Pure Metal Coders/Reviews

Review by Glenn Lunder
Just a logo, a starfield and a scroller for Flush to send some messages to his contacts. Uninteresting for the rest of us.

Tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
An unspectacular demo from the coder team that would later make "Alfa Omega". Go figure! We're not given a lot of effects, there's some interference, some plasma and some triangle stuff that seemingly goes on forever. The demo has no exit, and once it's run through, it starts all over again. The best part: Ramjet's picture at the start.

Tested A500 /000-7 /½mb chip, ½mb fast/2.04. A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0. -- Note: Needs KillAGA.

Review by Glenn Lunder
This demo's greatest assets are clearly Ramjet's pictures; especially the pissed off smurf :-) Other than that, it doesn't really come alive for me, despite talented people working on it.

Tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1. -- Note: Needs KillAGA.

Review by Glenn Lunder
A true classic. This demo exhibited truly advanced coding when it was first released, the vector animations had everyone going 'ooooh...'. It was something new, never done quite so good before. There's a fair few effects here that made Cocy a household name for a while. It was only beaten in the competition at the Amega party by another legendary demo; Tom Soft's "Virtual World".

As a result of the faster machine I ran it on, the scrolltext at the bottom became increasingly out of touch with what was going on onscreen.

Tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0 -- Note: Music bugs a little sometimes.

Review by Glenn Lunder
The first issue of a legendary disk magazine. Graphically, it's not everything the later editions are. That checkerboard design doesn't really do it for me :) Ofcourse, from the second issue onwards we'd be treated to Fairfax' increasingly great art... For HD install, remember that the disk/assign MUST be called "R.A.W:".

News that Walkman had joined Scoopex were, naturally, WRONG!

Tested A500 /000-7 /½mb chip, ½mb fast/2.04.

Review by Glenn Lunder
The show opens with a very cool R.A.W logo done by Fairfax, before the intro starts proper. It seems to use a variation on the RecVec system pioneered by Cocy in Pure Metal Coders' own "Alfa Omega" [06/91] demo to at first show a flight into a small cluster of houses. We travel into the window of one of the houses, where a RAW logo resides and we travel around and inside this while an overlaid textplotter informs us of the headlines for the upcoming issue. The design of the intro perhaps leaves a thing or two to be desired, but it does leave an overall good impression - especially the very nice music by Vinnie.

After clicking the mouse, the mag continues to load, and opens what is a very stylish interface - we dare the suggestion it was the best-looking diskmag to date, Stolen Data included! It looks and feels, in a word, smooth. Fairfax' title picture is also great, with a cowboy sitting atop his horse observing the slightly absurd spectacle of a ship stranded atop a mountain range in the skies...all beautifully done in shades of red and orange.

Motif's handle is spellt incorrectly ('Mofit') in the news item concerning Alliance Design. The news that Zephyr/Amaze joined Vision Factory are 100% incorrect, as I have the official version from the man himself =)

The mag works remarkably well on my 030 machine, provided you boot with no caches and the original chipset. I'm told the mag works fine even on A1000's =] To manually install the mag to your harddisk (there is no installer on the disk), remember that the disk/assign MUST be called "R.A.W:". The intro specifically needs KillAGA or similar on AGA machines.

Tested A500 /000-7 /½mb chip, ½mb fast/2.04. A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0 -- Caches off, orig chipset

Review by Glenn Lunder
A logo at the top, a logo at the bottom and a sine-scroller in the middle, accompanied by a mediocre techno tune. This intro was meant to recruit composers to a new techno music-group called BASE. I certainly never heard of them again, so I guess it's safe to assume it wasn't a big success...and neither is this intro. Nothing I'd recommend.

Tested A500 /000-7 /½mb chip, ½mb fast/2.04. A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0. Note: Needs KillAGA.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Not much to describe here, there's a PMC logo at the top of the screen, the middle is occupied by some pictures (duh!) and the bottom is where the obligatory text writer resides. Competent enough, I guess, with three nice tunes and an OK logo. Anders recycled this code for a very similar production called "R.A.W 4½" at The Party in december!

Tested A500 /000-7 /½mb chip, ½mb fast/2.04. A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0. Note: Musics bugs slightly.

Review by Glenn Lunder
How do you review the best mag on the scene? Fabulous! You can easily run this from your harddrive, just remember to assign R.A.W: to the main directory (what would have been the root of the floppy). Enjoy!

Tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
The Andromeda intro that graces the front of the fourth issue of R.A.W is very nice indeed, and puts you in an expectant mood before plunging into the mag itself. After just two issues, they've decided to change the code entirely, and consequently also the design. The new design is perhaps cleaner, and the new code has some innovations, like the way you can choose how the text is formatted. However, I must say that I quite liked the old design :) Editorially they're as provocative as ever, not pulling any punches this time either.

This would be the last issue of R.A.W released by PMC; before the next issue the entire editorial staff had left the group in favour of rising stars Spaceballs!

Tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
For the coding specifics, you can just refer to the review of "The Gathering '92 Pictro" (04/92), since it appears to be nearly identical. Lazy, lazy Anders... :) The show opens with a nice picture by Fairfax, which is a rendition of the poster for the movie "Home Alone". The logo in the slideshow itself is also nice. The music is not bad, about par for Jester. Well, what more to say? There's no exit.

Tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0 -- Note: Needs KillAGA.