JAPEMO
DRAGON BALL PART
BY
TYPHOON
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Code :Strider
Gfx : Kyst, Senser, Strider
Music : Dma-Sc/Sector One, Scanvenger/Synergy
1st at Iradium Party 2 (11-13 february 2001, France)
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At the Iradium Party 2, a small and mostly-PC coding party held in France,
Strider released this demo, which is actually a part of the megademo project
"Japemo" started by Hylst, a French GFA basic coder. This project was initiated
many years ago (Hylst told me it was7 years ago !), and due to lack of time
and various problems, isn't finished yet. This huge delay is probably what
convinced Strider to release the part he was working on, the Dragon Ball part,
alone...
So what is this demo about ?
It's all about manga, and more precisely Dragon Ball Z (hmmm you probably
already knew that). Oh, by the way the whole demo is coded in GFA basic, that
has to be said.
The demo start with a Game Boy picture (probably ripped from an emulator, hmm ?)
and then the Nintendo logo comes down, in the typical Gameboyish fashion. Then
the title of the game appears, namely Dragon Ball Z. This first part is a nice
one, it's quite original and brings back good memories...
Then some text presenting the demo is displayed using a nice font, a rather
ugly "Japemo" logo is shown and the next part of the demo is a new manga
picture, a close-up on Vegeta's face to be more precise (Vegeta is one of
Dragon Ball Z's main characters) which is a bit animated. I mean he opens and
closes his eyes and his lips move...
The next part is an adaptation of the SNES game featuring Dragon Ball Z
characters, which was a famous beat'em all (a la Street Fighters)...Vegeta
moves a bit, and then launch one of those huge fire balls that made the game
famous. But who is his opponent ? On the next screen, we learn that it is the
infamous "Bill Gates (Informaticus Stupidus)", just before he's hit by the
fire ball ! Too bad for Bill, it seems he doesn't like such attacks a lot and
he vanishes in a big explosion...Even if the sprites and the background from
this part are obviously ripped from the SNES game, I think a big work was done
on the palette adaptation : the console uses probably a 256 colors display, so
that's not easy to make graphics look good once converted to 16 colors, STF
palette.
Then the music changes to a nice sid-tune, a "Typhoon" logo appears on the left
of the screen, and the only real effect of the demo is shown : it's a bunch of
concentric circles that moves smoothly on the screen. It looks okay, but it
would have been much better if the circles didn't use only one color...
On the next screen, after a nice transition from the "circles part", a Dragon
Ball Z logo is displayed on the bottom of the screen. Too bad Anti-aliasing is
missing, the logo would have looked much better. The credits are displayed with
a nice font, as well as the greetings...Strider told us the demo was supposed
to be bigger initially, but that we will have to wait until their next release.
The last part is supposed to be a preview of a next Typhoon release (is it the
same that the one the previous part told us about?)... It consists of two short
anims (with 10 frames each times maybe) that are played a couple of times.
Erm...they show a famous kind of manga animations, namely the erotic ones : in
each one, a young girl is being fucked by a guy (the typical young-Japanese-
schoolgirl-discovers-sex style) and the rythm is getting quicker and quicker,
with the text "coming soon" (yeah we all hope that she will:) displayed in
front of anims...Hmmnow that's more clear why the demo came first in the demo
competition. I can imagine that the usual persons present at a demo party have
reacted positively...Anyway the quality is really good, the 16 colours
limitation isn't noticeable and the animations are really smooth. I guess it's
also ripped as it looks really professional. But once more, the adaptation to
the ST limitations might have needed a lot of work...
Bottom line :this demo has a quite original topic nowadays, as they're not so
many demos released with a manga style (That was maybe more common some years
ago, with the manga demo by Holocaust for instance), and is a quite funny one
(Game Boy introduction, the fight against Bill Gates). The ripped gfx look good
and the non-ripped ones are okay, the tunes are great, and the last part is
nice, for sure, but I wonder if that doesn't give a poor image of the scene to
non-sceners...I mean you won't probably show the last part to your girlfriend,
will you ?
Anyway I think it's a great thing to release ST or Falcon demos in coding
parties that are not Atari-only, it shows the Fuji-scene is still here !
Exocet
PS : Hylst told me he's still working on the Japemo project and he's still
willing to release it one day...Will it be with or without this part ?
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