”Commodore was limited, but the Amiga is eternal” was the motto of the final demo that Eternal released in 1995. The motto mirrors the fact that Commodore had gone bancrupt the year before, but a lot of people still believed in their Amigas.
The story of Eternal started in May of 1994 when it was founded in Stockholm in Sweden. I was myself allowed in as a member by Im-pose, our ray tracer/graphics guy.
The group began to feel the pressure from the scene after still having released nothing in almost half a year. So the first intro ”Gablonktro” was released in November 1994. A dentro was planned but it never materialized. It took until September of 1995 before the next intro ”Just a intro” was released and that was to be the last to come out from Eternal.
Many of the texts from the message board of my BBS are gone. Therefore I have no records of how it ended. The last file from members of the group was uploaded on the 26th of February 1997. My guess is that the group silently dissolved after that.
During the years, members have come and gone, but here are the people that made it happen:
* HYPe (GFX,Music)
* Dæmon (SysOp)
* Shodan (Code)
* Blitter (Code)
* NeuroN (GFX,Musik)
* BelGarath (Organizer)
* Yacuzi (Ascii)
* Smallomph (Code)
* Im-pose (Raytracer)
* BudWeiser (Music)
* Pinocio (Music)
Their real names were:
Rikard Thid = Smallomph
Kristian Kjeldsten = Yacuzi
Patrik Johansson = Blitter
Gustav Westergren = Shodan
Mikael Erkas = Belgarath
Erik Zalitis = Daemon
Gabriel Zackari = Spline
Niclas Passetti = BudWeiser
Mattias Nord = Im-pose
Marius Andries = Pinocio
The sites
Eternal on Pouet.
Eternal on Demozoo.
The BBSes
A good group needs at least one BBS to spread its productions. A during the years, as far as I know, the following bulletin boards served as collaboration areas and file distribution system for Eternal:
Smaug’s Grottor 08-7489663 24h 14400 v32″ v42
The Ericade Network 08-7268265 24h 28800
Gautland 08-7676091 24h 28800 V34
Smaug’s grottor was later renamed Orbotron and was from the beginning the WHQ för Eternal. Sysops were Yacuzi and Belgarath.
In 1995 Meyer BBS was added as an HQ, but in September 1994 The ERICADE Network was officially the group’s WHQ. It remained its WHQ until 1998 when the story ended.
Getting the demos
The first demo, ”Gablonktro” can be found here and the second demo, ”Just a intro” can be found here. They will run fine on any Amiga but on other computers they need an emulator such as WinUAE, FSUAE or AmigaForever.
Some screen shots…
Let’s take a look at the second demo, shall we?
Ignoring the obvious mispelling, it’s a good start. It continues on with words from the members.
Blitter has the word here and shifts the case of the letters just because it’s cool.
A now it’s my turn. I send hatings to Bill Gate$ and Micro$oft. Then some love to my girlfriend at the time and some friends. I have no idea who ”Any-1” was. That has slipped from my memory.
Skipping some screens, we end up with the list of the members at the time.
By 1995, The ERICADE Network had become the world wide HQ of the group.
The honour roll.
As we never presented our stuff on demo parties, Eternal is largely forgotten by the scene. I hope to shed some light on this group so that history at least knows we existed.
