Secretly/Reviews

Ill (2000, 28.10, AGA 030 4k Intro)

Review by Glenn Lunder

"Ill" actually has some music :) It opens with a goraud shaded object which says "4k", then onto some green-white balls spinning around. Next is the first routine again, this time saying "CP8", then the two routines are compined and the object now says "SCL!"...and that's it. This 4k'er certainly contains more than most.

Tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.

Artifictional (2001, 16.04, AGA HD File)

Review by Glenn Lunder

I'd just like to start this by uttering a small "wow". This demo opens on a great note - and even though it moves like through syrup on my machine, the opening "Tomb Raider"-like dungeon still impresses. As mentioned, we're in a dungeon and a man with a torch walks towards the cave walls, where the letters "SCL" are inscribed. Until now all we've heard is the man's footfalls, but now the first bars of the music starts as some envmapped shapes appear in the dungeon. Then we're shown the utterly cool "Artifictional" logo by Influence! Next we're back in a new dungeon of sorts, now with water flowing through it. Credits for the demo appears in waterfalls, though the one for coding is kinda hard to see... Anyway, we move around in the dungeon some more before we finally arrive at a wooden boat. The camera zooms in on its mast, which forms a crucific. The 3d part is over, and we are on to a sort of greetings part. This one is also very nicely done, with two bands forming two a circles, and with the names of groups written across the bands as they spin. Inside the two circles an object forming the word RESPECT spins. The demo goes on for a little while longer, with more shapes, 3d scenes and objects, but nothing really outstanding appears after this. Overall this is a pretty good demo, with some technical niceties. I guess the rest of the MS demos were really outstanding, since this came as low as 8th...

When I first tried this, it crashed on me just after the 'respect' part, but rebooting with no startup-sequence and running the demo as the first thing worked much better, and the second try went without a glitch! =) System requirements are really modest, just AGA 020+ and 16MB of RAM, but given how this moves on my 030-50 I guess the real system demands for smooth execution is somewhere closer to 040.

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