TCB

[leonard]

Tanis, many thanks for your long and complete reply about Nick and Jas. It's really cool to get true history about "living legends" now

Thanks !

[leonard]

I remember one thing that really impressed Nick though. It was Dogue De Mauve's GFA Basic demo. He was very impressed what he managed to do in GFA.

And so I was.... I coded asm demos on Atari because I saw the "ultimate gfa demo" by Ovr. Great rememberance...

[Zappy]

And so I was.... I coded asm demos on Atari because I saw the "ultimate gfa demo" by Ovr. Great rememberance...

I clearly remember making a fool of myself on Rtel, when I refused to believe the Ultimate GFA Demo was really in GFA

Anyway, for me this is crystal-clear: I started coding Atari demos because of (or thanks to?) the Cuddly Demos. Nothing ever blew my mind like this, neither on ST nor on PC later. I had seen enough to realize the world had never seen that before, but I hadn't seen enough not to be impressed anymore already...

I clearly remember the day I received the Cuddly from one of my contacts. I was mainly swapping games at the time, but there was a rising interest for demos around. So, one morning, I opened this letter with the Cuddly disk inside, inserted it in the drive, booted... and still, to this day, I think nothing ever shocked me like that This was so unreal. Complete magic, complete madness. It was like: "look at you, wasting your time swapping lame games while other people are doing this". It started it all for me. It is obvious that I wouldn't be in this country, with this job, with this past, without the Cuddly.

At the time the Cuddly Demos were released, I had no contacts at all in the ST demo scene (I think that word, "scene", didn't even exist. I first heard it on PC ). When we started Holocaust with Elric and a bunch of other guys, we were just kids, fanboys, TCB-wanabees, discussing demos at school, trying to figure out where or how to start. There was a rumor saying the guy who invented the "hardscroll", Nick, was only a 15 years old kid. I am not sure this was very accurate (was it?) but it was very motivating for us, since we were approximately the same age. I found it magical that some kid like us could "beat Steve Bak" at his own game. For years and years it became our one and only obsession: beat Nick

I actually wrote quite a bit in the past, about all those things. I moved to the PC world a long time ago, but never found again the same flame, the same energy, the same passion, the same magical mood, the same feelings. The ST years were just better, and in large parts thanks to TCB.

- Pierre (Zappy/Holocaust)

[sink]

oldschool in force kikou leonard (thk for u work in emulation world) and zappy (hehe rtel tellement de souvenir et de nuit blanche)... Cuddly is like the rsi megademo on amiga , a major production for the scene nothing is comparable. God save TCB

~ siNK / HEMOROIDS (HMD) ~

[jace_stknights]

By the way, where are all the sources, pics and music of this unrelease demo?

Lotsa people around can finish the stuff!!! (hey Leo

So Tanis?

[terence]

i never saw any source from TCB. i think they always kept it and did not want to them to be spread.

[ggn]

i never saw any source from TCB. i think they always kept it and did not want to them to be spread.

I have some TCB source

Check out AN Cool's hompage sometime

George

[jace_stknights]

i never saw any source from TCB. i think they always kept it and did not want to them to be spread.

At the past, "open source" was not so normal. And competition was hard. Now it is time to do it

[lotek_style]

dont share demo-scources! the competition must go on!

[tobe]

As soon as we find competitors

[jazz]

Time to revive the topic.

2009, 20 years after the release of the Cuddly demo, would be a nice year for TCB to release the sadly missing piece to their history. In order to motivate Tanis in hassling even more the coders I've decided to put here some articles (some of them I've posted here before) covering TCB and also their involvement in games or other stuff. Articles are in french but I've tried to summarize what's in there. Big kudos to abandonware magazines for providing me with the scans of these magazines.

http://download.abandonware.fr/magazine ... %20125.jpg

Fist link is an interview with Tanis conducted during the icc2. First questions were about how worked TCB these days, Tanis explaining that TCB member weren't living quite far away from each others but that, despite of that fact, they would see each others every 3 weeks only while they would meet nearly everyday when doing the cuddly demos. Tanis is also explaining what TCB had done since the sowatt demo (mainly involved in games though it is also mentioned that nick is quite good also at watching movies on video tapes ).

The main subject of the interview is of course the new tcb demo : apparently graphists would have been involved quite a lot to make it visualy very appealing and not just technical (tanis hoping for some involment of Gogo in it). Some more precise about the demo : apprently TCB had considered doing a multipart demo but they finally decided to keep on with the tradition of having a main menu. Also each screen would have had an intro and the demo would have showcase Nick's 3D routs and their speed but in a different way from other demos (means no big 3D show I guess).

Last bits of the interview deal with a possible release date (no don't ask) and the views of tcb on the scene in general (overall they felt the competition was harder and that it would be hard to produce something as groundbreaking as the Cuddly demos).

Ok, another bit of article.


http://download.abandonware.fr/magazine ... %20047.jpg

This one mainly covers the arch rivals from tcb (namely sync and omega) where they give insights about their projects. Also you have a guest apperance of An cool.



Now articles extracted from Tilt which was the first gaming magazine in france at that time and had some demoscene articles written by Dogue de mauve.

http://download.abandonware.fr/magazine ... %20047.jpg
http://download.abandonware.fr/magazine ... %20049.jpg

Another interview with Tanis which, of course, deals with their new demo. Sadly Tanis explained that though being nearly finished (apart from some polishing that shouldn't take more than 2 hours) they might not release it because they felt that nobody would be interested in a new tcb demo (how wrong they were really). More details emerge : a few screens (only the very best ones) with lot of different graphics and only soundtrack musics. Also tanis mention the screen where a carebear takes revenge on the lost boys ( mixing 3D with bitmap graphics).


http://download.abandonware.fr/magazine ... %20078.jpg
http://download.abandonware.fr/magazine ... %20079.jpg

The next article covers the Flashback demo from tcb (which is a screen from their megademo actually) and show some of the graphics from the carebears revenge over the lost boys.


An finally an article covering future releases by Eclipse software, including a screenshot of what would have been the second sequel to wings of death :

>http://download.abandonware.fr/magazines/Tilt/tilt_numero093/TILT%20093%20(Septembre%201991)%20-%20Page%20013.jpg


Well, more articles as I find them. In the meantime I hope Tanis (and you guys) will enjoy these bits of history and that TCB manage to finish their demo, that would be awesome really (yes i'm a fanboy).

[Marcer]

Too make things short..

TCB died in early 92.... an coool only action guy hunting for his crap tcb tracker.. thing is TCB was mastering haxxor in the 80's in compo of TEX and TLB code wise.. but.. they made too much action into makin an suxxor tracker into publish.. while even Audio sculpture was kickin harder with Expose...

Enchanted lands.. was the real defeat of an crew called TCB.. last final action on atari.. no questions why.. full power.. non-emulator proof.. heh

well.. power went on. but on wrong platforms.. still some quests unslovied... like M-Demo 2.. Cuddlye Demos 2.. unslovied screens (shouled be at least 6 screens never seeen!!)..

// Marcer

[nativ]

Didn't one of TCB work on The polygon Motorbike game, No Second Prize?

Thanks

[fpgaarcade]

"2009, 20 years after the release of the Cuddly demo"

Blimey, is it really 20 years? I remember being absolutely blown away by the Cuddly demo (it is one of the few floppy disks I still have) and it started me off first coding and then into hardware and now ASIC design. Cuddly is the first demo I will get running on my ST hardware clone.

/Mike

www.fpgaarcade.com
(Strange, and now 20 years later I also live in Stockholm)

[bod/STAX]

Didn't one of TCB work on The polygon Motorbike game, No Second Prize?

Thanks

Well code-wise no - that was down to Chris Jungen. Thorsten Mutchall (gogo) did the gfx though.

[alexh]

If you, or anyone else, ever come across more old articles about Thalion or TCB etc, I would love to see them. I really have no idea what was written about us back then, so seeing things like that is great!

I have lots of reviews of all Thalion games, plus lots of articles (mainly in German) about what went on behind the scenes. Here are a few :

http://thalion.exotica.org.uk/corporate ... 2/cd2.html
http://thalion.exotica.org.uk/corporate ... nticcc.jpg
http://thalion.exotica.org.uk/corporate ... review.jpg

[troed]

Time to revive the topic.

Alright then.

Lost boys ?? Hmm, i've always prefered the swedish maestros : TCB, Sync, Omega and Electra. The finest democrews on Atari IMHO.

I also noticed that some swedish crew-members looked down on AN Cool and called him the "TCB pet" among other degrading things... It is pretty funny that some of these guys (in very respectable groups) were all talk and not much action themselves.

I think we need to remember that we were all teenagers, and that there were a lot of cruel jokes being thrown around between groups. I remember some incredibly embarrassing moments that, looking back at them more than 20 years later, is hard to understand how they even happened. But, AN Cool being an extrovert guy with no qualms boasting about his own abilities of course got his fair share of crap talk In jest.

Redhead of Sync also worked for the same game company. He, however, dropped out of the game making biz completely and is more focused on art. With art, I mean technical installations, such as holographic projections of the human brain and stuff like that. Awfully hard core programming stuff, with cool results.

It's hard not to be amazed at the brain that is Redhead's. Always was, still is He's absolutely found his true calling in digital arts.

This is an interview with him I just pulled randomly off Youtube for those interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QipeduMRWNs

(I met him a few weeks ago and discussed old Atari ST coding tricks. I had read up somewhat beforehand, he just remembered anyway ... )

TCB died in early 92.... an coool only action guy hunting for his crap tcb tracker.. thing is TCB was mastering haxxor in the 80's in compo of TEX and TLB code wise.. but.. they made too much action into makin an suxxor tracker into publish.. while even Audio sculpture was kickin harder with Expose...

Well ... we'd of course agree about Audio Sculpture being the best piece of software ever to hit the ST, but I would commend AN Cool for being quick out the door with his tracker.

http://download.abandonware.fr/magazines/ST%20Magazine/stmagazine_numero050/st%20magazine%20-%20n050%20-%20mars%20avril%201991%20-%20page%20046%20et%20047.jpg

This one mainly covers the arch rivals from tcb (namely sync and omega) where they give insights about their projects.

Thx - I'll pass this on to the other SYNC members and see if anyone of them speak french (I don't) It seems we might've been better at keeping in touch compared to a lot of other crews. Or maybe it's just thanks to Facebook ...

/Red Fox

[jazz]

Wow, thanks for the trip into the memory lane. I will try to translate some of the articles so that you get a better idea of what foolish people in their 20s might have said back then

[Chrischzz]

I really liked An Cool's M-Demo's.
They were bold, maybe technically not brilliant, but very well designed and pretty nice tracks..




Anyway.. has Niklas posted that art yet? Can't see a link..