Domination 04 ch07 Demo Reviews
Demo Reviews Part 1
Some stunning demos have been released lately as we venture into the older age of this computer, but many still have to be released. Rumours say Crest have a co-op music demo ready and also a near complete "Crossbow" demo with new and unreleased parts concentrating on the old traditional demo style. Kingfisher is still yet to release "Refugee" the sequel to the classic "Red Storm! (come on Linus! hehe) but the new "JFK/Triad" demo seems to have satisfied most for now. Maybe before next issue we will see the following demonstrations... Brutality IV/LIGHT, Serenity Blue by Graffity and maybe some new Megastyle Productions demos, as they've come back to the fore.
So what's been tested this issue??
- Radio Napalm by REFLEX.
- W.O.I.I.F.T.D. by F4CG.
- Contraflow by COSINE.
- World Demise by SLASH DESIGNS.
- Nation by BLACK CODE DESIGN.
- No Control by TRIAD.
- Ritual 2 by TABOO.
- Parts by OXYRON.
All demonstrations are reviewed when the spectator is not on artificial uppers/downers (e.g. Marijuana, Acid etc). I'm no coder, graphician or musician, but judge these products from the point of view of an average onlooker so please don't judge my lack of routine names and the complexity of coding, music or graphics too badly. As all a demo is produced to entertain the scene, I merely judge that entertainment value, let's begin..
Radio Napalm from Reflex. (516 blks)
The X-95 winner!
Not long after their brilliant "Access Denied" comes another first class "winning" demo... "Radio Napalm" Another cool production from the dudes in Reflex and perfect trackmo music by PVCF. Description: First a FLI Reflex logo appears with some powerful bass orientated music by PVCF/Reflex. The logo then departs the screen to the right. A grey line moves down the screen, diagonally down and right, then vertically right. While this happens a dotted "presents" falls down on the diagonal section of the line and small balls bounce everywhere. The "Quiss Production" screen makes a brief appearance before a zooming filled star vector comes from out of nowhere towards the viewer. The screen pulses white, the music gets its main beat and a full screen piccy is displayed. The pic shows "Radio Napalm". The picture moves out of the screen, and a beautiful plasma water fountain effect begins, there is about four different effects and it looks very nice, from its burst at the beginning and the fade out. A spaceship look-a-like filled vector rotates on the screen and is soon replaced by a water fall style plasma bits in green/yellow and blue, giving a water style effect. Beneath this appears a shadow of "Reflex" which is soon filled with similar waterfall effects, but with a fire type colour style of red/dark pink/orange. The original waterfall fades out, then the Reflex shadow disperses soon after. Now a huge cube filled vector comes from right to left across the screen. Now a lo-res pic of Reflex is span around and around and then this switches to a similar swirling full screen plasma, then back to the Reflex pic then to a swirling lines like in "Woc3/Byterapers".. Then back to the original Reflex swirl. This effect is largely remembered in "Access Denied". Another original part begins, this time chessboard zooming with a difference, the chessboards zoom through each other giving a moving forward feeling. A very nice & smooth routine, one of my favourites. After this some more full screen plasma, bends, and swirls before the viewer, after 3 effects this fades out to be replaced by some large fonts giving greetings and final the end in a fading way.
Overall: a great demo and certainly one for your collection. Reflex certainly has an original style and smooth coding and excellent IRQ loading trackmo tune by PVCF, make this a true winner. 90/100.
W.O.I.I.T.F.D. from F4CG (236 Blks)
Second place at X-95! The first demonstration from this established group in a very long time, and one has the feeling it will be the first in a series. Recruiting some main members of "Noice" the goat power is shown through this short but sweet F4cg production. Certain people believe this as an anti Fairlight demo, this is NOT true, just some irony which I'm sure the coolies in Fairlight will return with soon. Its more of a dedication to the brilliant; Scope/F4CG.
Description: Firstly a nice 16 colour logo by Draz flips and lands at the top part of the screen. Soon after this a 2 coloured F4cg logo in 2 colours appears at the bottom middle. Some nice introduction music begins and a chessboard can be seen moving across of the 2 colour logo, using the centre of this logo as its rotating axis. This effect, although not highly complicated is quite nice and smooth. Soon after both the 2 colour logo and the chessboard disappear to be replaced by four wind mills, 2 on either side. Then some spiral dot formations appear in the centre of the screen, this effect reminds me of a circular saw. After several different patterns, the whole screen fades out and the journey into the sceneland begins... An aeroplane with pilot flies over a sidelong view of a city. The city has large buildings, as most do, and some of them have small names like M8,F4CG and a FLT building. The pilot lands onto a building and the screen fades to the next amusing pic. The next sequence shows a Fairlight logo and a baby walks into the screen from the left, then gets his penis in a somewhat "erect" way and pisses on the Fairlight logo till it fills with yellow urine. This satiric part fades off and some credit lines come on; Graphics: Draz, Scope/F4cg Code: Draz/F4CG, Music: Decoder/F4CG, Samples: Newscopy/F4CG, Ideas: Draz, Devil, Total Chaos and Newscopy. Some other texts displayed in this section show respect to the late Scope and the music fades out.. A bright, peaceful tune by Decoder begins and a cool full screen IFLI pic of a woman's face portrait appears.
Overall: Short, but certainly to the point and a nice start off for the demo section of a 'crack' orientated group! Hopefully the Noice members who joined F4CG will get more active, and maybe a force in the legal market. Cool stuff. 71/100.
Contraflow from Cosine (342 blks)
X-95 third place.
A new demo from mainly English based group. Cosine is pretty unknown to most, but a quite decent group who have some good releases. Now about their new demo...
Description: Firstly this demo is described as an "autorun" style production. This means a longer trackmo. The intro: Some music times with the screen disappearing. Next a 2x2 scroll comes over the screen introducing the demo and above this an Amiga (ED: yuk!) converted picture is displayed. Over the top of this nice pic some sprite formations of "Cosine" & "Contraflow" fly. Meanwhile the next part is already being loaded into memory, when the intro finishes, the next part begins.. Part II: A nice Cosine logo appears midway in the bottom of the screen. Then some weird & cool Amiga converted music plays, which was converted by TMR from Xtd/Union. Some large raster pipes appear at the top of the screen and text is also stretched over the pipes so it appears to scrolling around the pipes, nice effect! Then at the bottom of the screen another scrolly runs. Eventually this all fades out into the already loaded next part. Part III: A thumping soundtrack starts and a full screen pic of a Vampire and its victim appears. On the left side of this pic is a vertical Cosine logo. Then a familiar DYCP scroll goes over the pic. A somewhat smaller part than the others, but good style Part IV: Some raster bars at the top circle around each other and below this appears a picture of a planet and a space ship, which is quite nice. A FLD scroller explains the part, which journeys over the picture. Then some action begins with a Bitmap Tech Tech "CSI" logo which stretches across the rasterbars. The atmosphere of this part is in a good resemblance to old style demos, especially when the volume is up and the lights are out! After some time this fades out into the next part...
Part V: A nice Cosine logo appears at the top and a 2x2 scroll goes from right to left above this. The scrolling routine as some multi-colour effects running through it to spark it up a little. Then in timing with the music a half screen chessboard in the sideborders (!) appears at the bottom and starts zooming in & out towards the screen. This routine has 3 set movements. Very nice part. The End: A small box appears in the middle of the screen and different 3 coloured grey shaded pics appear in this box. Each of these pics is a shrunken sample of a former demo part in the entire demo. There are over 6 pics and credits are displayed for each. This routine is very similar to the note on side 2 of the old classic "Dutch Breeze" from Blackmail. A small 1x1 greets scroller runs underneath this and atop of a "The End" 16 colour logo.
Overall: A very nice "back to basics" style demo, nothing fascinating but sure a nice production worthy of your collection.
75/100.
World Demise by Slash Designs (613 blks)
Slash Designs bring a slightly larger than normal production for them (usually a one filer). This time it’s "World Demise", another competition entry at the X-95 party in Holland.
Description: Firstly a Slash logo swings into the screen which is soon replaced by a 'presents' font. Music begins and picture ported from the Amiga of a forest elf fills the screen. A quite nice picture, much better if it was touched up more. Some texts scrolls across the screen introducing the demo and some credits. >SPACE< The next segment loads and a "Slash" 16 colour logo appears at the bottom portion of the screen. Above this runs a 1x1 scrolly giving more information on that particular part. Above this two calculated line vectors move quite fast and smooth. Several different shapes appear, firstly cubes then stars, pyramids, plates etc.. A nice familiar part, but nothing mind bending. The next part loads in after pressing space. This part depicts a cartoon with characters, speech bubbles, each super hi-resolution pic fades out to un-wind the next part of the story, which amusingly enough is roughly based on an alien sex-romp! After about 4-5 pictures the next part is loaded. Some fast music begins this segment, firstly a 3 colour Slash Designs logo swings diagonally up & down whilst a 2x2 scroller FLD's at different rates. The Slash logo is replaced soon with a ported pic of "Christina Applegate" from Married with Children. (ED: yes big tits). This picture is copied over the screen and swings identical to that of the SD logo. A nice part, more pics or logos would have been nice. My spacebar is pressed, eventually.
This next part is probably my least favourite, as it’s for a coder to view only in my opinion. But still just the same, this part shows 2 pictures moving transparently over and behind each other. A Holland flag and a bit of cheese, symbolic or?? hehe. Beneath this a standard 1x1 scroller runs. The part would have been better if some better or larger gfx were involved or perhaps even several objects moving over each other transparently. After pressing spacebar the final part is loaded. Some cool music by Deek/Crest (ED: listen to a new zak by him in this issue.) plays and a "bob" spiral formation in the figure 8 begins. By pressing the < sign another different series of bobs and its formation comes in. Other bobs are: balls, stars and some Peace signs.. Underneath this the last scroll routine gives greets. This part looks quite nice, even better in the sideborders like crest did, but none the less cool.
Overall: An average demo with some nice parts from the point of view of the onlooker. Give these guys some more time and I think they could shock us with some stunning stuff. I give it 62/100.
Nation by Black Code Designs (450 Blks)
I haven't seen anything from this group before, but hopefully they will be promising. This demonstration also entered the X-95 party and received position #5. Let's take a closer look at this production...
Description: Some music plays and then a NATION 16 colour logo appears centre of the screen and explosion effects appear over it. The logo fades away to show a BLACK CODE DESIGNS full screen 3 logo pic. Here I noticed when the IRQ loader loads in the next part after the BCD logos disperse, the music gets jilted slightly, and this routine needs improvement. Upon the next loading a super hi-res pic of a creature wearing a gas masks centres the screen. You are able to view this for about 4 seconds before the next part begins. A half screen picture & logo is displayed in the lower half of the screen and is painted by Misteal. Above this is a three colour vertically moving and bending BCD logo. The x & y sinus speed can be adjusted by using joystick. A very nice styled part. The next load displays a cool logo by the growing painter, Cupid. This logo is displayed at the bottom of the screen. Above this a small square picture of a girl's face is displayed and then metamorphosised into a fractal. Quite cool, but it could be improved with more pics, colours or smoothness. Upon pressing space the next part is drawn to my attention, a simple BCD 3 colour logo appears with timing of the music at the bottom part of the screen. Above this is a small BCD lo-res piccy which zooms in and out towards the viewer, nice. This lo-res pic is soon replaced by a face portrait of a girl which also zooms. A scrolly gives final texts etc.
Overall: Coding improvements are needed, but the ideas are definately there. Keep at it dudes. 60/100.
And that is the end of the first demo review chapter, load the second one for more legal entertainment and the reviews of No Control, Ritual 2 and Parts.
