Anarchy (group)/Reviews

Review by Glenn Lunder
This intro precedes the first ever issue of Anarchy's packseries Demo Dolly Mixture (compiled by Cosy), and is very very standard. The music is a suitably cheery chip affair, and the obligatory logo at the top of the screen is nicely done, if a little unimaginative. The rest is just the normal text and scroller. This is the kind if intro you are likely to see a hundred of... Please note that this is NOT a selector, just an intro, the selection itself was probably done in DOS. The intro does not in any way indicate any release date. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1 -- Note: Needs KillAGA!

Review by Glenn Lunder
The very first issue of SD opens with a good intro - colorful and professional. Then on to the mag itself... You are first taken to a menu, where you can choose to see one of three new demos (so it's almost a pack too!), the charts or the mag itself. The menu is a little much, really, too colorful and overcrowded for a diskmag. SD was originally on both paper and disk, with the papermag containing the bulk of the material... As a result, the editorial content of this first issue is VERY limited. In fact, you'll read this mag from start to end in about 10 minutes... tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.

Review by Glenn Lunder
The coding of this mag remains mostly the same as last time, only the music and text seem to have changed significantly. It's still both disk- and paperbased, with the paper edition having most of the significant information - sadly. There are just two demos on the disk this time, Red Sector's "Follow Me" and Rebels "Vectors 1990", but in addition there are also two small utilities, Boot Memory Clear and Music Ripper for Titanics Cruncher by Punisher/Anarchy. The different heading above for this review means INT (intro), MEN (menu), MAG (magazine) and CHA (charts). The mag was released in february, but after MF's Select party (03-04.02), so probably sometime around mid february. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Nothing has changed on the graphics front since the last issue; everything is precisely the same! Mr.Big is the new editor. Nothing much to read here yet, most of the material was still being used for the paper edition. There were no demos or other stuff on the disk this time, the extra material was used for the three winning tunes from their music competition in issue 1. No release date appears in the mag, but some coding examples on the disk carry a 06/90 date... tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.

Review by Glenn Lunder
The intro remains the same, but the new menu is refreshing and ultimately heaps better than the old one! In addition to the mag and the charts, it also allows us to see the art gallery or listen to three cool tunes thay have received since last time! Onto the mag we go, and it's immediately obvious that there's a lot more to read now than there used to be! And the mag would continue to improve... tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1 -- needs KillAGA.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Anarchy goes at it alone for the first time, and the results are the best issue of SD yet! Improved in virtually every department, with some remarkable new graphical talent - namely Havok - just adding spice to the package. This time the limitations of the mag code became painfully obvious, when there was just not enough room with just one magpart for all the text, and the mag had to be split in two! A remarkable improvement over previous issues. The intro for the mag announced the joining of English musicians Nuke and Cosmos, as well as the leaving of Raistlin and Pioneer who leaves the group to concentrate on their educations. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1 -- note: caches/aga off.

Review by Glenn Lunder
With new cooperation partners, brand new code, and almost half a year behind them since the last issue, SD #6 was their strongest issue yet. It all opened with Havok's Stolen Data logo from last issue's intro, and onto a first page that immediately proved that everything was indeed new! An unorthodox design, but also a sign of fresh ideas. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Beautiful in its simplicity, "Legalise It..." is a classic among amiga musicdisks. Facet's perfect design touches makes us fondly remember why he was considered one of the strongest graphical talents in the scene back then, and Nuke's perfect blend of jazzy and 'finnish-sounding' tunes (can't help but think of Bruno, Dizzy and most of all Heatbeat when hearing "Nassum Peliti" =) shows us a musical talent at the height of his scene life. And Dan's coding makes it all come together, creating a production with an almost perfect sense of "flow". After a brief intro sequence, we are presented with a main menu for choosing - among other things - what tunes to listen to. In addition, the function keys F1-F5 also allows us other choices; F1 means a selection of scrollers, F2 is an info screen on the currently played music, F3 is a credits sequence, F4 gives us a greetings scroller (they originally wanted to have a separate part for this too, but didn't have time), while finally F5 gives us our 'bonus' - a fullscreen picture of a dwarf warrior by Facet! The layout of the main menu screen is simplicity itself, but nevertheless the overall effect is one of professionality. An ANARCHY logo resides at the top, under which the names of the six tunes are highlighted. Below this is a simple scroll, and below that again a panel of the five function keys as described above. Though this musicdisk is clearly inspired by Phenomena/Scoopex/Rebels' "Crystal Symphonies" [91], it lives perfectly in its own right as a classic example of the magic that the scene could create once upon a time... The disk offers six tunes on offer, none of which to my knowledge was released before. They are "Velomatrix" (2:42), "Nassum Peliti" (3:50), "Love Funk" (3:08), "Time For Loving" (2:28), "Je L'Ai Deja Vu" (2:33) and "Bloe Job" (3:41). "Legalise It..." was originally supposed to be a cooperation musicdisk between Nuke and Maestro, but unfortunately Maestro's music did not arrive in time for inclusion on the disk. Even before it was finished, a second installment was planned, as made evident by several of the scrolltexts. Its release date was supposedly to be the end of april or beginning of may - but it did not surface until november! The scrolltexts also kind of "announced" Rush had moved to England and had secured a job at Core Design, working alongside Dan. This review was made not of the original version, but of the 'fixed' one released by Stingray/Darkage in june of 2001. This not merely a whdload version or similar, Stingray has resourced the entire demo, and fixed EVERYTHING - even sample and module replayers - to work correct on all 68k cpus - without denting performance on older machines. As he says, it should still work on the original configuration of an A500. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.

Review by Glenn Lunder
I have not been able to get this musicdisk to work on my configuration, no matter what I've tried :( I can get the booting logo by Zoom (which is pretty good, btw) but once it finishes loading it always crashes :( tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1 -- see review!

Review by Glenn Lunder
Just weeks after he joined, Paradroid released this small, rushed trackmo that still smells strongly of a professional attitude towards demo coding. Paradroid also did most of his own graphics - and very well he did them too. I guess this makes him Dan's equal, in that they're coder-graphicians, which is a rare combination indeed. Nuke's main tune is a very bland disco affair, but the end tune is a much better, slower affair. The code consists of mainly vector routines, but they're strictly state-of-the-art for the period, including stuff like ellipses and complex shading. The graphics and design are what sets it a little apart from the crowd, though. Very nice, if I may say so. I cannot vouch for this needing the full 1MB or being just 512k. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.0. Note: Glenz vectors bugs, otherwise perfect.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Since this demo no longer works on my current hardware, I will have to write this review largely from memory. What I can remember, though, is some excellent craftmanship, in all respects. I remember this demo for Nuke's great music, I remember it for Facet's great 'Hardcore' title picture, and I remember it for its revolutionary vector code, with complex effects like space cutting. Technically, this demo consists of three files; one small loader and two data files. The executable and the first data files were packed with the absolute address cruncher Time Cruncher 1.7, which may go a long way in explaining why it doesn't work anymore. Rush, ICronite or Dan - please release a working copy! The files must all be on a disk in df0: for the demo to work. When you attempt to load the demo, it prints a little text in the cli window, starts loading the first data file, and when it's done the machine guru's. This also happens with caches off, kicking down to 1.3 etc. Believe me, I've tried it all... tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.0 -- Note: See review.

Review by Glenn Lunder
SD's swansong issue is an audio-visual feast. I LOVE the idea they've used, with having one disk with lots of pictures and tunes, and one disk devoted to the mag. Presentation is flawless, as mentioned, with lots of pictures and great design. It's not hard to understand SD's position in the diskmag scene after having feasted on this. Excellent! Released at The Party 92. ProPacker was used for music. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.