Under construction! new website is still in work! [ (c) 1996-2009 Secretly! ] Your place when it comes to democoding:

The demoscene is a subculture in the computer underground culture universe, dealing with the creative and constructive side of technology, proving that a computer can be used for much more than writing a letter in MS-Word and hence emphasize on computer technology as just another medium that can transport ideas and styles, show off skills and express opinions etc.

Ultimately, a demo(nstration) in a demoscene sense, is a piece of free software that shows realtime rendered graphics, while playing music. Often, the music is tightly connected/synced to the visuals. Modern pc demos run linear from start to finish and are non-interactive. There is no whatsoever rule what a demo must/can show. The creator is free to decide whether he wants to show stylish and/or impressive effects, an epic story, funny/bizarre/satirical audiovisual artwork or a distorted mindfuck.

A scene demo is not a try-out version of a commercial application or game.

The demoscene basically started with cracking games on home computers in the early 1980s (at least this is widely regarded to be the main root of the scene as we know it today). Crackers started to remove the copy protection of games for fun and competition with other crackers. Instead of just spreading the cracked games, they soon thought about 'labeling' their releases. Modified versions of title screens (saying "cracked by xyz") were soon followed by a more advanced version of showing the cracking/programming skill of a cracker: The crack-intro. Visual effects, music and long text scrollers filled with greetings and scene babbling. Later, cheat modes ("trainers") followed. Of course those kind of activities were (and still are) barely legal, so the crackers used pseudonyms instead of their real names. In case you have no idea how crack-intros looked like, visit http://www.flashtro.com for some accurate flash remakes of older amiga cracktros.

In the late 1980s the legal part of the cracking and warez scene slowly drifted away from the illegal part. Intros became more advanced, (mega-)demos (several advanced intros linked together) appeared. The demoscene was born... sort of. A few individuals are still active in both, demoscene and warez/cracking scene.