RetroDemoScene
1 HN recommender · recommended in 4 months, 2015–2024
4:13 · 264K views · Nov 2, 2014
A recapture in 50fps HD of Spaceballs' 'State of the Art', an Amiga demo released at The Party 1992. It showcases the Amiga's real-time animation, graphics and music in a few minutes.
HN uses it as the canonical example of what the demoscene could squeeze out of an Amiga 500 and a single floppy disk.
4 comments from Hacker News
The “European hacker-culture demo” from Ezra’s Amiga is likely State Of The Art or 9 Fingers from Spaceballs — both really cool scene demos: this video [LINK] These easily run on an Amiga 500 ES from the 80s, and are stored on a single floppy disk.
I agree with everything you said. I have a couple of theories from a Swedish perspective. First, and the most vague, is the idea of competent children in Sweden. I read an article recently (in the Swedish newspaper DN[1]) that traced a line through the author Ellen Key -> Astrid Lindgren and Rune Andréasson -> Pippi Longstocking and Bamse (comic book bear), and the idea that just because you're young doesn't mean that you're not competent. Both Pippi and Bamse talk directly to children (and the parents who read them to their children) and tell them about injustices and the idea that even a child can do things on an adult level. This idea has been involved in the creation of preschools throughout the whole 20th century in Sweden. The newspaper article says that's why it's not surprising that Greta Thunberg is from Sweden, because you can't discount what someone does or says just because they're a child. Also part of the preschool movement in Sweden was the idea that play is important for children. The DN article quotes the sisters Moberg who started the first Swedish preschool in 1904 as saying: "The child that plays a lot and with intensity, will surely become a competent human." So children are expected to play and be children, but when they do and say things, they have been taught that it carries equal weight as what an adult does. It's a powerful idea that when children play (and I include teenagers playing video games or programming here, because a lot of parents would vi
A few years later 1992 "State of the Art", Spaceballs demo shows off Amiga 500 pretty well. That whole thing fits on 880 kB floppy and it's rendered realtime. this video A year later same group released "9 Fingers", also running on Amiga 500. [LINK]
For a moment I thought this was an old Amiga 500 demo (older than this game). Spaceball's "State of the Art" [0]. Apparently same author for both rotoscoped animations. [0]: this video