Star Wars Commodore 64 Will Make Your Jaw Drop

Before we get into this too far, let me be clear - this is a demo, not a game. Demos can make the hardware do things it could not do if there was player input to have to worry about. On computers, the demo scene is quite robust and sometimes jaw droppingly awesome, as is the case with this Star Wars demo that is running on a Commodore 64. My question is, where was all this processing power back in the day?

Star Wars is one of those iconic franchises that people know whether they enjoy the franchise in any way - movies, books, toys, cartoons, comics, etc. Star Wars has transcended entertainment to burrow into the psyche of humanity in some way.

This demo does a great job of showing off the color range of the Commodore 64 as well as the animation capabilities. As already mentioned, most of this would not be possible due to memory constraints and having to work with user input - and what that input would require be at the ready in memory.

For the most part, this demo is just static images with some cool flipping text, moving pictures, or a combination of that stuff and some animations.

Some scenes show off the parallax scrolling capabilities of the C64 quite well. Recreating famous scenes from the movies and interpreting others with new, fresh points of view.

What is here is impressive, no wonder this demo took first place at the C64 X 2018 Party.

What is your favorite demo? Does Star Wars rank high for you or are you more of a Trekkie? Let us know in the comments.

Need a Commodore 64? Grab one on eBay.

This article was originally posted on Retro Gaming Magazine.