After Future Crew brought respectability
to the PC scene with Second Reality,
the popularity of PC as a demo platform
started to grow
The rapid evolution of the PC hardware
brought a steady stream of
new possibilities to programmers
The long-standing Finnish demogroup Komplex
who were most active during the mid 90's
are best remembered of their 3D graphics expertise
and sense of style
I got to know the demoscene in 1988
when a fellow called Jukka O. Kauppinen
walked through my door
I lived in the Lahti ghetto at that time.
A friend of mine also lived in the same block,
we had some Commodore 64 -related hobbies.
I was also making a game with one other friend,
and then Jukka O. Kauppinen arrived,
with a bag full of disks with him.
At that point I found out what the demoscene is
and that's how my story began.
In 1988 I was at my first demoparty.
The next few years I was a member of Byterapers,
and then in 1990 I joined Komplex.
They are a group from Lahti - my hometown -
and therefore we have a bit more
in common with each other
I'm still active in the same group.
We've done our deal of odd and interesting things,
and still try to continue doing them.
In Komplex it's always pretty much been so that
more than half of the time
we're playing around with something new
and if we run across new technology
- no matter what exactly -
we'll see what we can do with that technology.
And that's one reason to keep making those demos.
One of the greatest examples of
the rapidly evolving 3D capacity
was seen in Dope,
Komplex's PC demo from 1994
which was made by the group's core members:
Jugi and programmer JMagic
Dope is legendary demo in the sense that
it created a 'larger-than-life'
atmosphere around itself
with a bit of exaggeration, understandably.
But it came across as more than it actually was
and that's why it's left an impression
on many people.
The exaggeration claim refers to the
various outlandish 'facts' displayed in the demo
but this doesn't diminish Dope's influence
among PC demos.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
At that time when Dope came around
in the spring of 1995.
As an effect overload
it was very stylish and cool
even with all the exaggeration
and lying to the audience
which are part of the deal, I'd say.
Making Dope took a week's worth of intense work.
I can't remember how long we did that,
but the final stretch was tough.
We were without sleep for three days.
The demo was supposed to be entered to
a demoparty in Norway.
Where I then went with my girlfriend
to begin our Interrail trip
I hadn't slept for three days and we got
to the party where we were the only Finns present.
It was an interesting trip. And long.
The demo competition was also very exciting.
The first time they showed the demo,
it ran at half speed.
There were other problems too,
there was some confusion with vote counting
and one of the party organizers was
an older Danish gentleman,
who apparently took off with all the party's money.
We won the competition, and thankfully there were
some leftover funds from Coca-Cola sales,
so the other main organizer took a quick
withdrawal and awarded us 15000 Norwegian kronor.
So that became the main prize.
In addition for its 3D mastery,
Dope is also remembered for its remarkable,
non-mainstream soundtrack
The first thing that comes to mind from Dope
is the soundtrack,
which is an extremely fine piece of music
and does its part in raising the demo to legendary status
I didn't think it at the time
that the soundtrack I made would become
a fundamental block of the whole demo.
In Dope, editing wasn't that much of a factor,
as the demo is more of a slideshow of effects
that we tried to sync with the music a bit, that's all.
And we had technical problems too.
About making the Dope soundtrack,
it's a combination of old chord progressions
composed in a very manual way
Of course there are also clear influences,
such as the Galactica theme, or Star Wars soundtrack.
You know, that kind of pompous film soundtrack theme.
And then some celtic melodies mixed in.
That's where the ideas came from.
Evolving 3D performance started to show
in Amiga AGA demos
that had a stronger visual identity 
than their PC contemporaries in the mid 90's.
At the same time the tables were turned so, that
Amiga became the underdog in 3D graphics
when PC performance increased.
ZIF by the Finnish group Parallax won
the Assembly Amiga demo competition in 1995.
ZIF showed that Amiga can do the same things
that faster PC's could.
It was a really good demo at its time.
ZIF was very current.
When compared to other demos of its time,
its effects are very modern.
It has the depth tunnel,
some vectors, enviromental mapping
and it ran on a non-turbo Amiga,
although it naturally ran better with turbo.
Technically, it was a very high quality production
and it represents the era it was made in well.
A year later, Amiga's strong presence
in Assembly continued.
This time also by a Finnish demogroup,
Virtual Dreams.
Virtual Dreams began from a scenegroup
called The Black Robes,
which included Juha Lainemaa, Dr. Skull,
me, Jarkko Salminen, a.k.a. Jaco,
and a bunch of other local guys.
In the end, The Black Robes focused more
on partying instead of getting demos done
So we rounded up the so-called active members,
and split off to form a new group,
which became Virtual Dreams.
I think we released the first
Virtual Dreams demo in 1992.
The final demo by Virtual Dreams ended up being
Sumea, which won the Amiga demo competition
in Assembly 1996.
From the beginning, Sumea aimed for success
in the competition.
We had done demos for some years at that point,
and at least personally I hadn't won
any demo competitions,
so it was natural for us to go in
with the frame of mind that 
we were going to win in Assembly.
I had piled up a good amount of usable code
for the 3D engine and some filtering stuff.
That was the starting point for the demo.
The biggest inspiration for the project was...
or in fact, we had two stylistical things in mind.
The first was when I saw then recent 3D demos
by Silicon Graphics that had breaking polygons.
There was a rabbit thrown on the floor
with pieces flying all over.
That was one thing we wanted to have in the demo.
The other thing that was a huge inspiration
for me and Jarkko
were the Future Sounds of London music videos
that were on rotation at that time.
Those were the things we were inspired by.
We wanted to make a high-tempo demo.
And striking.
So that the effects and other elements would not
stay on the screen too long.
And the viewer would be left with the impression
that he'd like to see it again.
The music we had ready.
And in a way we 'played' the demo into the music.
But at the last minute, we had to change the music.
Fortunately, the new music fit in too.
Bit by bit, the PC side began to include groups and demos
whose visual style eclipsed what was done
in the Amiga scene.
This led to more creativity in the demoscene,
with some demos even avoiding 3D features.
