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Alive 10
 By DHS/Atari org
 2x disks, total running time 179 minutes

This is a  DVD compilation  of the  Atariscene productions in 2003,  made by
Evil of the Dead Hackers Society.

When  you first think about it,  why bother with a DVD compilation of  Atari
demo recordings, as you can get the originals for far less trouble?

Or can you?  Yes you can download these fine productions, but in many cases,
people  don't necessarily have all the different forms of Atari hardware  to
run  them.  I'm sure that this problem will get worse from the 2004  edition
onwards,  when  things  like  CT60  start to register a  presence  in  these
archives!

Also,  many  of us can't be bothered to rescue that rare elusive spare blank
floppy  disk  from the heap of discarded crap at the back of  the  cupboard,
when these are needed for some of the ST based productions.

Then  you might want to show the sceptical non Atari-owning public  some  of
what  we get up to.  And how much more convenient is it to have it all in  a
fistful  of  DVD's,  playable  on common DVD players,  then to plug in  your
Atari, fumbling with a rats nest of cables, into the family television. Then
of  course,  if you do decide to vastly upgrade your home entertainment set-
up,  and  treat yourself to a massive plasma/LCD widescreen and state of the
art DVD player, then it would be nice to have something cool to show on it!

Anyway,  Evil of DHS thought it was time that the Atariscene had a permanent
record of its activities in recent years. Recently, the first fruits of this
archival keenness has started to show itself,  in the Atariscene 2003 double
disk set!

We're at 2003 right now,  the intention being to release the previous year's
scene  activity for the succeeding year,  only things may have got a  little
bit behind?  However,  with Error in Line part 3 dominating proceedings that
year,  2003  was  a  vintage  year  of particular piquance  in  a  long  and
distinguished Atari history.

The packaging is a standard DVD case,  with a neat cover. Evil does a fairly
good  job  on  downplaying expectations in a bit of  soul-searching  on  the
website,  but this turns out to be quite a good looking box, which certainly
will  "look  cool on the shelf." Booting up reveals a functional  but  smart
menu  system,  with all the titles on each disk listed,  and divided up into
suitable cateries, like 'ST demos', Falcon intro's', 'diskmags', and so on.

At 179 minutes worth of viewing, this divides up into two disks thus;

The content of Atariscene 2003 disc one

Acid by MJJ Prod
Alive 7 by Alive team
Fantasia by Dune and Sector One
Grimey by Reservoir Gods
Hallucinations by Reservoir Gods
Illusion by Dune
Moving into darkness by DHS
Popstars by YM Rockerz
Posh by Checkpoint
Undercover Magascene 24 by .tSCc.
Warryorz by YM Rockerz

BONUS:
Sprell by Creators
Lynx Reloaded by Sage

The  first disk shows the cream of the ST stuff released that year.  So  you
get  a  welcome reprise of Checkpoint's 'Posh' demo,  and all the  other  ST
demos from EIL 3, and the French oldschool attack from Illusion and Fantasia
demos. We also get some space for our favourite diskmags, and I wondered for
one moment,  whether we were going to get a lengthy session of 'reading' the
entire contents of these from the screen. But no, it was just a taster! I am
happy to report that the demo's are all full length of course.

There  are a couple of welcome bonus items on this first disk,  such as  the
never released 'Sprell' demo, which seemed to be slightly longer than when I
remember it,  and the rather ace 'Lynx Reloaded' demo by Sage, which came on
strongly  with  lots of mid-nineties Obnoxious style swirly effects  on  the
handheld.


The content of Atariscene 2003 disc two

15 kilobyte music intros by various
4ster by Checkpoint
Alive 7 intro by ST Knights
Bud teh chud by Dildo Fatwa
Chariots of fire by Reservoir Gods
D-Bug intros by various
Falcon contribution by Cruor
Fantasia fake by MJJ Prod
Chosneck third intro by Mystic Bytes
Chotro by Escape
Delta by Lineout
Echos by Evolution, New Beat and DHS
Emulated Oric by NeXT
Fullscreen 3D by Oxygene
Love machine by MJJ Prod
Mind rewind by Reservoir Gods
Paracon 5 invite by Paranoia
Grazeys Zak Hacks intros by P.H.F.
Pipeline by Reservoir Gods
Plasmoid by MJJ Prod
Rotat by Reservoir Gods
Slideshow 2 by MJJ prod
Underscore by Escape

Disk two is more of a mixture, bringing the Falcon goodies from EIL forward,
and also rounding up all the miscellaneous smaller releases.  So it was nice
to  revisit  all  the  smaller intro's like  'Chariots  of  Fire'  from  the
Reservoir  Gods.  We  also  get a quick look at the sort of  stuff  I  don't
personally  tend  to download,  such as the D-Bug intro's,  which are  still
nice.  One  small quibble on an otherwise excellent collection is that Dildo
Fatwa's  'Bud  teh Chud' does not look good when it is recorded off  a  4mhz
Falcon!  A  subsequent  conversation  with Evil realises,  that yes,  it was
recorded from an ST by mistake.  Still,  never mind. It was also interesting
to  remind ourselves how much material MJJ Productions managed to make  that
year.  They  seemed  to have had the faketro market pretty well sewn up  for
that year.

Perhaps  trying to avoid sales hype and subsequent lawsuits,  Evil chose  to
warn  us  that the recording quality was good,  but in  certain  situations,
perhaps  not  perfect.  I personally didn't have any problems  viewing  this
collection  on my average spec Samsung DVD player,  with a very bog-standard
non-scart  connector (All my scart sockets are already in use!) I would  say
that  for  the vast majority of people,  the quality is perfectly  adequate.
Where I tend to notice differences more, is in the soundtrack, where some of
the Falcon soundtracks sounded a little 'distant'? But that is probably just
me ;-)

This project is being run as a minimal or no-profit venture,  so the cost is
an  amazingly  cheap  10 euro's.  This has been worked out to be  more  cost
effective,  the  further  the disks have to travel,  but I think even  local
Swedish buyers would be hard pushed to call this poor value.

I've just got one more question to ask, when's the 2004 collection coming?!

Pro's..
Smart presentation and packaging
Incredibly good value for money!
All your Atari demo favourites from 2003 in a neat easy to use package
The two bonus productions were nice to have as well

Con's..
Some slight compromise on recording quality in places
Dildo Fatwa recording went somewhat "wrong"!!


CiH, for Alive Mag,March '05

Alive 10