Vector Demo

Vector Demo is a homebrew demo for the Nintendo 64 by Destop, released on 22 April 1999. It’s a collection of various 3D effects accompanied by a marquee scroller. It was released to compete in the Presence of Mind ’99 competition where it won 2nd place.

You can get the ROM for Vector Demo from its download page by using the password whatsthevictorvector.

About Vector Demo

The first section of the demo is non-interactive. It’s pretty much just a text scroller with a variety of 3D effects involving spheres arranges in several different patterns.

There’s also the appearance of someone called Bucktooth Bob, which seems to share a name with a character from the Regular Show. This show came out in 2010 so it’s likely to just be a coincidence.

Destop presents his demo for the Presence of Mind 99 competition… Please note that for this entire demo that everything is done with hardware. But what make it different from the others is that its written entirely in hard-coded MIPS ASM!!! I repeat – no devkit used – It took a great deal of work to reverse the RDP and nearly every function of it is used

If you are seeing this demo you have the RAM expansion pack and probably a V64 backup unit. It seems it doesnt like to work on CD64… Hay wildfire its nice to see you still making trainers. Be patient some docs are coming. Just need a rest first. Note: no RSP is used in the calculations of triangles.

Yo Titanik where you been dude… I like your mod player… I made a few adjustments hope to hear from you soon… I would like to say hello to all the friendly people in N64scene that I have met over the short time I have been here.

Look out now… Text restarts

The next section shows various 3D models rotating around while some greets appear in the background.

Greets go out to: Titanik, Wildfire, Loom, Sispeo, Nagra, LaC, Jovis, Actraiser, Hartec, DSI-CIP, Twinsen, Brett, Steve, Angelo, WT-Riker, Locke, Zilmar, Motion, SOS, -OK-, Pureevil, Acey, Jeb, Demo, Snake, McBain, Cyryk, Nil, Acid, Kidstardust, Ste, Longshot, Poyz, Stumble, Yogi, Pan, Ultra, Coolhand, Eric, Netfucker, Ennay, Nep, Loaded, -RIP-, Icarus, JL-Picard

The final section in the demo is the only interactive one, it appears after pressing START when the previous sections have completed. It consists of a flat plane of spheres that has a wavy effect which then turns flat. You can move it around with the joystick.

There is also a marquee scroller in this section, but it’s so disjointed and hard to read that I’m not going to transcribe it. It seems to say that there’s an Easter egg and just some more greets after that.

Review and conclusion

Vector Demo is not necessarily one of the most impressive demos of the era, but it surely is at least somewhat interesting to look at. There is a variety of shapes and patterns to keep you interested, and the music is probably my favourite out of the ones included in demos from the era.

Something that is interesting about this demo in particular is that some of the 3D models like the torus and teapot are glitching out a bit because there is an issue with the Z-buffer. This causes some of the polygons in the rear to appear in front of the ones in the foreground as you can see in some of the screenshots.

That said, the most impressive thing about this is that it was made completely in MIPS assembly, while most others would use some kind of toolkit which would include a compiler or something similar.

In the end, Vertex Demo is worth having a look at yourself, even if it is to find that elusive Easter egg and decoding that jumbled-up scroller.

Articles across the web

Vector Demo is a homebrew project by Destop which showcases a variety of 3D effects on the Nintendo 64 written in MIPS assembly.
Article published on N64 Squid

Search

Subscribe to the mailing list

Follow N64 Squid

  • RSS Feed
  • YouTube

Random posts

Leave a Reply

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Website

Your Message