It's been thirty years since the birth of the Atari ST series, with something called a 'demo scene' going almost as long as the hardware. The hardware itself still exists in 2015, it has not been returned to the landfill of obscurity, with interest in it and emulated versions as keen as ever.

Nor does it seem that the 'demo scene' side of things has returned to dust either. This is almost in spite of the various predictions of its demise, often made with misplaced confidence on a number of occasions.

This article is their story.

The original scene, aka the 'old school', started from the mid-eighties and thrived, up to the early nineties. We all grew up on the latest epics from The Exceptions, The Care Bears, The Lost Boys, Delta Force, Level 16, Omega, and many many more.

We felt the first glimmerings of a sense of losing when 'Ooh Crikey Wot a Scorcher' was released in 1991. This was announced as The Lost Boys final adventure into demo creation. They were going to go on to bigger and better things and wanted to show a more game developer friendly face. Indeed, this is what more or less happened. At about this sort of time period, a lot of the then current 'names' on the Atari scene were seriously reconsidering their next moves as well.

The first 'Death of the Scene' was officially pronounced by New Mode of Delta Force in Maggie 10. In his view, the 'scene always sucked' in comparison with the Amiga etc. There being little original input and lots of imitation, the Atari ST demo scene would shortly die an unlamented death, and then was going to be replaced with a new and upcoming Atari Falcon scene. This would include elite worthy members of the old scene and even some Amiga people were going to come on board.

So what actually happened? The expected Falcon 030 scene did arrive, but not necessarily with many of the old stars of the recent past. Delta Force themselves dropped spoilers about new productions, but never came through with anything. After an initial toe in the water from the likes of Sanity and The Respectables, neither did any of the old crews to any great extent.

However, a number of newly arrived demo groups took over. Some of these people were brand new, others came from starting out as the next generation on the older ST hardware, and broke through to greater fame on the Falcon.

It seemed that the ST side of things was in a terminal decline. We even had an official 'Act of Remembrance' demo when 'Froggies over the Fence' was released. For that period, the Atari ST did fade a bit into the background, but was not completely gone from our screens.

But it was only a matter of time before the grim reaper came calling again. The second 'death' came with a shaking out of many of the original Falcon scene people after 1995 and 1996. The original Falcon scene arguably hit its peak in 1995 at the Fried Bits 3 party. After then, we never quite got the same pushing back of boundaries, at least not for a little while there.

To put this into a broader context, the overall direction of Atari related activity was becoming less clear. With the final demise of the parent company, who weren't playing anymore. This was also a period when the supportive print media and commercial support was in its final death throes. (Yes I am being a bit UK-specific here, but the trend was downward elsewhere in Europe too.)

We stumbled on and things recovered a bit. We next encountered a 'Goodbye and thanks for all the prods' state of mind in the late nineties. There was the 'Poets of Decay' period from some parts of the scene, who hit a depressive phase and more or less proclaimed 'Est is todt!' Happily, they got over that one.

At a 10th anniversary version of the STNICCC in the year 2000, the final regular issue of Maggie was released. It was briefly considered by one R.Karsmakers, that it might be lights out time for the Atari demo scene, if their major diskmag was ending. So this article might be a case of "Hah! in your face, you gouda munching cloggie person!"

Happily, this was most certainly not THE END. The 'Undeath' or revival of the Atari ST demo scene showed glimmerings for a while before, but really burst forth from its crypt of premature assertions at the Error in Line party in Easter 1999. The general health of the Atari ST and in particular the Atari STE demo scene has been much better since then.

On the other hand, we did get an unannounced quiet fading down of Atari Falcon activity, especially from the mid 2000's. A feeling of drift away from it took root. There was accelerated hardware, but after initial interest, this did not quite get a critical mass for sustained releases.

The danger is not so much from the unlikely event of a mass conscious decision to quit a specific niche platform, it is more from a quiet and imperceptible drift away for various reasons. It may take something exceptional to halt and reverse that trend. We were lucky enough to get this, with the Sillyventure party series during the early 2010's. This managed to drag up the level of interest by the scruff of neck. Even better, it took a holistic 'all platforms' approach, from the VCS to the Jaguar. Of course this benefited all the major computers computers, even the Falcon and CT60 were showing a healthy set of releases by the end of 2014.

So, to bring us right up to date, where are we going from here? The future prospects are uncertain, but we can say with a degree of confidence that there is most definitely still interest and intent. A good Atari party for the 2016 period really would not go amiss either.

In the past, people have gone away from their scenish activities for diverse reasons such as family and career, but some of them have since returned. Doug Little being the most high profile example of this. Even some fine chaps from other platforms have been tempted over, such as Britelite and the Genesis Project, of Elefantastic demo fame.

We may even go so far to ask, what is the 'death of the scene' anyway? A wise man currently living in Canada, Mr Pink, once said that even if there is only a very small number of people with active intent and releasing productions, then there is still a living demo scene by this definition.

As we stated a bit earlier in this article, leaving a scene isn't generally a conscious decision on the part of most people, with a cease-by date written in letters of fire and a period beforehand to set their scene affairs in order.

Rather, with the amount of unreleased stuff, half finished projects and restarted stuff coming through later on, it seems that quite often, circumstances outside of people's control unexpectedly catches up with them even right in the middle of a fertile creative process.

There is the odd high-profile exception, with Tat of Avena bailing out due to a series of arguments. But that was whilst he was becoming a coding guru for Sony, so who knows whether what could have happened would have been that much different?

There is also the not uncommon situation where you can get a tailing-off of interest, when someone may feel that they have given all they have to offer, and have no further interest in the scene. This tends to be a gradual and fitful process too.

So we must not get complacent. It is possible for a platform specific demo scene to die quickly. The Acorn Archimedes and RISC PC scene up to 1998 was capable of anything the others could do, even high end Amiga's and PeeCees. After 1998, with the failure of their parent company Acorn, there was nothing but empty cold void.

One last thing that we should all now seriously consider. With advancing years as people are now reaching middle age, there is the increasing likelihood of the actual physical death of individual people to cause a 'dying of the scene'. I fully expect Pouet.net to be running a permanent and ongoing obituaries thread before too long!

This is a problem for the demo scene as a whole, not just the Atari scene. If we don't recruit new and younger followers and creators, how will we secure our legacy?

And on that thought, I'll leave this here.

CiH - For Maggie 25th Anniversary issue - May 2015.

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