Demoscene tribute - State of the Art
23/Jan 2008
Yeah, I know, I know, I was supposed not to write about famous demos, in some cases, however, I cant help myself. State of the Art/Spaceballs is one of my favourite productions and maybe the best demo ever made. I appreciate it even more now than I used to in my scene days. I was graphics freak back then and preferred productions with hardcore code (like Rage demos mentioned previously). Problem with most of them is that they age quickly. Try watching Machines of Madness for example. It had an extremely impressive 3D engine when it was released, but nowadays, in the era of 3D accelerators it looks a little dated. SOTA was done 16 years ago and it just doesnt age. Sure, it was impressive from technical point of view, remember – it’s A500/880kb floppy, but I showed it to many of my non-scene friends. They didnt care about code, they enjoyed it just for what it was - a great show.
SOTA won demo compo at The Party 1992 and introduced a new trend in demos, later followed in productions like 9 Fingers (Spaceballs again, this one is even more flashy, but I still prefer State of the Art), 242 (Virtual Dreams/Fairlight) or, more recently, 303 (Psychic Link + Acme, coded by Statix, who’ll soon kick our asses with Little Big Planet).