Future crew

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Future Crew Logo from the demo Second Reality from 1993

Future Crew was a group from the demo scene .

The Finnish demo group Future Crew has long been considered one of the best demo groups ever and was above all one of the first groups to (later) exclusively work on the IBM PC , although at the end of the 1980s the PC with its capabilities was far behind the then dominant Amiga lagged behind. They were thus one of the pioneers of the multimedia use of the PC platform, also visible through the support they received from sound and graphics hardware manufacturers (including Gravis with the then very advanced ultrasound sound card ).

history

The group was originally founded in 1986 by Sami Tammilehto ( PSI ) as a Commodore 64 group, but in 1988 it switched completely to the PC .

In 1990 Future Crew released the well-known Tracker Scream Tracker 2.0, with which music in the form of MOD files (.STM) could be composed comfortably on the PC for the first time .

Future Crew (often abbreviated as FC) caused quite a stir with their demo Unreal . Their breakthrough came at the 1993 assembly with the much-noticed demo Unreal] [- The 2nd Reality (later simply called Second Reality ). At that time, this demo put everything on the PC in the shade and impressed above all with its varied music and its exact synchronization with the effects. Until the mid-1990s, Second Reality was considered to be one of the best PC demos of all, even if it was technically out of date.

In 1994 version 3 of the Scream Tracker appeared, which now uses the S3M format. This was the last major release from Future Crew so far. They then stopped their activities as much as possible. However, the Screamtracker influenced the design and user guidance of the following trackers ( Impulse Tracker , FastTracker etc.) and tracker formats in the following years of the 1990s.

In 1998 the group was actually planning a comeback . However , they no longer fulfilled their promotion slogan at the time, which can also be admired on T-shirts, After 4 years of silence the original gang is back to unleash the beast . With smaller contributions and as co-organizers of the assembly, FC members were active in the demo scene until the 2000s.

At the end of 1999, the online magazine Slashdot retrospectively selected Second Reality as one of the “Top 10 Hacks of All Time”.

Later meaning

Some members continued their activities in the demo scene by organizing the world's largest demo party, the Assembly. Every now and then some members of Future Crew take part in individual competitions at the assembly. Jussi Laakkonen ( Abyss ) has been the main organizer of this event since 1995 . Abyss was the sysop of StarPort, the WHQ ( World Head Quarter ) of Future Crew. Although he never really did demos himself, he is the most famous member of the group today.

The musician Purple Motion ( Jonne Valtonen ) is still active . In 2004 he released his first professional debut CD "Musicdisk". Today he is the musical head of Merregnon Studios and responsible for the orchestral implementation of game music for concerts worldwide.

Various projects and companies have emerged from Future Crew that were initiated by former members - the most famous representatives are, for example, the company Futuremark (formerly MadOnion ) - known for their benchmark 3DMark, the game developer Remedy Entertainment - makers of Max Payne , and the graphics hardware company Bitboys .

Nectarine Records, a small indie studio, released an album in 2011 with the most famous songs of the Future Crew remastered in 24-bit as a tribute to them. The album called "Metropolis" is available as a free download on the Internet.

Cover of the album "Metropolis", a tribute to the Future Crew from 2011

Surprisingly, on August 1, 2013, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the Second Reality demo, its source code was released as public domain on GitHub by the Future Crew.

Members

Jonne Valtonen, one of the musicians from Future Crew

Members of the group at the time of Second Reality's release:

  • Gore (Samuli Syvähuoko): Organizer
  • Psi (Sami Tammilehto): programmer
  • Trug (Mika Tuomi): programmer
  • Wildfire (Arto Vuori): programmer
  • Purple Motion ( Jonne Valtonen ): composer / musician
  • Skaven ( Peter Hajba ): composer / musician & graphic artist
  • Marvel (Aki Raula, formerly Aki Määttä): Graphic artist
  • Pixel ( Misko Iho ): graphic artist
  • Abyss (Jussi Laakkonen): BBS Coordinator / Public Relations
  • Henchman (Markus Mäki): BBS operator
  • Jake (Jarkko Heinonen): Internet Public Relations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Walker: PC Music Freeware Roundup ( English ) In: Sound on Sound . June 1, 2004. Retrieved on May 29, 2010: " When PCs first came of age for music making in the mid '90s, ScreamTracker was one of the first music software packages to appear with sample support [...] "
  2. ↑ Andrew Leonard: Mod love ( English ) In: Salon.com . Salon Media Group. April 29, 1999. Retrieved May 17, 2010.
  3. ^ Claudio Matsuoka: Tracker History Graphing Project . helllabs.org. November 4, 2007. Retrieved January 29, 2011: " Tracker History Graph "
  4. ↑ Bobic: 105 - Marvel: from the Future Crew to EA (.de) . In: .deMOSZENE article . bitfellas.org. June 15, 2008. Retrieved January 3, 2012.
  5. ↑ Derek Glidden: Slashdot's "Top 10 Hacks of All Time" ( English ) Slashdot . December 13, 1999. Retrieved January 3, 2012: “ Second Reality by Future Crew - Awesome, Mindblowing, Unbelievable, Impossible. Some of the words used to describe what this piece of code from demoscene gods Future Crew did on 1993-era PC hardware. Even by today's standards, what this program can do without relying on any kind of 3D graphics acceleration is impressive. As if the graphics weren't impressive enough, it can even playback in Dolby Surround Sound. "
  6. ↑ Bobic: Sceners in the Games Industry ( English ) 4players.de. January 18, 2007. Retrieved February 17, 2011.
  7. ↑ Download of "Future Crew - Metropolis" from the Internet Archive (English)
  8. ↑ "Future Crew - Metropolis" ( Memento of the original from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on GoEar @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.goear.com
  9. ↑ Ryan Smith: Happy 20th Birthday Second Reality ( en ) Anandtech.com . August 1, 2013. Retrieved August 21, 2013.
  10. ↑ Abyss announcement on Twitter (English)
  11. ↑ http://www.purplemotion.net/
  12. ↑ http://www.futurecrew.com/skaven/

Web links