Welcome to Demoscene

日本語で読む

It’s been already more than a decade since I started to write about demoscene. In recent years, I’ve noticed that there are quite a lot of people who discovered demoscene and use my blog as an entrance to the demoscene culture. (What an honor! and Thank you for your comments and messages!)

While I’m fully aware that I’m not an expert in this domain, I’ll try my best to guide you to the next step to explore this culture further.

📍If you’ve just discovered the demoscene or learned the word “demoscene” like 10 seconds ago, I strongly recommend watching this documentary (Moleman 2 – Demoscene – The Art of the Algorithms). Some may find 90 minutes is too long, but this is the shortcut in the long run to get the whole picture of this subculture. This film “Moleman2” features Hungarian demosceners mainly but you can get the history and structure of demoscene in general.

📍If you want to just check what the “demos” actually look like, go to Youtube and type “demoscene”. There are tons of demos showing up in playlists, suggestions or whatever. And when you find groups you get interested in, go to demozoo and search with your favorite group name. They’ll show you the list of their works.

*If you’re using standard computers (meaning non-gaming PCs), I do not recommend downloading demo execution files and run them on your computers. Standard computers tend to have difficulty processing the files, so stick to the video. Lots of demo videos are available in HD quality.

You can use Pouet to search the demos, but I rather recommend using demozoo if you’re new to this culture. Once you get to know more and start to recognize the names of coders, musicians, graphics artists etc, Pouet will be your good friend. (Pouet will function as a main source for your demoscene activity as this is the long-standing portal site of demoscene, but to use this you need a bit of knowledge of this culture. )

📍If you’re interested in partaking demoparties, you can check the upcoming schedule on demozoo and Pouet. Revision is the largest demoparty held annually around Easter in Germany, but there are demoparties of various sizes happening everywhere in the world. A lot of them offer live streaming too, and past events archive videos are available on their Youtube account (Check each party’s website).

To help you with this, I’ll post some videos of demos on my Mastodon timeline. I’m already widely derailing with other topics, but I’ll try to share some of my favorite demos from time to time so please check this too (you don’t need account to see it). You can check my demoscene-related posts (including demoparty reports) from here.

Welcome to Demoscene! (Can’t believe I’m saying this after all these years…! 🙂