It was May 2024, and the fruits of our labour were finally ready for release. We now needed to choose a target demoparty and competition through which to present our work to the public.
Mercifully, we did not need to look far. The famously Atari-focused Sillyventure party, which had recently upped its frequency to six times yearly, was taking place imminently. With its unique festival-style atmosphere, Sillyventure was already known for stubbornly showing competition entries for their entire running time, no matter how restless the captive audience became. Such was the culture of the party, we even surmised there to be a high probability of our work being shown at least twice in its entirety. Reassured, we submitted our intro to the ST/E demo competition - and waited.
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| Full pop songs welcome here? |
I could barely sleep for a week before the event. Finally, the fateful night arrived! We settled down with snacks at 4.30pm UK time, excited to see how the Atari-mad Sillyventure barmy army would respond to our creation. At 2.30am the following morning, it was finally the turn of our intro to be showcased! Playback went without hitch, although we were slightly disappointed to see that only around 80% of the demo's full running time was shown. We also noted almost no response to the intro on the otherwise-lively chat accompanying the YouTube party stream. Slightly unnerved but hoping for the best, we headed to bed.
The next morning, we awoke to find that all hell had broken loose. One of our main objectives was to avoid any combative and/or upsetting internet controversy related to our release. However, it transpired that we had catapaulted our intro directly into a burning hellscape of internet fury.
1) Unfortunately, without our knowledge, the previous night's Sillyventure competitions had been subject to an organised and targeted inundation of "fake" releases by actors unknown, with contributions ranging from an intro with a runtime of under one second, to an ASCII-based slideshow of parochial political satire, to a bizarre celebration of the merits of acorns, to a startlingly inappropriate piece of pro-Kremlin propaganda. Whilst these so-called "faketros" were no doubt merely intended to amuse, their consequence was that our entirely earnest release became lost in a mix of fake slop. Worse still, we learned that many Atari elders were incandescent with rage about the fake release tsunami, believing it to have publicly undermined the Atari scene to a worldwide audience. Sadly, it seemed that our intro was being tarred with this same angry brush. People were furious, at us.
2) As is typical for any release, we had excitedly submitted our work to the popular demo hosting/social networking sites Demozoo and Pouet just before bed. However, the following day I inadvertently caused significant offence on the former by failing to exhibit sufficient deference to an "Atari scene VIP". Stiffler's Mom and Marrowfat, understandably, were furious. This was the one thing we didn't want to happen.
3) Worst of all, by late afternoon we had received a cease-and-desist letter directly from the estate of the late Scatman John himself, accusing us of both civil and criminal infractions in relation to use of his intellectual property in our intro. The shock did not end there: it then transpired that, contrary to what I had been led to believe, we were in fact not the first group to attempt to sample Scatman John in an Atari ST demo. Indeed, Stiffler's Mom and I were horrified to learn that Marrowfat himself had written directly to Scatman John back in 1995, formally requesting rights to sample Scatman's World for an ultimately unrealised demo project.
In itself, this was not unusual back in the day. Some Atari demomakers, eager to establish themselves as "legitimate" potential developers without links to the illegal cracking scene, often wrote directly to musical artists to obtain formal legal permissions for sampling. In this case however, Marrowfat had received an aggressively litigious response stating that any such use of Scatman's World would be met with the full weight of international law. Despite knowing this, the fucking Judas went ahead and let us release this intro anyway, which of course was immediately detected during streaming by YouTube's anti-copyright algorithms.
We were fucked. What had begun as the innocent fulfilment of a life's dream was rapidly descending into a waking nightmare.
Our first thought was to somehow "unrelease" our demo, thereby striking it from both the internet and - hopefully - public consciousness. However, due to the decentralisation of the demoscene and the physical reality of human memory, this turned out to be impossible - the binary had already been spread too far by too many. We had to face the music, whatever tune it was going to play.
We decided to think practically. After a tense inter-group conversation, Marrowfat agreed to sell all 24 of his Atari Falcon 030s to finance the inevitable out-of-court settlement with Scatman John's estate. Stiffler's Mom entered rehab with immediate effect, posting a garbled social media apology in which he promised to "work on himself". For my part, such was the shame of the episode that I went into hiding for six months.
And that brings us to the end of the story of our demo. If you were wondering, I have not once heard from Stiffler's Mom or Marrowfat since, although I believe that at least one of them has now moved to the continent to take up semi-competitive cycling. Despite the difficult conclusion of our collaboration, ultimately there are no regrets from me - I learnt about friendship, digital art, and the timeless power of the full pop song. Perhaps one day I will return to the demoscene, and if I do, I will be sure not to repeat my past mistakes.
In the meantime, next time you think of Scatman John and/or the Atari ST, make sure you think of us - that way, our legacy can stay alive!
With all best wishes,
Jeff "Caulky" Caulk, March 2026 xx