germany |
| 05 |
Oliver Ziegler |
Germany |
| 06 |
Marc Oberhäuser |
Germany |
| 07 |
Michael Braun |
Germany |
| 08 |
Sijmen Schouten |
The Netherlands |
| 09 |
Jörg Konzan |
Germany |
| 10 |
Ingo Boyens |
Germany |
| 11 |
Dieter Kosancic |
Germany |
| 12 |
Stephan Freundorfer |
Germany |
| 13 |
r_type2600 |
Austria |
| 14 |
Dieter König |
Austria |
| 15 |
Jens Klöpfel |
Germany |
| 16 |
Rene Kamerbeek |
The Netherlands |
| 17 |
Martin Jobst-Tremel |
Austria |
| 18 |
Steffan Ros |
The Netherlands |
| 19 |
Rikard Ljungkvist |
Sweden |
| 20 |
Marco Kerstens |
The Netherlands |
| 21 |
Kai Darius Kohl |
USA |
| 22 |
Walter Lauer |
Germany |
| 23 |
Sascha Bejer |
Germany |
| 24 |
Carl E. Howard |
USA |
| 25 |
Steve Rich |
England |
| 26 |
Karl Illetschko |
Austria |
| 27 |
Jose Artiles |
USA |
| 28 |
Rick Weis |
USA |
| 29 |
Jeff Rothkopf |
USA |
| 30 |
Pepijn Bakker |
The Netherlands |
| 31 |
Al Backiel |
USA |
| 32 |
Marco Wollstädt |
Germany |
| 33 |
Jens Fickermann |
Germany |
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