Demoscene tribute: French 3D revolution

1996 was one of the best PC scene years in my opinion. It was also the year when some legendary Amiga/Atari ST groups released their first PC productions. It started at Saturne’96 party. It wasn’t one of the great 3 events (The Gathering/Assembly/The Party), it was local party, with French groups mostly. In 1996 however, the competition level was just crazily high. To this day I’m still not sure which one of the first two productions I like more. Winner was Contrast by Oxygene:

Code: Oxbab, graphics: Spiral (RIP) & Mon, music: Clawz.

Second place went to Impact Studios for Bomb demo (Gengis/Made/Titan/Clawz (again)). Sadly, couldn’t find it at Youtube, so here’s Pouet link. Those were two highlights of the competition, but whole top 5 is actually very good and any of those could easily won any other party. [EDIT] 2016 update, it’s on youtube now:

Oxygene later made one more PC production - Solex (same team as with Contrast):

As it usually happens, lots of Oxygene/Bomb members are/were involved in the gamedev industry. Impact Studios (known as Bomb at Amiga scene) created Fears - Amiga’s response to Doom.

Even more interesting are later adventures of Oxbab (Oxygene coder). He went on to to work at Red Storm, later SCEA, then Naughty Dog and now he’s co-president of ND and, knowing his skills, probably one of the reasons why Uncharted is so damn great. To end with a nice accent, one of Oxygene’ Amiga demos – Control:

Old comments

trace 2009-11-08 20:47:46

I agree. I share the same feeling about Saturne’96.
I think it was all thanks to Clawz tho. If the music wasn’t how it is I doubt we would remember much these demos.