Madwizards/Reviews

Review by Glenn Lunder
"Frey" was Mawi's first ever intro, and unfortunately one that I just couldn't get to work properly on my machine. I first tried simply running it, and got the music correctly by just scrambled graphics. I rebooted and tried with KillAGA, but...I don't know, the music still plays, but now no visuals at all appear on my screen! Strange... Please note that the version reviewed is one that is 'a little fixed and refreshed', but still does not 'support' turbocards, in that they've used a blitter-c2p routine to support the older Amigas. GLE tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1 -- Note: See review!

Review by Glenn Lunder
You're basically not missing anything with this... It's just some slow Gouraud objects in garish colors. Unfortunately the intro can not the exited until it is done. Both AGA and ECS versions are included. MAWI claimed they reached 11th position in one of their nfos. GLE tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.

Review by Glenn Lunder
A nice idea, this is an intro based on an effect that is randomly generated each time it is executed. It is essentially a buce background effect with color-cycling under a few pages of nicely designed text telling the title and the name of the group. Perhaps not so great, but nice nevertheless... Two versions are included, one for 020+ fastmem machines, and one for all processors. The intro has even been tested by its makers on a bog standard a500 :) GLE tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Unfortunately, I could not get this intro to work. It just returns the command prompt after a brief pause. GLE tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.

Review by Zito
Mawi surprised us with a breath-taking demo-like show consisting of superb raytraced graphics by Zoltan who has already won many competitions before (as written in the readme-file) settled in a cosy atmosphere and good design. Await something different to traditional slideshows if you will have a look at this one. Not only that it is no pixeled art you can admire but nine raytraced fullscreens (plus the main logo) it's also more designed like a demo (it has been placed second in a demo competition) showing after every picture a little part with poetic words and various textured vectors and other 3D-effects. The traced gfx have a high level of quality. A Viking ship, insects, alien topics and plays with reality (the 1st picture is more than art, it's a vision!) and spaceships are to find in very detailed views. The best stuff I have seen 'till now from 3D-Modellers. Guest musician Dave composed a smooth (ambient, I guess) module that fits very good and makes the overall design to an extraordinary event. A very  nice opening tunnel and multitasking without bugs shows the abilities of Bjsebo and Noe, but I still don't know why this 3D-system shall be as revolutionary as written in the readme?! Also a bad point is that you have no selector to choose single graphics, you always have to run the whole thing again! Conclusion: Who haven't seen this missed an important piece of the scene's history one will still talk about in a few years. Most of the pictures are more than six points worth but a few have no good ideas and lack of design like the 5th for example. ZIT tested A1200/030-42/2mb chip, 8mb fast.

Review by Kempy
Wow, wow, wow! Seems that polish demo makers at least started to think seriously 'bout so called design in their production and "Mute12" is a example for it! Dear watcher, before launching this demo you should first read (btw. nice designed) ascii #?.nfo file which contains some kind of explanation about leading idea of this production. Sadly, but poles are able to know more that their foreign scene mates... You boot your amee, type demo drawer path and at last run mwi-mute.exe file. Now prepare to assimilate a secret message hidden between routines [as mad wizards members say: teevee is only a form of modern slavery!] Black screen lights up and very good looking picture appears, but... That's imho big "minus" of this demo, we can see here lot of SHOCKING graphics, but they're only scans [from special SPAWN comics series] or image process' effects [like all Oopure's ones]. Anyway i don't like this kind of pixelz. Nevermind. At screen non filled vectors formed in like_a_triangle symbol are rotating and they're blured too. Another pic - this one shows body of naked woman, particle's ring is flying around her, really nice. All the time we hear full of feeling musis which perfectly fits in another effect. This time we see a voxel landscape with 3D human object flying over them. Sweet female's voice starts to speak [only polish] 'bout flying under blue, clear sky, and adds that it makes its [her?] free, be out of world. At end of monologue voice ascertains that in flying is only one bad thing - how come back, down, on ground? Scene disappears and big question mark [3d object] fills screen. Music starts run faster and sign stretchs and shortens. Mad Wizards' fullscreen picture is showed music turns down, first part has been ended. Really twisted object is rotating over a strange black/white picture named "metaphysical mutation". Suddenly explodes music (goa) and we can see fast 2d tunnel. Screen splits in 2 and later in 4 parts, in every part a nice tunnel/effect is calculated and a moment later the entire screen starts to move! Very good routine, never have seen it before on amiga [but on peecee and c-64 yes!] Another "photoshop" art on your monitor, a photos mixed with texts. Blurred, non filled vectors again, in background we can see "dead media" inscription. After while Grass' picture ["Hunter" 3rd at Rush Hours'99] appears. Now we can see lot of stuff: another particle effects, dynamic showed credits, really good animated "sphere with tentacles" object, second Oopure's picture, 2d tunnel with morphing object on first plan, Oopure's art again, looped animation (rotating flower with number 12 over it) + woman's object in right-down corner, tunnel with sumething blured, "like a snowfall" particles and Fame's ["Synchrom"] picture ends second part of "Mute12". Music changes for rather slower one and flowing background fills all screen, slowly a girl's photo appears. And it's time for credits, they're typed on known to us spawn's scans. One more time 2 tunnels penetrating themselves and a background placed fullscreen Mawi logo. Last 3d scene - a enviroment mapped stairs which leads to... nowhere! Oopure's pic and a well known "water masque" effect on it [your mind is soften], few seconds and finally one eye from Fame's graphic looks on us. It's time to shut it down, so you click mouse, screen is going darker and "like_a_triangle" symbol is showed. Tarram! That's end! All effects for first look seems to be joined in chaos, but after another session with "Mute 12" you recognize that's not truth. Less or more but demo has got its message. Now you should ask yourself few questions: where, who and why? Trust me - answer is simply. Just think, but turn Your teeveeset off before, ok? 040 or better recommended. KEM tested A1200/040-40/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
AB is a demo with a clear sense of design, some great incidental graphics, and a good soundtrack. It is, in fact, a very cool demo :) Some hardcore code, and as mentioned a good sense of design, make this come together as a pretty great package. It is only testament to the quality of the competition at MS that this only made 3rd. It seldom gets tedious or boring, even despite a total running time of over 8 minutes. It is hard to accurately review a demo like this, who so much relies an the mood and atmosphere it builds... I can only recommend viewing it and forming your own opinions. I certainly liked it! :) Personal highlight: The endpart, with the upscroller and (presumably) polish singing... a small piece of magic. Viewing this demo was only possible through a video file on my part, since my amiga hardware is not capable of running it natively. Please take this into consideration when reading this review. The demo was designed for 060 systems, and requires about 25mb fastmem and an fpu. It has reportedly been tested at ok speeds down to 040-30. Theoretically, it should run on any 020+ with fpu and enough ram. It should run on cgx systems without promotion, provided 320x240 and 640x480 screenmodes are defined. Requires AHI (v4+) for the endpart music. All credits in the demo and the accompanying text file is given using the authors' real names. They have been replaced here with their handles, for compliance with the rest of scenery. Incidentally, this was the group's last non-ppc demo.