Razor 1911/Reviews

Habitual Novelty or Look, No Bitplanes! (1990, 07.10, ECS File)
Tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
 * Note: Does not work. Won't work at all with KillAGA, but goes past the intro part with a clean OCS/nocache boot; then it gurus.

Erazorhead (1991, 05.10, ECS Multifile Demo)
Tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
 * Note: Gurus, even with KillAGA.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Voyage is one of the greatest demos of all time, bar none. There are so many little touches and design things here that makes it a thing of beauty. Not to mention the revolutionary code! Mind you, this was the end of 1991, and Sim was doing some quite outrageous things here, with the texture mapping and stuff. He was truly a coder before his time. The music is also worth its weight in gold. These two tunes are half the demo for me, I must confess. I personally believe that the middle, calmer section of Overload (heard during the bubble part) is some of the best music Mantronix and Tip ever made. So totally recommended it hurts.

This demo *DOES NOT WORK* on AGA machines. Fortunately, we in the Amiga community are blessed with some skilled coders who have taken it upon themselves to fix some older demos so that we can see them on our machines and run them from our harddrives :) Galahad is one such person. Thank you! [ AGA_VOY.LHA] on Aminet.

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

Review by Glenn Lunder
Tempo is the keyword for this demo. The uptempo rock'n'roll tune fits perfectly with the mood of the demo, which consistently throws some new effect at you. The audio-visuals are great here, with Diesel's graphics a highlight. Tony's graphical contribution is just one picture of a big, smiling face. The code is another matter though. It doesn't totally suck, it just fails to really come alive. There aren't any real 'wow' effects here, so to speak. Still, the coders are the ones that have put the graphics and music together into such an enjoyable package, I guess I can forgive that. Not bad at all.

To access the hidden part, hold down the 'l'eft mouse button before the 'l' starts rotating in the beginning. The demo requires 1MB total memory. The text file mentions it may not work on 2.0 machines with only 1mb, but it worked fine on my A500 setup, provided I ran the add21k program prior to the demo.

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

Review by Glenn Lunder
Though not much of a 'demo', I guess this animation is perhaps worth getting for the music. You see, all that this small production encompasses is a big, B&W raytraced animation of a cityscape and a boat in the water outside of the city. So we travel around and around these skyscrapers, endlessly... and that's it. I think they could have done without this kind of 'demo' really. Still, the music's not bad. Will run on an unexpanded A1200.

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

Review by Glenn Lunder
Short but sweet, Chaosmaze takes a new approach to the Doom routine with some shading instead of real pixeled textures. The shading looks VERY similar to what Skull/Virtual Dreams did for his trackmo "242" [08/93]...and this intro contains (in the file) the text 'Tanks for the enlightining Dr Skull' (yep, that _IS_ misspelt like that!). I guess this was certainly impressive back in 1994.

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

Review by Glenn Lunder
No intro this time, so it's straight into the mag. The loader picture by Danny is a green, topless nymph seen from the side, with letters forming the word PROPAGANDA down the left side. The mag has been totally recoded since issue #3, and the new code sports a UNIQUE feature - a sort of limited hypertext clone, where you click your way to the article you want! Unfortunately, not enough is made of this feature, which could have been a killer.

Design is the point where Propaganda fails most miserably. There's not really any one thing to put your finger on, it's more the inadquate FEELING it leaves you with. Also, most performances here are below par, from the dreadful panel graphics to Deelite's music. Sorry. This was to be the last ever issue of Propaganda. It multitasks, though in an unstandard sort of way. Mind you, I'm writing this with the mag in the background! =)

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

Review by Glenn Lunder
A very good, polished 40k intro is this. The music is a funky little thing that sounds everything but chippy. There are also a few very nice routines here, with some texturemapping and a very nice effect with LOTS of dotballs bouncing around. Very very nice.

Tested A500 /000-7 /1mb chip, 4mb fast/1.3^2.04.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Early attempts at shading here, with a not-too-good-looking 4x4 routine with spacecutting. It's used twice, once for spacecutting three objects and once for showing a revolving face that unfortunately ends up looking quite comical. There's also two (blocky!) pictures by D-Design...and that's it. It's small, not particularly sweet, and very forgettable. AGA? We're not sure.

Please note that there are two versions in circulation, crunched with different crunchers (StoneCracker and PowerPacker, I believe). This had me mightily confused, since the filesizes were different. However, de-packed they're exactly the same.

Tested A2000/000-7 /1mb chip, 2mb fast/2.04.
 * Note: Appears to run, but no graphics are ever displayed. It probably uses AGA-specific graphics registers. A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
A 'one-routine-intro', this small prod showcases Colorbird's blocky 4x4 doom routine without ceilings or floors. It's an early attempt at doom, but I can't see this impressing anyone, even back then. The Doom part can be paused with the RMB, but the upscroller that ends it can't...

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

Review by Glenn Lunder
This musicdisk is a gift for the eyes, with LOTS of great graphics by Tony and Diesel. There's pictures everywhere! Lizardking's music can't be faulted, and the coding does its job reasonably well. Another good thing about this disk is the fact that it's fully multitasking, so you can flip screens with Amiga-M just like with any other program. I love being able to write a review while having the thing in the background! This is wholly recommended.

The tunes on this musicdisk are: Memorial Theme, Longstabben, Weird Personalities (also in R.O.M #1), Orhtanc (also in Oepir Risti #2), Sunshine Dance, Physiology Theme, My Little Oliphant, Thematic Hymn, Magic Nights (3rd at TP93), Compulsion To Obey (winner Assembly '94!), and Water Below (also in Upstream #8). There are also two additional hidden tunes accessed by clicking certain parts of the panel. One button is at the top right of the panel, and the other is below the addresses button, at the very bottom. The disk can be run straight off the harddisk with no assigns, or from floppy if so is desired. The original MEMORIAL SONGS was released in 1993, when Lizardking was a member of Alcatraz.

I'm guessing at the release date; it's based on them calling it a delayed christmas present in one of the scrollers. This was probably Tony's final scene appearance, since he was employed at Team17, making graphics for games.

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

Review by Glenn Lunder
There's one very good thing and one very bad thing about Dalahorse. The good thing is undoutedly the music. Lizardking and D-Design deliver a stonking techno tune as the main soundtrack, one of those pieces of music that can lift a demo all on it own...almost. The bad thing is its speed. Even on my 030-50 it snails along, never quite managing to keep the update rate up. Despite some innovation, this is what brings this demo down. You can't help thinking they should have spent some more time on these routines. Also known as 'Falukorv'.

I belive, from the way the files are set up, that this would run quite happily from disk. Anyone?

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