Welcome to

The Zoko Team Homepage

Our story and a tribute to the Commodore 64 computer


About The Famous Zoko Team

It all started when Cato's punch on a keyboard formed the now famous four letter word (and I mean Zoko). We were two guys having fun on the Commodure 64 computer. The rise to fame was uninterrupted and in 1989 we won a Scandinavian C64 demo competition in Trondheim, Norway, with the demo 'Exquizite'. We retired shortly after that. Send an email if you want to talk about old times.


Zoko Team Members

  • Thrax (Gudbrand Eggen) Code and graphics
  • Sharkey (Cato Broberg) Code and graphics
  • Mr Last (Lars Stuanes) Graphics
  • Sølve Lindgard Amiga code

Zoko Team Demos

Thanks to TMB for converting the Zoko Team demo from 1988.


Zoko Team on the Web

About the Commodore 64 and Emulators

The legendary Commodore 64: A unique computer. Any 64 is a genuine 64 and not a collection of freely selected hardware pieces, like todays PC. The 64 is a beige plastic case which looks like a too thick keyboard, and when you plug it into the television set, sounds and images appear that were amazing back then. Best of all, the sounds and images could be controlled by using the keys to enter programs, and programs could be swapped with other people. The 64 is probably the computer with the most games written for it. We in the Zoko Team took part in exploring and utilizing the 64. Step by step we learned about its many peculiar traits and the techniques to make use of them to create the most artistic effects on the screen. It was hard work, and still the Zoko Team only did a very small part of the total effort to master the 64. Only programming ingenuity has contributed to the amazing performance boost of the 64, not improved hardware as is so often the case on the PC.

Now there are emulators. On this Pentium 200 MMX I double-click the file "A Lot Of Old Shit.Horizon.d64". The well-known blue screen of the Commodore 64 appears, excactly like I remember it. I start the demo, which was made the year after we retired. There is no difference to the image I would expect from a real 64 except for a very slight jerk once or twice per second. I note that they have, as I would put it back then, '14 sprites in the sideborder over a logo with FLI'. I remember we were thinking about the problems involved with programming that. Then after a while the PC screen saver 'waving flag' appears, more smoothly shaded than a 64 could ever manage. That makes me think: All those programming difficulties, and now the whole thing is simply emulated. Amusing in a way, but hey: A real challenge is attractive even after you discover a shortcut. Then it's an art.

The Commodore 64 has experienced a revival because of the internet and emulators, and people have put most of the old stuff on the net. New demos are being made all the time. It's really touching.


Commodore 64 games and demos on your PC

  1. Install the CCS64 Emulator for DOS and Windows 95 (takes *.d64 and *.prg files)
  2. Get what you want from www.c64.com

For transfering to or from a real C64, see the Star Commander homepage.

 
Written 1996-08-08 by Gudbrand Eggen, last updated 2013-05-05
220 visitors 2012
76 downloads