Phenomena (PHA) was a Swedish

Demogroup Demogroups are teams of demosceners, who make computer based audio-visual works of art known as demos. Demogroups form a subculture collectively known as the demoscene. Groups frequently consist of students, young computer enthusiasts who spend ...

making

Amiga demos Amiga demos are demos created for the Commodore Amiga home computer. A "demo" is a demonstration of the multimedia capabilities of a computer (or more to the point, a demonstration of the skill of the demo's constructors). There was intense riv ...

that was productive during the formative years of the Amiga

Demoscene The demoscene is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visual ...

founded in 1987.

Origins

Phenomena was founded by members of

Triangle A triangle is a polygon with three Edge (geometry), edges and three Vertex (geometry), vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC. In Euclidean geometry, an ...

which was a 3 group co-operation between Crack Force Five, Jetspeed, and

The Gang A gang is a group or society of associates, friends or members of a family with a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over territory in a community and engages, either individually or collectivel ...

. Specifically, the founding members were Avalon and Silmarillion in early 1987, and members from these three groups joined during late 1987 and 1988. A pure demogroup from the start (as distinct from groups that started out cracking

Amiga games __NOTOC__ This is a list of games for the Amiga line of personal computers organised alphabetically by name. See Lists of video games This is a list of all video game lists on Wikipedia, sorted by varying classifications. By platform Acorn * ...

), in April 1988 Phenomena released their first demo, The Star Flight, one of the early demos featuring Soundtracker music and the to-be staple effect of demos, the horizontal starfield effect.

The productive years

In 1989, the member count of Phenomena exploded to where it might grow hard to organize. Among the new members were Megaman, Terminator, and Firefox, who would later work in the Amiga games industry as developer, graphics artist, and musician for major Amiga game developers. But once organized, this also resulted in a high production output with releases climbing the charts such as Phenomena Megademo, which won the Equinox and Horizon Party and was featured on season 1, episode 4 of the Swedish TV program, Bit för Bit. Throughout 1989 and in the years that followed, Phenomena released many chart-toppers. The growing success in Scandinavia, France, Germany and the UK was due to a high release tempo yet also a consistently high release quality. This Phenomena achieved with its large member count, with an unusually high ratio of coders (demo programmers) for any demogroup, and a fanbase growing around the skilled output of Phenomena's productive musician, Firefox. But it also required swappers that were on the game, to make sure the demos spread across Europe together with the latest cracks and demo collections. This Phenomena had from the outset in the members from the forming groups.

Demoparties

Phenomena also helped organize Demoparties yearly from 1990 to 1993.

Competition wins

List of winning entries in demoparty demo competitions, in chronological order: * Phenomena Megademo, 1st at Equinox and Horizon Party 1989 * Vectormania, 1st at Amiga Halloween Conference 1990 * Animotion, 1st at Dexion X-Mas Conference 1990 * Enigma, 1st at Anarchy Easter Party 1991

References

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External link