Zoo 2026

The Zoo animals

The main Finnish Commodore 64 demoparty, the Zoo party, was again held at the Orivesi venue. A weekend-long gathering of Commodore 64 demos, music, graphics, related presentations and features.

The event is so popular the dorms and hotel rooms are gone in few minutes after being open for sale. Fortunately a new Orivesi hotel started operations, and we got a good room near the venue after all.

8-Bits High presented their Commodore-centric stage gear, which was quite interesting. Marq and Grue gave a quiz, there was a panel about hardware fixing. Aavikko gave a show, so did 8-Bits High and Bass Cadet and some guys I forgot. Oh, Nebawaganza. I almost never get to watch anything in a focused way, as I'm working on some release at the last moment.

Miha Rinne showcased the Undead game in arcade format, something that may or may not eventually materialize as a C64 game too. I note he gave a talk about it in Zoo 2022, so it's a real long term project.

I got to try Aleksi Eeben's Upic Paint for Commodore Ultimate, and it did again make me think it would be nice to have a C64U. I'm just hoping the software would get some updates first.

Buggy Boy at the Simucube rig

I felt something of a déjà vu, as everything was organized mostly the same way as in 2022 and 2024. 

Nearly everything and everyone is sitting at the same positions (well I did that too), there's the grill, there's the Reprocade arcades and a Worrior1 PETSCII exhibition at the lobby, C64 peripherals for sale, there's the Simucube feature at the corner.

Zoo at Orivesi has become a well-oiled machine, at least from a visitor perspective. The programme was full, schedules were reasonably kept (are they ever 100%), dinner and breakfasts were absolutely well organized. 

But as these things go one can become weary of the C64 content itself.

Some of the baggage likely comes from the late October timing: Do we really need to have Halloween-themed demos every time, replete with Bats, Ghosts, Pumpkins, Witches, Spiders, Skeletons, More Pumpkins, and so on, to a wailing horror soundtrack?

Not the most inviting time to be in Finland.

Appropriately there were some trick'n'treaters doing rounds I suppose, a loud teenager voice exclaimed "Fucking computer wankers!" from the darkness of a half-open door and then disappeared. Not exactly Edgar Allan Poe material. I wonder if they realized some of these wankers likely had kids older than them.

On my insistence we braved the entire democompo, no matter how long it took, and it actually finished at a reasonable hour. The duration may be another matter, the demo portion has become very, very long.

The best demos were actually pretty good, but having watched about twenty plus of them, nearing midnight, can produce a somewhat critical atmosphere. After all, I didn't contribute to a demo so who am I to complain?

Maybe it's just an indication I should skip one Zoo, but then again it's only every second year, so the absence might be too horrible to bear.

Barba Yaga, a C64 PETSCII

I didn't get no prizes, but that's not unusual. The 5th position at PETSCII is quite respectable at this time and age, and for once I felt quite good about the work, something that's not happened for a long time. This is not the same as having made excellent work, but it's a start.

For the graphics I already made a hires 320x200 image I already knew was at odds with scene styles, so no huge expectations there: 10th place. It's still possible I'm exploring themes which have not quite peaked yet.

With Game Dev I was hoping for top three, but I already knew which entry was going to win and there were a couple of well-presented clever and precise game ideas. So, 4th place. I already discussed my entry, Domain 83, in another post.

Carry On, a C64 320x200 plain hires

As for other graphics entries, I was surprised to still see Multipaint often listed as part of the tools used. I had expected other tools to have superseded it by now in the C64 scene. Which reminds me an update is in order.

Instead of a laptop, I took a Raspberry Pi 5 and a small display. This was very adequate for PETSCII editor and Multipaint work, and uploading the entries to the Zoo website. Also I tried out GIMP and Librecad and Audacity. 

The desktop experience is getting quite close to the kind of computer I had at 2015, when I first entered the world of Linux Mint/Mate, at least before upgrades. I may return to this topic in a separate blog post, if I find time to try it out more.

I finally acquired a dedicated carry case for the Commodore 64, and as usual when entering a new category of items the first buy isn't the perfect choice. The C64C just barely fits there, and after that a joystick can't fit underneath. I was also fantasizing about how the peripherals would spread out beautifully in the carved foam, but as there's a lot of cables the end result is an ugly mess no matter what. 

The overall weight of the case is pretty good, a larger case might already be a little painful. In the end I didn't even use the C64 all that much at the party place. But the case is also a topic for another post.

So, after inevitable party weariness, I'm regaining my composure and off to more computer antics. Next stop: Tampere Retrocon next weekend.

Zoo Party 2026 at Demozoo