Retro Intro

A HTML and Javascript based retro intro with real time SID emulation and oversize scroll text

Do you still remember the 80s and 90s when 8 bit computers conquered the children’s rooms? Did you also love the cracktros and demos, some of them with elaborate animations, great scroll texts and groovy 8-bit music? I did! Possibly because I also developed cracktros and demos back then…

I had some time recently and came across a really well done replica of such a cracker lead-in at Pixel Ambracht on the internet. This inspired me to activate my old knowledge and develop such a classic Intro with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The result is not quite as authentic as Pixel Ambracht’s – but it still comes with a touch of finesse and uses individual methods of the 80s and 90s.

Because I wanted to have stylish music for it, I did some research on the internet and actually found a purely browser-based SID player (SID is the colloquial name for the sound chip of the Commodore C64). All in all it is – in my opinion – a very successful experiment.

If you are sitting at your laptop or desktop, you can start the result of my play right here in the browser. With a modern Firefox, Chrome or Edge it should work fine. No additional downloads are required. On smartphones and tablets it might be difficult due to the much smaller displays and reduced performance 😉

By the way, the music comes from “Cubehead” and is called “Present”. The pictures come from Joe Kurz and Smatilla. If you also enjoy it and are curious to see how it all looks like, take a look at my Github repository. There you can find the complete source code…