The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes itself on producing demos, non-interactive audio-visual presentations, which are run real-time on a computer. The main aim of a demo is to show off better programming, artistic and musical skills over other demogroups.

The demoscene first appeared during the 8-bit era on computers such as the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, and came to prominence during the rise of the 16/32-bit micros (the Atari ST and the Amiga). In the early years, demos had a strong connection with software cracking. When a cracked program was started, the cracker or his team would take credit via an increasingly impressive-looking graphical introduction called a "crack intro". Later, the making of intros and standalone demos evolved into a new subculture independent of the software piracy scene. Quite a few of the young talents that spent their time "coding" demos and thus gaining in-depth experience programming computer graphics later ended up working in the games industry, whose products they had initially cracked.

Concept

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Prior to the expandability of the IBM PC, every home computer of a given line had identical capabilities. Therefore, the variations among demos created for one computer line were attributed to programming alone. This created a competitive environment in which demoscene groups would try to outperform each other in creating amazing effects.

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