This is not a formal chronicle, nor an attempt at perfect historical accuracy, but rather a heartfelt recollection, stitched together from memories spanning over three decades. Like all stories told from memory, it’s coloured with nostalgia, and perhaps a few gaps and fuzzy edges.
So, with all due imperfections and sentimental asides, let me, Tronic of Effect, take you on a walk through time… and share the story of how a floppy disk, a few lines of code, and a spark of curiosity grew into something truly special.
A bit of Tronic related history, and how I stumbled across the scene
Back in the 1980s, I vividly remember my Dad and I walking into WHSmith in Croydon and buying my first home computer, a BBC Micro, he had reserved on the telephone. Very quickly my enthusiasm for computing was ignited! I was busy playing games, a bit of coding in BASIC, and my Dad manually typing in games line by line from home computer magazines; bless him, this took him hours.
I inadvertently got involved in the demoscene while at school around 1985, when I was 8 years old, receiving blip blop music demos that were passed around school on 5.25" floppy disks amongst friends, featuring music demos from famous films and songs such as A-Ha, Axel F, and Madonna. The main swapper at school was a boy called T.D.M. (The Dream Master), and was the first scener, as I know them now, I would have met.
I now realise, these were demos released by a demo group called, Byte the Apple, but I didn’t really appreciate what a demo group was at that time.
The Atari ST history
By the early 1990s, after being seduced by the television adverts, Argos Christmas catalogues, it was time to invest in a new computer. For me the BBC Micro had its day, and software stopped being released, although I do still own the very same computer carefully stored away in my own retro museum. I had played with the Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, and Atari ST computer at friends' houses, but the Atari ST always stood out for me because I loved the sound, colours, and gameplay such as Dungeon Master and Kick Off.
Unfortunately, at about the same time, my Uncle passed away and left me some money, so I sought permission from my parents, and bought my first Atari ST computer with money left to me by my Uncle. I remember walking into Alders in Croydon, England, and picking up, with a great amount of excitement, a brand new, boxed, Atari STFM Discovery Pack!
When I was at senior school, a close friend of mine was in an Amiga-only cracking group called the Alliance, and another friend was in touch with a few Atari ST sceners. The demoscene was slowly but surely closing in on me, ready to recruit me as one of its life-long acolytes! I remember being absolutely blown away by dialing up BBS boards, and telephone based adventure games on my friend's Amiga.
Early releases
Soon after buying my Atari ST, I felt the same enthusiasm I had as a boy when buying the BBC Micro. I bought ST Format and started buying Public Domain demo disks that were highly rated by Wizard PDL in their paper-based catalogues. I remember watching my first Atari ST demo in my bedroom at a very young teenager, The Cuddly Demos by The Carebears. Loving the chip, module music, and sampled sounds, graphics, effects, stories, mini-game, and... well, just everything! I then received some Lost Boys sample disks and was amazed at the realistic sounds coming from my ST. My demo collecting started from there, spending all my pocket money on public domain disks. The joy of receiving disks in the post was what started my rapid disk swapping activities across the world.
The Atari ST symbolised not just my love of the scene, but also my love with music. However, let’s not dwell too long on my first tape cassette purchases from HMV (Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovon... I was a kid, alright?). Fortunately, my music tastes matured pretty quickly, veering into the industrial and electronica territories. It all tied back to that hazy nostalgia I’d feel hearing the Blade Runner soundtrack as a kid, spinning away on my parents’ record player while playing on my BBC Micro. Later on, it was Nine Inch Nails, Front Line Assembly, and the rest of that gloriously dark sonic universe. But my love for music all started with chip tunes from BBC Micro and Atari ST demos - pure magic!
Tronic joins the Atari ST demoscene!
In the 1990s, when I was in my early teens, I started some demo groups as an outlet for my creativity, the earliest I can remember being Lowlife Inc. Starting my Atari ST demoscene legacy as TDM of Lowlife Inc. and recruiting some members through contacts. One member was Omen of Lowlife Inc. who was a school friend, later on another was Mikee belonging to the M.L.P. Mikee and I used to spend long Atari-themed summers together in his parent's house in Taunton, Somerset playing computer games, Kick Off 2 tournaments, compiling disks and demos. Lowlife Inc. soon grew to 15 members, however, thinking back, I suspect a lot of these were made up to make us look bigger than we were (like Cedric [the cactus] that used to grow with me on my window sill – yes, an actual cactus). Lowlife Inc. released 122 or so menu disks but I have very few recollections of compiling these disks and the amateur graphic attempts you can see below!
Full of youthful ego thinking I could do everything better than anyone else, and knew more than anybody else, I opened a PD Library called Tronic PDL, wanting to be bigger and better than other PD Libraries in the UK at the time. When I was a kid, I didn't really know what I was doing with regards to running a business, but what it did ignite the entrepreneurial spirit in me which now thrives in me. I also released some compilations under Tronic PDL.
Subsequently, in later years, I took over Prophecy PD library which was in bike riding distance from my house - I remember the owner, Mr X, showing me some new Dominion (of Awesome and Hotline) coded fullscreen overscan intros for his library disk-based catalogues that have to this day, never seen the light of day - they were quite special.
I accumulated many demoscene contacts through visiting the 16/32 Bit Computer Shows in London in my mid to late teenage years meeting the likes of Sammy Joe of T.L.B., Jeff Minter, Synchron Assembly, and other sceners who congregated. I also wrote to people advertising in the back of Micro Mart looking for Atari ST demo swappers. These swappers became the network of people who used to spread my demoscene releases throughout the scene.
Effect's history
Bringing this story more into relevancy of Effect, now you know a little bit about my history... As mentioned, I was creating compilation disks, much like those created by POV, Impact, Adrenalin UK, and Golden Dawn, under the handle and group Tronic of Tronic PDL.
I was always a very active swapper of PD back in the. Two of these people were Icelandic-based sceners Radium and Blaze, who were in a compact group called R.I.P. (Royal Instant Pudding).
Radium met Baldur when they were 10 years old at a boys football club, and formed R.I.P. when they were 14/15 years old. They both lived in the same city, Reykjavík. Radium would put together the compilations and intros, while Baldur would be the graphists. After a year or so, deciding on which direction the members wanted to take, R.I.P. naturally came to an end and they formed Effect with new member Wire 2.69, who was one of Radium’s swapper contacts, and Baldur changed his handle to Blaze.
"...it's been a lifetime ago. I met Blaze when we were 10 years old. We formed Royal Instant Pudding (RIP) with Wire in our teens, 14/15 years old. I used to have a lot of pen pals abroad so I think I met Wire that way, in any case we all formed RIP together, made few disks and then formed Effect probably a year later. I met Blaze playing football actually. I can´t really remember why we changed the name [from RIP - ed], it was probably just some logo reason. Making RIP logos probably takes more time than making Effect logos 😉 In any case we just wanted another name. RIP was sort of our testing ground. We did a lot of various stuff. With Effect we knew more what we wanted to do and how to proceed.", Radium 2025
Other members joined, including Baggio (of Wildfire fame), who invited NervE to join as he felt was a good fit with the group. Unfortunately, NervE did not release anything official under Effect but was in regular contact with Blaze, and did share some sine dister routines.
Radium and I think we got in touch through my Tronic PDL contact home address I used to plaster over a lot of my releases. At this time I was compiling the Tronic PDL demo disks. Radium asked me to join Effect, so I stopped compiling these disks and started the Industrially Safe Demo Disk series. Named after my love of the music genre, and a feeling of them being “hard hitting” on the scene, I felt at the time rather suitable. These were compilation disks containing the latest intros, demos, cracktros, etc compiled onto one disk with an intro and sub-menu, packed to an inch of their lives. The amount of hours I used to watch Atomik Packer packing up files, and single parting productions....
Effect was only ever active on the Atari ST, and was not on any other platform. Blaze had an Amiga and used this to create some graphics. We were all die-hard Atari ST users, so we shouldn't be confused with Effect on the Amiga, or any other platforms for that matter.
The intros I put together were average, at best, but I had fun doing them, and enjoyed the involvement this gave me on the demoscene. Icelandic Effect members would also release disks independently to my releases, such as module disks, music modules, and compilation disks. Blaze would help me with Effect logos, crafted on his Atari or Amiga, and I would use these on the Effect Industrially Safe Demo Disks, and other releases.
I would also have a stab demos, such as the Tempest 2000 music demo, and some awful releases not worth noting here. I asked Sinbad to join the Effect group. Sinbad is now living in Australia, and not involved in the scene at all. Wizard of Effect joined and he also set up a PD Library, and started to release his own compilations. There was even an Effect Finland who would put together their own compilation disks - they would code their own intros in GFA Basic with in-line assembly, which was great to watch as this craft evolved along the months. There was never really any cohesion with the members of Effect. At no time did we all work on something, there were always individual activities.
IRC, now IRL, London meets
Arranged in the years of 1997 and 1998, mostly UK-based Atari ST demosceners used to meet in London arranged via IRC on the #atari channel. These quickly became very regular, even monthly, with more and more people joining the party each Saturday. The core in-person attendees were Gridda of Effect (my sister), Felice, CiH, Mug UK, Sinbad of Effect, Wizard of Effect, Ade, Pop, myself, and even friends of those attending because they wanted to see London, and meet new people.
These gatherings were rather reminiscent of the recent Buxton Bytes party. Like-minded, Atari enthusiastic hanging out, and just having fun! No pressure to release, no ego, no bear battering, no dramas – just fun! We arranged about 10 of these meet ups.
Effect UK (as I would unofficially name it), would talk about demos, intros, and ideas for releases at these gatherings. Some worked their way onto the scene, and others were never started. It was a very special time, putting faces to handles from the #atari IRC channel. Long-term friendships were born, and mean a great deal to me.
While the in-person meets up were becoming a regular thing, they stemmed from chats and online friendships built on the #atari and #atariscene IRC channels. Notably, Effect also had its own IRC channel where the online-enabled members of the group would congregate, and hangout. Talking about computing, and every day life. Nerve was telling me only this week about the chats we used to have on the #effect channel; it's amazing what you forget, but as soon as we started talking about it I remembered so much! A lot of us were still at school then; crazy to think, looking back! Pyroman, Nerve, Gridda, Sinbad, Babydee, Carbon, Radium, and others, including myself would all congregate on IRC.
The beginning of an end?
Slowly but surely we all got older with real life responsibilities like jobs, and various more adult themed activities, such as going to the pub, clubbing, and girlfriends took over, and Atari fell by the wayside. At the same time, the Icelandic guys in Effect gradually lost momentum and gravitated away from the scene entirely. The IRC meets slowly but surely stopped.
However, I did keep going, I was interested, I was still in love, possibly unhealthily at this stage. But, I kept releasing the Industrially Safe Demo Disks without much support, or seeming interest from the scene. Without the internet, I lost touch with Radium, and Blaze until the days of Facebook, and at that point we regained sporadic contact, and still do to this day.
Sinbad was producing some slideshows and demos in STOS, and I asked him to join Effect. He would continue his activities under in Effect but without any involvement of other members. As you can see, the Effect family was quite disjointed in its approach to releasing productions – this was a big difference to today’s demoscene. We didn’t meet up, we didn’t go to demo parties, we didn’t even speak, hell we didn’t even know what we looked or sounded like! Everything was done over snail mail, and we lived hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of miles away from each other. At the time, I did not have the funds to travel, either, and was one of the reasons I never attended demo parties.
So, this started the beginning of the end-ish. In 1997, I bought my first PC as did friends, and a lot of my contacts had disappeared, and I left the scene, so it seemed to me, at the time, a natural gravitation, compounded by the frustrations of wanting to code in 68000 on the Atari ST but never really grasping the concept of demo coding. I had a stab at creating a very simple web page with some free web space I had available with my Demon Internet dial-up subscription. I developed this on my new PC set up, and got my hands dirty with HTML and CSS. Then started playing FPSs like Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, and Wolfenstein 3D.
Still coding on the Atari ST at this time, I attempted to put together a megademo called, Awaiting the Seduction, but this only really got to a point where I had a few concept screens I had bolted together. At this point, no other members of Effect were involved, and it was very much an isolated, desperate attempt at a big release. I lost interest, and it was never released. The source code has also been long lost.
Our last Effect releases in this era were Industrially Safe Demo Disk #34, Ninistral Modules Disk #5, an unfinished Elite intro, slideshow demos by Sinbad of Effect, and a Text Compilation by Effect Finland. Radium composed some music for an unreleased Falcon game called, Offworld.
That concluded Effect in the 1990s, and 2000s.
The demoscene comes calling
For me the demoscene was a dormant previous life while I pursued my career, relationships, home renovations, and life activities and hobbies. However, in 2014 after a break of 17 years, now happy, content, married, with a good job and career, something felt missing.... One evening with a bottle of wine, I started to watch old demos on YouTube, discovered Demozoo and Pouet, which lead me down a rabbit hole of watching new, and old, demos, reconnecting with a lot of old friends, and sceners over Facebook the love was slowly reignited!
Nostalgia is a strong unparalleled evocative emotion!
Effect is reignited, like a phoenix from the smoke of ageing capacitors!
A several years prior to any form of release, Lotek Style was convincing me to release a missing Industrially Safe Demo Disk #31. This number was missing as Effect Finland were supposed to release this compact back in the 1990s but quit the scene at the same time, so it never happened. So, you've Lotek Style to thank for Effect returning.
Discovering the new PC-based tools the 21st Century had to offer, the process of creating these disks was, not only streamlined and faster (with utilities such as STeem, Visual Code, VASM, and UPX), but I soon felt the love I had for the scene - albeit dormant, it was still alive, it was still there, it had never really gone!
I wanted to return, I wanted to contribute, I wanted to be involved in the demoscene once again.... but what was I coming back to, what would Effect mean, would it mean anything? So with that in the back of my mind, I did some research and decided to visit the Silly Venture Demo Party in Gdansk in 2014 with the aim of releasing the compilation there and submitting a surprise entry into the 96Kb intro category. "Let's see what happens", I thought! Grey put me in touch with Ukko, who helped me code an intro for the missing Industrially Safe #31 demo disk, and also did a very cool Effect logo, and font, as a bonus. Spaz of TLB also contributed an unused opening Star Wars-themed graphic.
By this point, my interest, and my love for the Atari ST demoscene was well and truly reignited, especially after visiting so many cool and enthusiastic people at the Silly Venture Demo Party.
After the release of Industrially Safe Demo Disk #31 in 2014, Bod of ex-STAX joined Effect. Bod got to work and started sending me some intros to use on future Industrially Safe Demo Disks. I continued to try and learn 68000, with some success, mostly failures as seems to be the norm, but still not to a level where I could release my own intros – frustrations felt to this day.
Throughout 2014 to 2016, Bod and I worked together on the intros, while I worked on the compilation work, with Samurai joining to pixel graphics.
In 2015, I asked Senser to join Effect as an ASCII artist, Samurai as a graphists, and Xrwwr joined as our musician composing some original tunes.
After great fun and some lovely, enjoyable releases, in 2016 we received some very sad news that Bod had passed away peacefully in his sleep. We were all very saddened by this news. After knowing each other since the 1990s and swapping, I did only met Bod in person once at STNICCC demo party in Gouda, 2015. After his passing, we decided to release a multi-part demo called Gave It a Try in his memory at the Outline Demo Part, 2017. The inspiration of the title for the demo was from Mad Max’s CD, Give It a Try. Bod is still greatly missed to this day.
In 2017, Black joined Effect, as did Pandafox of now-HMD. Unfortunately, this did not work out and they both departed the group favouring to do solo releases, and releases through other groups.
LFEE’s friend, Anth, joined Effect as an Atari ST coder who had experience in Amiga coding, and 68000, so it didn't take him long to get to grips with coding. Anth and I met each other several times when I visited Newcastle, and he was excited to join Effect.
Anth and I worked together on Gave It a Try demo and a release for Silly Venture 2017 called Try Harder, which was meant to be a Part 2 for Gave It a Try. Anth’s contribution to the demo is pictured above featuring a 512 colours per line logo by Pandafox with a scroll effect in the background. He also coded a real time wireframe of the iconic Anonymous mask, pictured below. Then…another great shock shook the scene and Effect with Anth suddenly passing in August 2018. I'd rather not go into any more detail about this, suffice to say, it was a great shock and I never really felt like I got to know him for long enough.
After some months had passed, we considered Effect’s future. What should we do now? We did not have a coder, I wasn’t able to step up to the level required to release, and the other members possibly felt let down, wondering at least, by lack of releases.
MotionRide (not documented) and Dyno of HMD briefly joined Effect as a musician and coder respectively, but this did not work out either and both departed. We are not quite sure why it didn’t work out, it’s just one of those things that happened. Perhaps they were a bit too keen to accept the offer without thinking things through?
Then out of the blue, Bod’s brother got in touch with me and offered to send me Bod’s disk collection. I welcomed this to archive the disks for the scene, as an active archivist, and also received some unreleased source code, intros, and even an unreleased megademo.
This megademo was quickly imaged and released to the scene on Demozoo. The other source code was adapted to continue releasing Effect productions in a form, but this did not seem sustainable, and even questionable in terms of what Effect was at that time. Best intentions from me were always at the forefront of my mind, and I hope that was clear.
Then in 2018, I remember vividly watching I’ve Quit by a scener called Tom. The demo was fresh, fun, exciting, and oozed style. This year could have been the final curtain for Effect; however, I did wonder if Tom wanted to join Effect and be involved in our releases. Amazingly, and surprisingly, Tom accepted and we excitedly started work on our first release, Do Old School Intros Possess Artistic Credibility, to be released at Silly Venture in 2019. Bod, Jade, Xrwwr, and myself were also all involved in one way or another in this release.
It really felt like Effect was re-born, with new energy and excitement injected by Tom, and the other members.
In 2018 releases seem to gain momentum. Jade joined Effect and started to produce some really awesome pixel graphics for our releases.
In 2020, a new musician joined the Atari demoscene producing some awesome first tracks, using gwEm’s amazing chip tracker maxYMizer. The new musician was Proto of Effect and he worked with Tom to release a truly stunning music demo called, YMphibian, featuring most of his new tracks.
Proto has since stopped activity on any Atari ST releases but we remain in contact on Facebook – who knows what the future may bring! We've learnt that much by now, surely! :)
Effect's member list!
Talking members, we have had a lot of them in the past! Let’s try and break down the entire multinational Effect member list. Some members of Disney World also joined Effect but never contributed to Effect releases:
- Amblin - Iceland - Compilation.
- Anth - England - Coder.
- Art - Unknown - No contribution.
- BabyDee - England - Music.
- Baggio - Sweden - Coder, and Music.
- Black - England - Coder, and Music.
- Bod - England - Coder, and Graphics.
- Bozox - Unknown - Graphics.
- Carbon - England - Compilations.
- Control 3 - Unknown - No contribution.
- Cybersmurf - Iceland - No contribution.
- Gridda - England - Mascot (Tronic’s sister).
- Hazza - England - Swapper.
- Illuminoid Assassin - Unknown - No contribution.
- Jade - Germany - Graphics, and Design.
- Kitcat - Iceland - No contribution.
- Lawyer - Unknown - Compilation.
- Mac Error - England - Compilation.
- Mikee - England - Music, Graphics, and Compilation.
- Nerve - Norway - Coder.
- Nose - Iceland - Mascot (Baldur’s cat).
- Oedipus/Wire - Iceland - Music.
- Pandafox - France - Graphics.
- Proto - Portugal - Music, and Graphics.
- Pyroman - Sweden - Graphics.
- Radium - Iceland - Music, and Compilation.
- Senser - France - Graphics.
- Sinbad - England - Coder, and Compilation.
- Tom - England - Coder.
- Tronic - England - Coder, Compilation, and Archivist.
- Trantic - Finland - Coder, and Compilation.
- Wizard - England - Compilation.
- Xrwwr - Netherlands - Music.
As of today, the current members of Effect:
- Jade – Graphics, and Design.
- Samurai – Graphics, and Design.
- Senser – ASCII Art and Graphics.
- Tom Kito – Coder.
- Tronic – Coder, Graphics, and Compilations.
- Xrwwr – Music.
Radium was always considered the leader of Effect, but since his departure from the scene and me taking over the group, as such, I strongly felt Effect would have no leader and a totally linear heirarchy, but aiming towards a common demo idea, goal, or release/s. We make sure we all work together when we are releasing a production, without any surprise releases like the old days. No longer are we the old Effect that would work independently. If you’re not going to work together in a team, why even join a demo group?
Effect's group family
Digging a little deeper into group connections, the demo group Sublime was born in 1995, consisting of some members of the Effect aimed solely at releasing picture slideshows. We released an intro, and three slideshow demos; Manga Desires, Dzhopa Dream Pictro, and The Cindy Crawford Experience. We decided to stop productions in 1996, and retire the group - we felt that we had been there and done that now. My handle in Sublime was Locum, the other members kept their handles. Acid from the Blue Boys was also involved and supplied some code routines for me to use in the intros; he was always very supportive.
Effect Finland formed their own group called Depression and continued to release up until 1999. Formed of Finnish members, and me as an honorary member. There is a rumour I was Trantic of Effect; I can assure you, we were two separate people.
Personally, I was involved in other demo groups, such as Elite, Arsenic, Checkpoint, Density, Kuba, and Triple Element. Some of these involvements and memories really are lost in time, and I do not have much recollection. I think Triple Element was a record label that BabyDee and I started, with Kuba being a dedicated music demo group with all original content, Arsenic a demo group based in France, and Checkpoint and Elite I never really contributed to due to lack of time, and at the time, motivation.
Effect as we are today
Effect’s latest release, in March 2025, was a fake cracktro for the Fate: Gates of Dawn game released at the Buxton Bytes party. Satirically, the game has never been cracked on the Atari ST, so we felt a good fit for a fate cracktro. This intro was coded by Tom of Effect, with some guest surprise graphics by TiNKer. I got my hand into some music ripping again with the aim to help contribute to the SNDH library and to get back into coding and debugging; maybe there is an intro in me yet!
Since Effect’s return in December 2014 we have released 34 productions, covering a mixture of Industrially Safe Demo Disks, a sprite record entry, intros, and multi-part demos, not to mention chip music, modules, graphics, logos, fonts, and pictures.
Effect’s existence is now very…. fluid – we may or may not release again, and we may or may not be back...
Our motto is, "Everything we do, we do for fun" :)
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