So what were the very best of the best, of all the releases from Sillyventure past?
I’m back again once more.
We’re in the pre-Sillyventure 2025 Winter Edition anticipation period. ‘Things’ are being made ready for the party, those not quite ready this time around folk are probably getting their excuses in early, respecting the compo entry deadlines, which is nice to see. I thought I’d add to the pre-party excitement by taking a look back at some of the things that transformed our expectations of what the humble Atari was capable of.
There is a fantastically crowded field of entries to select from down the years. I’ve had to think really really hard to narrow it down to the ‘creme de la creme’. In the end, a couple of demos made the cut. Here is their story.
Note:- The following text is my subjective and personal opinion. Of course your mileage may differ, in which case feel free to offer your views in the comments. Also, my selection is somewhat 68K Atari biased. I recall there were at least a couple of Atari XL and 2600 demos which could well have qualified, but it’s my article, with my emotional opinions in play. As I said before, feel free to disagree nicely in the comments below.
STreet Art (SV 2011) 4MB STFM or STE
My first “Did I really see this?” moment came from the 2011 edition of Sillyventure.
This was the first of the ‘new’ generation of SV parties that we attended, having missed out on the previous 2010 edition.
It is safe to say that we weren’t disappointed. An epic competition with a marathon running time and many strong entries featured. It was actually the *third* placed ST demo that got the most jaw-dropping and general checking if we were in the same reality, from me.
STreet Art by BlaBla, Condense and Sector One was a completely fresh take on what could be done with high colour on a stock ST. It may have been the very late hour, it may have been that my brain chemistry had been overstimulated with the procession of very strong entries and vodka already indulged, but watching this really, genuinely, made me think that the likes of the Falcon 030 and Amiga 1200 had been rendered pointless by this new standard in ST high colour effects.
High colour mode on an ST is normally associated with some very pretty, but very still static images. Such as the gorgeous STE specific pictures we got from Zerkman’s picture displayer on the Dune/Sector One winning demo Antiques, which was also showing that evening. With STreetArt, we were getting twisting and tunnels, fading and movement, with all 512 colours not holding back on the frantic motion.
In my way past bedtime 04.00 hours befuddled state, I was wondering if Cyg had found a genuinely missed by everyone else hidden ‘God Mode’ in the stock ST, or if a new and cunning graphics card adaptor had been squeezed under the case?
I went to bed shortly after, woke up too soon, still not sure what I’d seen. Fortunately, Felice had his camcorder at the party, so yes, there was evidence that yes it did really happen and no the evening wasn’t a vodka and fatigue induced hallucination.
Looking at it now, it still holds up well. There are a few rough edges, more noticeable away from the big party screen and there is undoubtedly a lot of coding sleight of hand with fancy colour cycling to get things to where they are. Cyg did follow up with some more adventures in the world of high-colour ST demos. Japan Beauties and Troubles appeared at the 2012 Sommerhack Party. I had some involvement with their next demo, Circus back2STage, which was their first STE specific demo, with a 400 x 200 widescreen. I took this to the Revision 2013 party, insane clowns and all.
The most recent demo was present at Sillyventure 2013, STrange Robots, which developed things a little bit further. None of the sequels had the same shock impact as STreet Art. They couldn’t have done, to be fair, but are decent demos in their own right.
We’ve not heard from Cyg recently, but I had the feeling there was still more to come and more advanced effects being developed. Maybe there still is?
FirST Love (SV2021 SE) - 4 MB STFM
My other choice harks back to the 2021 Summer Edition. It was the first post-COVID Sillyventure party at a live venue. It wasn’t attended by me. That would have to wait for 2022 and the Olivia Star skyscraper party.
I had the pleasure of another party with a strong entry portfolio, even as a lame sofa-scener. You will not be surprised to hear that my other choice for all-time awesomeness is the FirST Love demo, from the Overlanders/Union.
This demo was an outpouring of pent-up creativity and artistry from long time olden golden members of the old timey demo scene from 1990, The Overlanders. They are fondly remembered as one of the mainstays of the early French scene. They are also remembered from an early 1990 era Maggie article detailing a flame war with scene rivals ‘Next’, being described as ‘Overlamers’. Clearly from this release, they are anything but that.
It is hard to describe any single feature of FirST Love which stands out. It’s all goddam perfect!
A lot of demos are technically strong, possibly even setting new standards of excellence, but they dribble to a stop before they get going properly. The main part of this demo gets to nearly thirteen minutes, so has suitably earned its epic label.
Some demos are good overall, maybe even verging on greatness, but there are parts where some of the content is place-holder to fill in an awkward gap. Not a single second is wasted with FirST Love.
Some demos are technically strong, but don’t quite get there, artistically, or are half-finished. If anything lifts FirST Love just that little bit higher than the rest, it could well be the fantastic and consistently smooth artistry closely bonded to pixel perfect effects. And there is the banging tune by Jess, mustn’t forget the musician!
I was gobsmacked, but in a different way to STreet Art. FirST Love was more a case of “This is what the ST is FULLY capable of and the kind of release it deserves!” This will definitely go in my lifetime top three for ST demos.
It does run on a humble 520 STFM, but will need the full 4 Megabytes of RAM. The STE is fine with it too.
This went on to win the 2022 Meteoriks awards, and quite rightly too!
There have been smaller follow-up productions from the members of Overlanders, but nothing further on this scale, yet!
Honourable mention - 8 Runes of Aerillon (2022 Winter Edition) - 14 MB Atari Falcon 030
The Falcon is feeling a little neglected, so I thought I could pop in an honourable mention for a 2022 game preview released by Dune, the 8 Runes of Aerillon.
The game is a classic adventure quest along the lines of the early Falcon release of Ishar. Or it could be compared with the (in)famous PC VGA game Legends of Valour which had a proper 3D engine, which was supposed to come to the Falcon 030, but didn’t. Legends of Valour did get an ST release at least. I remember that someone bodged this to work on a Falcon as well.
The game is building on earlier DSP 3D engine work by Thadoss, from the highly regarded T’ere Rai and Electric Nights Falcon demos, which livened up earlier Sillyventure parties.
The degree of interaction is much more realised than for a bog-standard graphical adventure. There is a lot of effort made with the world building. The graphics are very well drawn, the ambient soundtrack lends itself greatly to the game atmosphere. My feeling for this one was, that “This is the kind of game that the Falcon is fully capable of and deserves!”
It runs with a memory fat (14 MB) Falcon and seems to be happy with 030 flavours of accelerator too.
This is still an unfinished project. There is more to come. Thadoss has been working on other projects since 2022, the refinements for these will be added to 8 Runes of Aerillon, so there will be even more to look forward to.
This did get a Coup de Cour from me on Pouet. These aren’t handed out lightly.
Conclusion.
These are my stand-out “All-time top” releases from the Sillyventure parties. As I said at the start of the article, feel free to add your own views in the comments section. I will also look forward to seeing some of you at the 2025 Winter edition soon.
CiH - For Atariscne.org - Nov 2025.
Comments
Refering to ST/Falcon, I agree that StreetArt was absolutely stunning, as one of those "how is this even possible" moments. I actually remember how AdamK said to me before the compo that there is something unbelievably colorful coming up in the compo. And he was right.
Then there was "Lockup", the final Falcon perfection, and I remember "Muda", an unexpected, powerful demo in just 96kb. Last year "Out a time" was definitely another jawdropping experience, similar to StreetArt, implicating a next level kind of "no way that this is STE" feel (ironically I never got it running on my STE). But as said, there are way too many others, big small, creative, special demos to mention them all.
They would be in a top five selection for Sillyventure 68k releases for sure.
With reference to Out a Time, to run it on real hardware, you have to boot your STE completely clean. even selecting minimal memory usage for your hard disk driver. (Escape key at boot up for HD Driver.)
And of course thanks for your kind words. Ironically for me the SV presentation of our demo was absolutely the worst possible feeling -- it was streamed at terrible frame rate (despite their own requirement to supply full hd video at 50 Hz), presented as the last one after a stream of, erm, okay, let's be diplomatic here, multiple _long_ demos... after that I have decided to never present anything on SV again. :-/
I remember that the videos/beamer constellation could not deliver full framerate, but I think this is true for all entries and in that sense fair again. Also, few beers can help here;)
But seriously, I really see the effort of such a massive compo preparation with that amount of releases and platforms which went absolutely flawless! I can only say hats off for the work of the compo team last year. You have to compromise somewhere, and with this great overall result I prefer this much over what we experienced before.
And to put this into perspective: you should have submitted at EIL party, as we would have downgraded your demo to VHS-quality with now mercy plus would have used a wobbly bed linen as big screen along with a crap beamer. Just look how things evolved for the better.
For me, that was the last straw. SV runs from what, 2010, regularly? If 15 years aren't enough to perfect the technical side, perhaps it isn't just bad luck. Yeah, I'm bitter and pretty disappointed about all of that. And after all this we were nearly blackmailed to finish our demo during Christmas because apparently without releasing a production within two weeks from the party, the world would collapse.
Never again.
Out a Time felt next level STE to me and I didn't notice the presentation issues. I'm sorry to hear you were disappointed with the presentation, but it came across brilliantly to me and I thoroughly enjoyed it.