Text mode demo competition (or compo, or contest - same thing, really) was held for the first time in 1996. Back then there were a few demos running in text mode; some were 'pure' textmode demos such as what TMDC was after, and others tweaked the text mode. We wanted more textmode demos, and we saw two ways to go about it - make them ourselves, or hold contests to get many more! Grand total of 90 demos were produced in the 10 contests, including the invitation demos and the couple of disqualified entries. A handy ISO has been produced that includes all of the demos as well as Dosbox 0.72 plus batch files to launch the DOS demos with it. Download "The Complete TMDC" ISO (about 100 MB zipped ISO file) All of the entries are available separately for download below. TMDC has had its supporters as well as its doubters. In the beginning, the people against TMDC kept saying that you can't do anything in text mode, and later on saying that "it's just a low-res framebuffer" Lately we've started to see that, while the demo quality has kept rising, we were getting fewer demos (even though the invitations were as popular as ever), and in the end decided that it didn't make much sense to run a contest of this magnitude for a handful of people. We'd like to thank all our sponsors, past and present, as well as everyone who entered the contest. It's time to move on. We have some ideas for other 'alternative' demo contests, so maybe you'll see something.. different.. from us at some point =)
-- Jari Komppa
TMDC Organizer tAAt ry