Complex/Reviews
Skid Row Cracktro (ECS Intro)
Review by Glenn Lunder
A quite basic intro, with vector renditions of the two words 'Skid' and 'Row' twisting around on the right side of the screen, and the rest of it being occupied with a text plotter. Not much more to say, except that Jugi's tune sounds like a raped version of Codex/Cryptoburners classic "Memorydust". And that font seems awful familiar...
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.0.
-- Note: Needs KillAGA.
Maggy #9 (1991, ECS Multifile Diskmag)
Review by Glenn Lunder
The intro part works fine, though has a few slight graphical errors that make the sinescroller a little hard to read... This issue of the mag was released a full year after the last issue was released, and for the first time with a new code (the last one was iff-only, like the old Crack Journal's) and in English. All previous issues were in Finnish only. First impressions are good, with a pleasant design and english that appears to be readable (not a given in those times! ;) But...then you try to read the next page, and something STRANGE happens... You can't. The mag forever keeps loading articles, and you never get to read a single byte anymore... Thankfully the text is unpacked on the disk, so I could at least read SOME of the it! Too bad :(
Release date is uncertain, but certainly after april (contained party report from late march).
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1 -- note: See review!
Vector Preview (1992, 09.06, ECS File)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Tai-Pan became a celebrity nearly solely on the back of this single, short production. The reason for all the enthusiasm was the incredible (for its time) filled vector routines presented here. Complemented by Jugi's above average graphics and music, this became a great little production! The endscroller can be paused with the right mouse button.
tested A500 /000-7 /½mb chip, ½mb fast/2.04.
A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0. -- Note: Needs KillAGA.
Gospel Karaoke (1992, late .06, ECS File)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Apparently coded in a day during a party at Jugi's house, this is certainly one of the best 1-day productions to ever grace the scene! Not only is it good, it's original too! The main feature of the demo is a gospel song (yes, with vocals!), and you can press the right mouse button to turn off the singing, and sing along yourself; hence... gospel karaoke. Graphics are absolutely great, as is the music. Top-notch!
The scroller mentions several secret parts; Tetris! is mentioned... No release date of any kind appears in the demo, so the date reported here is my assumption, based on information in the scrolltext. ADL had it as '1992?', and that combined with them mentioning they were waiting for demos from the Hurricunt (Hurricane) party, arranged at at end of .06 that year. Let's hope I'm right :) The demo requires 1mb total memory.
tested A500 /000-7 /½mb chip, ½mb fast/2.04.
A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0. -- Notes: Needs KillAGA.
Delirium (1992, 26.07, ECS Trackmo)
Review by Glenn Lunder
It is always hard to review a demo you've never seen, and this one is no exception. It often crashes on 2.0+ and accelerated machines, and must surely be one of the most incompatible demos ever... Bummer :(
This is actually the third demo to use the name Delirium; Fraxion and Zero Defects beat them to it :)
An Old...Intro! (1993, .01, ECS Intro)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Simple but sweet, this intro has a big raytraced animation of two 'tannhjul' spinning, over which some text materializes. Nice design. This MAY be the same as COMPO INTRO, I guess, but I do not know 100% for sure, so... The release date is based on the fact that there was a text BBS ad embedded in my copy of the file, dated 30.01-93.
tested A500 /000-7 /½mb chip, ½mb fast/2.04.
A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Paradigma (1993, 02.08, ECS File)
Review by Glenn Lunder
DemoManiac coders Crash and Argon prove their class in this great, polished demo. Graphics are generally excellent, as is the music. There are some very good effects here, like a large TV box (remember "Enigma"?), a vector world (remember "Enigma" again?) and pencil vectors remember "Boggledop"?). Very very cool.
The demo is referred to as a Mainzelmaennchen Production throughout. It requires 1mb total RAM, and all external drives disconnected on 1mb only systems. Since it failed to run on my A500/1mb/2.04, I guess you'll need to run a 1.2 or 1.3 system if you want to run it with only 1MB.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Note: Unstable, perhaps KillAGA helps.
Origin (1993, 28.12, AGA Trackmo, 2 disks)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Origin" was Gengis' triumph of demomaking, with its smooth transitions and powerful routines - coupled with Clawz's thundering techno soundtrack and the combined graphical expertise of some of the foremost arists in the scene - ultimately bringing us a demo that was second only to Kefrens' outstanding "Desert Dream" [04/93] this year. It all opens with a loading picture, a beautiful rendition of a female in a space helmet done by Mack. Then the demo itself begins, with an atmospheric powerhouse intro sequence in which a raytraced ship touches down on the surface of an alien planet. Then we are suddenly inside the helm of a vector-robot, and go around exploring the inner workings of an entire solid vector city! After a while of this, we suddenly go underground through a hatch, and are transported through a vector-created tunnel. The demo's first real effect follows, a transparent gouraud vector cube, overlaid on a stylish patterned background. Next comes a POWER ON logo, before a picture is mapped onto a bouncing, elastic ball. The very same picture (by Axel) is then used for the zoomrotator routine that follows. Then we move onto a Wolfenstein-like routine which is far from fast, but was probably dead impressive at the time =) Then a picture by the great Titan of a metal man throwing a discus is composited from two parts... and here the demo just stops dead in its tracks. I reviewed this demo through a hard disk install, and it is entirely possible that this is the way it really ends... it just seemed a little abrupt to me =) Perhaps there's more, perhaps there isn't ;)
Gengis' next - and final - demo for Complex was "Real" [04/94], before he and Clawz left the group to form Bomb Software. A sequel to this demo, "Motion: Origin 2" [12/94] was released a year later, but unfortunately without the success of the original.
The demo does not work perfectly on 060 machines, but a WHD-Load patch by John Selck (Graham/Oxyron) available through Aminet or the whdload page can fix this problem. However, when I tried this patch (v1.1) it unceremoniously crashed my machine... Another harddisk installer is available, by Zer0-X/Moses, and this worked perfectly for me.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.
Real (1994, 24.04, AGA File)
Review by Glenn Lunder
A good early AGA demo with its high points and its lows. There are highlights, ofcourse, like the swirling things that fly at you during the opening sequence and the way the parts are linked together in the beginning. There are also two full screen AGA pictures by Titan and Eloy, that are almost worth the disk space in their own right :) Titan's picture is called "Synchronocity" and Eloy's is called "Artemis". They were both released for the graphics competition at the same party as the demo. Clawz' music is not his best work, but it's functional. A truly polished production. Recommended.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Dive (1994, 06.08, ECS 40k Intro)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Ahem. There's only two real effects here, none of which kills. The first is what appears to be a standard graphics zoomer which soon appears to be more of a meteor storm. Original, but hardly goodlooking - it's WAY too blocky. The second is a voxel routine with some rather... ehrm... interesting palette choices. The music irritates me.
I always thought this was an AGA intro? Still, on my machine it requires KillAGA to work properly... To confuse us, Complex released a demo at Assembly 95 with the exact same name!
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0. -- Note: KillAGA.
A500 Homage (1994, 28.12, ECS 40k Intro)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Crazy Crack made this little intro as a farewell to Complex before he and the rest of the German coders took off for Polkaland. It is also a homage to the A500, and appropriately so since it was released in the first compo to have almost exclusively AGA contributions. There are some cool effects here, though the best is probably the concluding fullscreen 4 bitplane 4x4 rotzoomer, or the 4096 morphing dots. I like it. Right mousebutton pauses the end scroller.
tested A2000/000-7 /1mb chip, 2mb fast/2.04.
A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Wormhole (1995, 14.04, ECS 020+ 64k Intro)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Technically very impressive is this intro which won the Gathering 95 competition. It mainyl comprises of three vetor objects with light sourcing and MANY faces, shown animated over a huge scrolling picture - probably generated during the lengthy introduction text. Technically great, as I mentioned, but it's not very exciting is it? Boring, in fact. Probably the last ECS intro to win a major competition, though it requires at least an 020 processor. I think this requires quite a bit of memory...
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Tequila Chart #11 (1995, 01.07, Chartmag)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Tequila is released the first of every month, and is a chart and mag for the swedish modem scene. This means that the editorial content is not very interesting to outsiders, unfortunately. I'm sure it's essential reading for those it concerns, however :)
The coder is Rioter/Equinox, the swede previously responsible for the "European Top 20" chart from his own group, Equinox. I really must say that I like this one a lot more than his first effort. Much of the praise for the smooth look and feel, though, must go to the person responsible for the graphics, Artifex. He's come up with the perfect combination of raytraced, animated icons and handdrawn stuff... just marvellous. Now I've mentioned the code and graphics, so I guess the next item on the list is Loxley/Equinox's great piece of music. I don't know exactly what makes it as good as it is, but there's a cerain sense of dynamics and vitality to it that puts it up. Presentation, therefore, is very very nice.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.0.
