ZX Spectrum demos

ZX Spectrum demos are demos made for the ZX Spectrum and compatible computers. The demo scene on the Spectrum can probably be traced back to Castor Cracking Group, The Lords and a few other groups and individuals back in 1986. The ZX Spectrum demo scene was slow to start, but it started to rise in the late 1980s, most noticeably in Eastern Europe and southern Europe. Some demos were also released with magazines on cover tapes.

Although there are many demos made for the 48K Spectrums, most current Spectrum demos require the additional features found in the Spectrum 128K, that is, 128 KiB of RAM and the AY-3-8912 sound chip. Also, many demos have been designed to run from a floppy disk rather than a cassette tape.

In many eastern European countries, the various Spectrum clones used to be more common than the original models, a fact that also reflects in the choices of hardware among the demoscene. For example, on most Russian demoscene events, the standard "compo Spectrum" is the Pentagon 128 with a floppy disk drive. Since there are considerable technical differences between the Pentagon and the original Spectrum, particularly in the video timing, there are also many demos that require a Pentagon to run properly.

In the former Soviet Union and Eastern/Central Europe, the ZX Spectrum often has a cult status similar to the Commodore 64 in the Western Europe: it was the most popular 8-bit homecomputer and also the first computer for many computer and demoscene enthusiasts. Therefore, whereas many major Western European demo parties organize demo, music and graphics competitions for the Commodore 64, the parties in the east often have the corresponding ZX Spectrum competitions instead.

The earliest demos were simple music players with music ripped from games and perhaps simple effects or text scrollers. Many scrolltext may contain rude words. Many later demos feature so-called 'multicolor' effects (changing the color attributes of the ZX Spectrum's display configuration of 768 character blocks), which have to be fixed to a specific ZX Spectrum model. Megademos, demos with more content, usually split into several parts, appeared in the beginning of 90's, with the advent of the The Lyra II by ESI. Most of the demos since 1996 have been "trackmos" (effects fixed to music), often featuring 3D objects, sometimes in low resolutions, to achieve more colours.

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