. . . .. ... ....._.._.__..___..__._...... ... .. . . .
_________ ______.____(___)_______ ________
/ ___\___\ | /__( _ __\ ___.____.___/_ __ \
( / _ __\ / \ __/ ) \ / ) \__ \__)
\____( __/ )______( )______/ \ /\________/
. ..._.._\________/_._..._.\____/._......_.\___/\___/.__._.._... .
Xmas Intro by Satantronic (2001) [Falcon/ST]
Hey, it's christmas again. Time to go out and buy presents for
your folks. Time to bake those christmas cookies. Time to hang
up empty socks in front of your chimney - and obviously time to
write a christmas demo.
Well, by now it's some kind of a tradition to write little demos
to wish everyone still owning an Atari a merry christmas, a good new
year and display maybe one little effect or two.
The swedes do it with humour (Spice Boys), the germans with the
wrong colours (Paranoia), the brits in overscan (Torment), the
dutch people detuned (Teenage) and now the slovakian dudes come up
with their way of spreading season's greetings.
The demo consists of an ST-Lowres picture on the left side displaying
a snowy scene with a tree, which fills the screen to the half. On
the right side you find single text displaying a menu. The menu
offers different texts to display such as greetings and some warm
words (or less warm words) from the makers of this intro plus a sad
poem. Pressing one of the keys to summon up such a text will scroll
out the menu and scroll in the text desired. All this is accompanied
by a chiptune-remix of some common christmas songs.
Now, i won't go into a theological discussion about SATANtronic
spreading christmas greetings but right into summing my impression
about this little intro up.
There's hardly anything intro-like about it. It's a simple picture,
a simple chiptune and some short text. The poem is not really sad,
the greetings not really complete, the words from the makers not
really informative and the whole intro not really entertaining.
Worst of all the text is behaving a little weird when scrolling in
or out because it's bent by a line in about 1/3 of the screen -
Did someone forget about double buffering ?
Even though i appreciate the fact that Satantronic is currently
releasing more products than any other Atari-group does and
even though this is just meant to be a christmas intro and not
intended to keep you occupied for hours, it once again lacks spice.
Sad, but true. I wouldn't have mind if at least the text had been
fun or informative, but it isn't - and besides the music there's
hardly anything that has anything got to do with christmas.
So to be honest: Basically anybody could write this kind of demo
twice a day and still have a lot of time to buy christmas presents.
If you really want something fun, run the Spice Boys funky intro
or Reservoir Gods' Snowstorm, still one of the most stylish
christmas intros there were.
The Paranoid/Paranoia
Of the Lunatic Asylum
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