Today I finally finished my remake of the classic ULM’s Parallax Distorter screen from the Dark Side Of The Spoon demo on Atari STF.
I loved it since the first time I saw it, back in 1991, for me this is the best fullscreen scroller ever done on Atari !
The Parallax Distorter was coded by Gunstick of ULM (Unlimited Matricks), with a font by Oxar, a background by Dizzy of Tool 8, and a sample from “You” by Boytronic. Its scrolltext explains what makes it special: the one-plane scrollers are not preshifted, “nothing is precalculated”, and the background is parallaxed in both directions with another wave in it, all in a fullscreen with a hardware scroller.
Gunstick also adds a rare word about compatibility: “Until now I found 14 different hardware configurations. Our hardscroller works on all”, and asks other coders to test their overscan routines “on every ST you can find”. Many years later, in 2024, he revealed on Demozoo a secret key sequence that lets you control the hardware scroller by hand.
Dark Side of the Spoon was officially presented at the first STNICCC, in December 1990, and Demozoo dates its release to January 3rd 1991. Flix writes about it in his Atari ST Demo History: “This demo has an enormous amount of fullscreens.”
In 2015, I made my own version of this screen for STNICCC 2015, ParaDis3, with an almost twice larger font.
Run it in your browser
- On Aldabase
- On WAB, the CODEF demo gallery (click “CLICK HERE” to start it)
More about it