Crusaders/Reviews
Eurochart Top Ten #1 (1989, 01.11, ECS File Chart)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Oh my god, THE FIRST EUROCHART!! This is history. Slagging this off would be sacrilege, surely! Ok, I'll try to be objective about it. The presentation's not much, to be honest. There's a selector screen, where you manouver a large crusifix around with your mouse, to select the section you want. It was a long way from this to what we have today.
Trivia note: Ipec Elite were actually the first to do a chart, as the scroller in this production informs us.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Note: Finally got it to work by booting it off a floppy with caches off and chip to old.
Eurochart Top Ten #2 (1990, 01.01, ECS File Chart)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Well, nothing much has changed. Presentation-wise it's pretty much the same as the first issue, though perhaps a little better here and there. The tune is adequate.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Note: Caches off, chipset orig.
Eurochart Top Ten #3 (1990, 01.03, ECS File Chart)
Review by Glenn Lunder
With the third issue of the Eurochart, things took a turn for the serious. With a new interface, it looked a lot more professional. Graphics are quite adequate for the most part, and Fleshbrain's music (his first for this group, this was his introduction as a new member) is among his best work ever!
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Note: Caches off, chipset original.
A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.
Eurochart Top Ten #4 (1990, 01.05, ECS File Chart)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Again, nothing much has changed from the previous issue in what we actually see on the screen. One big improvement, though, is the use of percentile to show how many votes each entry got. There's also [new] icons and up/down arrows to signify if this placing is better or worse than the previous one. The tune fails to set me alight, as does the gfx.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Note: Caches off, chipset original.
Eurochart Top Ten #6 (1990, 01.09, ECS Multifile Chart)
Review by Glenn Lunder
This issue looks a lot more like what we got used to later in the life of the EC. The interface stayed pretty much like this in the next issues. A plus also for the graphics, which AFAIK were the first Bustman did for The Crusaders. A nice issue!
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Note: Caches off, chipset original.
EuroChart Top Ten #7 (1990, 01.11, ECS Multifile Chart)
Review by Glenn Lunder
The name is a little inaccurate from this issue on, as some of the sections now actually represent the TOP TWENTY most popular things. Other than that, there's not a lot to complain about, really. Another good issue, which feels nice and smooth - just like it should be :) The tune is not one of Fleshie's best, though.
Works fine even without KillAGA, though the music sounds a little strange sometimes...
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.0.
Tuff Enuff (1991, ECS Trackmo)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Another oldie that doesn't work anymore. As far as I can remember, this one was rather good. The main event, sort of, is an animation of Calvin from the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, that's rather fun and humourous. I got the credits by ripping a few parts off the disk, but this did not result in ripping EVERYTHING. There are several parts, and I can't remember them all now... Anyway, worth a look if you've got an A500 lying around...or a good, new degrader!
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Note: It *ALMOST* worked ONCE :)
Eurochart #8 (1991, 01.01, ECS Multifile Chartmag)
Review by Glenn Lunder
The revolution! With issue 8, the Eurochart sported some major overhauls to the code, as well as two full new sections in addition to the charts! The Gallery and EuroNews were born... Graphics by Bustman are some of his best yet, and oh, did I mention the absolutely fabulous tune by Dr. Awesome? I didn't? It's just lovely. It incorporates themes from many of his earlier songs into a sort of medley-type-thing. The 'feel' of the mag also seems improved, it now feels almost perfect. A milestone for the Amiga scene, and a great production any which way you look at it! By the way, the news item about the new Amiga sound chip 'Mary' sounded more like wishful thinking to us ;)
Starting this one was the cause of a few hiccups, since it tries to allocate memory at some specific addresses, and newer Amigas do not always have their memory where the old ones did ;) The only real solution I found was to boot without caches, chipset original, and without startup-sequence. Then the mag ran perfectly from my harddisk :)
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.0.
-- Note: See review for details.
Eurochart #11 (1991, 01.07, ECS Multifile Chartmag)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Legendary doesn't quite cover it when it comes to the EC. It was a milestone of the scene, and gave coders, painters and composers everywhere a new incentive to get better. This issue is certainly not the worst, with acceptable graphics from Intec and OK music by Fleshbrain. One thing that I found cool about the EC was that they had new graphics for every issue. They had the (basically) same code, but there was always a new design on the control board. This is not the best one, neither is it the worst. This issue marks the arrival of a new editor, since Dr.Awesome decided he want to leave the scene.
During testing the mag has proven somewhat unstable on my accelerated system. I have found it works best when run from disk. When installing to harddisk, or running from RAM:, it seems it has problems with the loading taking too little time, and often crashes. KillAGA has no positive effect when run from hard or RAM, and isn't necessary for disk running.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
The Gathering 92 Reminder (1992, early, ECS File)
Review by Glenn Lunder
A simple little intro-demo this, to remind people to go to The Gathering in 1992. Enough people must have been reminded, 'cause it's still being arranged every easter :) I'll have to base this review largely on memory, 'cause the introduction, where some good pictures are shown, just FLASHES by on my machine :) Oh well, I guess that's the price you pay for accelerating :D It opens with some cool strings, the opening bars of Bjørn Lynne's fabulous soundtrack. Then, as the tune takes a turn for the heavier with a guitar riff, we're shown some pictures of earlier productions and some humourous text ('You've seen the flapping toilets... now come to the party!'). Then you're shown some pages of text, and... Nothing more happens. It's not going to set the world alight with it's awesome code, but it's still GOOD in its own way.. Worth getting for the tune.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Note: While it works perfectly, the intro sequence is too fast to see what's going on!
The Gathering 93 Invitation (1993, early, ECS 1MB File)
Review by Glenn Lunder
This year the Crusaders presented a very good invitation intro for The Gathering, with some new ideas. The show opens with some guy pumping a Crusaders logo full of air, and then goofily walking across the screen. The invititation part itself is very easy to control, with a set of icons with text on them in the middle of the screen to click on. Most of them will take you to a page of text - you can also just flip through all the text with your cursor keys - while some also have some extra functions. One really nice thing is the aforementioned 'tour of the hall' part, where you control a little... err... animal-thing :) around a blueprint of the hall, and the various areas are explained as you get to them. A really nice, new idea! A top-notch invitation intro with a good sense of humour!
The intro requires almost all of chipmem on a 512k chip machine, and 300k of some other ram. It therefore needs at least 1mb total mem. though it worked fine on my 030 machine, it did run WAY too fast. For example, the 'tour of the hall' part was almost uncontrollable, and some of the intermission screens flashed by before I was able to read what was on them. A dose of KillAGA fixes everything, though.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
