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Phototro by Hemoroids (Atari ST and STE)
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So, a long time ago, this little demo was supposed to be released on a party in
1993. Unfortunately, the final version never saw the light of day so this
party-version was released for good.
The demo starts with a very old-schooly chipmusic, presumably done in
Megatizer, and a font on screen, 16x32 pixels in size in 4 colours displaying
introductory text with a little blue slightly morphing checkerboard in the
background.
After a while, the content of the screen is being removed from the border with
some rotating shape that closes in to the middle. This way of clearing the
screen is persistent all through the demo and will appear in various shades
more often. The picture is being fade to grey with a flash first, then removed
as described above. The first real effect is a relatively dark blue circular
Hemoroids logo with a huge sinus-wave scroller, motionblurred, running over
it, displaying the greetings. The effect lasts until you press the space bar to
be removed the "usual way" for this demo.
The font reappears saying that you can't escape the Hemoroids plasmoid and
after a while, it's being removed to make room for the plasmoid. Which, in
fact, is 1000% fullscreen and a very very colourful plasma indeed. It seems
to consist of repetitive patterns, but the patterns are slightly modified to
each other, so that you have indeed a really huge, smoothly changing plasma on
screen. Pressing space will remove that and instead, a graphic is being
brought onto the screen - starting with a very low-resolution, then being made
more and more detailed until you have the full picture. It displays a slightly
humanoid creature on a planetary surface.
As usual, the space bar will remove that making first a b/w-photo of it, then
being eaten by the border in a rotative way. Next up is a text saying what
comes up, and in fact this is 3D. A lightshaded cube in red, yellow and green
appears, rotating over the screen, until you press space, then comes a bluesish
tetrahedron.
The next effect is a kind of an early "texture-mapped" cube. It's actually a
blue cube with a sort of "polygon tunnel"-texture on it. Basically, it's just a
bunch of polygons on each side of the cube, that make up a twirl of rectangles
in 2 shades of blue. Pressing space ends the demo in a way, a text reappears,
the cube reappears, and the final effect is a wobbly ball bouncing on some
rather odd background graphic. This is the last effect and the demo will loop.
To be very honest, i never really knew how to rate the Hemoroids before i saw
this little demo. But this certainly is a nice demo. Neither music nor
graphics are overly detailed and stunning, but done well and give the demo and
"easy-flow" feeling that suits it well. The effects may not be brainblasting,
but they are well done.
First, the demo comes as a PRG, making it executable almost anywhere and it
ran fine from harddisk on my MegaSTE without incorrect timing, too fast
effects or problems with the screen- synchronisation. Which is especially
stunning since the plasmoid is 1000% overscan - Yes, i really mean 1000%.
Also, i consider this the best effect of the demo. The large 1-bitplane
sinus-wave scroller is also nice but the remaining effects are rather average,
even for 1993. The permanent fading to b/w with the pattern that rotates in
and closes in on the center from the border is original, but used a bit too
excessively in this demo and even though the patterns change - you get to see
square sawteeth, Pac-man-like munching and so on - it's a bit too repetitive.
But for just 150kb, for the fact that it runs fine on all 68000-based Atari
computers, this demo is well done and well put together. And after having seen
this demo, i feel kind of sad to not have seen much more of this group.
Graphics: 60% - Not really stunning, but everything fits well
Sound: 54% - Technically rather simple and short, but sounds nice
Technical: 71% - The overscan plasmoid rocks, rest is okay
The Paranoid
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