Demoscene in Belarus

by Sergei Dubarev aka H. A.

Abstract

First of all, try to find a world geographical map and point with a finger into an area somewhere between Poland, Russia and the Ukraine. No doubt, you will get into Belarus. (It's for those folks who don't know where the country is placed. ;-)) Actually, our land is a crazy mix of things that have remained unchanged since the days of Soviet Union and those that have appeared in the last couple of years. The appearance of demoscene is one of the new events that we're having here.

The Scene

Of course our scene is quite a small circle of people. We have no e-mag at the moment; the information on new and existing groups is often poor and incomplete. The situation was better somewhere in the period of 1995 to 1998, i.e. before the collapse of the ZX Spectrum (yes, it was very popular here while in the rest of Europe it was almost gone). But even now some Speccy guys are trying to do something for the scene. As much as the PC part of scene is concerned, it started to develop in the last three years and there were even some really pretty things from those people - intros (including those made using Flash technology), graphics and soundtracks. It's sad to say but it seems to me that the Amiga scene is almost dead here. In the last two years I've heard just numerous MOD tunes from "Amigians". Some activity was also detected at the GameBoy and Sony PSX platforms although these cannot be considered "real" computers. ;-)

"Mags" and "Papers"

This area was and still is occupied by the ZX Spectrum completely. A few years ago, when Speccy was at its top, each scene group tried to produce at least one e-paper. ;-) We even had two issues of the ZX Element e-mag from ZX Legion (the third one was almost ready and then left unpublished). The only real e-paper that exists today is Body produced by the Smokers. I've heard something about a new Target e-paper from Savers Alliance but I've never read it. A huge collection of this "e-stuff" can be found at the Virtual TR-DOS Archive maintained by Paul Pavlov/Psycho. And yep, it's all in Russian language. ;-)

Boards

The only Speccy BBS that is online from time to time is Brom's Chemical BBS. There was a great number of PC systems but nowadays, with the impact of the WWW, their quantity significantly decreased. The only Amiga-based BBS I've heard about was AmigaCity maintained by Denis Yoniss, as far as I can remember. It went offline a couple years ago.

Teams and Works

Most of our scene groups (especially ZX Spectrum ones) started with "cracktros". Some of them were crap, some not... Anyway, it's not so interesting. After the age of crack came the age of demos and games. And again, ZX Spectrum platform was the leader. Sex Xonix by Tankard, Mist by R-Age/ZX Legion, Kolobok Zoom by Fatality/Asphyxia, White Eagle by Fatality, C.H.I.F., Technodrom by Real Software, Civilization (demo version), ClickMania (the Speccy version of Clickomania for the PC platform) by Optical Brothers and the last one - Pussy by Fatality - these are the best of our Speccy games.

Of course, there were some more games but I can't remember them all and again, there was a lot of crap. Fatality Team (later it became FreeArt) produced cool arcades and puzzles. They were also active on GameBoy and PSX, with such pretty ones as MetalHeadz, FireGear, MIG-21 and some simple intros. Their works can be downloaded from The Virtual TR-DOS archive and FreeArt homepage, and (maybe) from numerous Speccy file archives on the net (see the Links section below).

The CoolSoft Team produces good PC games. The only problem is that most of them are shareware.

As far as PC music is concerned, there are two leading music teams in Belarus: The Psycho Team and FishBone. Soundtracks by DJ MoHaX, DJ Freax, DJ Psych, DJ Baz0fft of Psycho, Z0rg and Serg'ant of FishBone often take first places in Belarusian and Russian parties.

DJ MoHaX also managed to win at Spoletium'2000 in Spoleto, Italy with his Amiga MOD track called "Disco". It's interesting to know that at Spoletium 4 which took place on November 24-25, 2001, he won again with another MOD track “Multyjazz”.

There are a couple of ZX Spectrum musicians who are still in the scene (Fatal Snipe/Fenomen/Psycho, Equator/PHD, Midnight/Ellipse and some more people I can't remember right now). It sad to say that Mast/FreeArt has left the scene. He composed soundtracks for a huge amount of scene stuff. His last Speccy tracks were presented at the Millennium'1901 Demoparty. Now he is “at the world of big business”. ;-)

FishBone also produces nice Flash intros. You can download them from their site (see links below).

The "real" PC intros are developed by Fenomen/Psycho. Their "Blur in Motion" and "Fusion" 64Ks took first places at Millennium'1900 and Millennium'1901 demoparties, respectively.

The leader in Speccy demomaking was RUSH (ex-Dream Makers Software). Their last work was called "Brain Surgery" and it was a really cool thing. One more interesting Speccy demo is "Condommed" by E-mage (now this group is obsolete).

Nice PC graphics is also available. (Here are two ones - "The Way Home" by Y2R and "Wallpaper" by Hanz/Psycho).

Kaz/Psycho made a lot of graphics on Speccy and Amiga. He also created some pixels for the "Millennium Photo Gallery" presentation by The Psycho Team. (This presentation also includes four music tracks from Psycho's DJs).

"Swappers"

There were lots of software swappers in the days of Speccy. The only one person who collects and swaps demoscene stuff in huge amounts I know today is Kaz/Psycho. He can even burn a CD for you for a couple of beers. ;-)

Parties

The first attempt to organize a demo party in Belarus was made by Psycho Team (it was Millennium'1900). They made the second attempt - a year later - and it was called Millennium'1901. All the info on these ones, as well as on forthcoming Millennium'1902, can be found in the party site.

I don't know if we really need more than one parties in our small country per year but... FishBone announced their Twilight party not so long ago. Let's see what this one will be.

Links

Scenosaurus
Virtual TR-DOS Archive
The Psycho Team
FishBone
FreeArt
Twilight Demoparty
CoolSoft Team
Optical Brothers

Final Words of Wisdom

So, that's what the Belarusian demoscene looks like in brief. Maybe I've forgotten some names or events... Nothing is perfect, and my memory is not perfect, either. ;-)

Sergei Dubarev aka H. A.