Today it’s time for another Amiga demo I recently discovered. It is called 40 & a Blunt and was made by Y-Crew. It was released at the Maximum Overdose 10 demo party in 2012 (28-12-12 to 30-12-12 in Lübeck, Germany) and ranked as number three in the competition. It is not actually a demo though, since it falls into the 40KB intro category. An Amiga 500 with 1MB of RAM will run it fine.
The music in the intro was made by my old friend Rebb of Paradise & TRSI and he sent a greeting to me in the production. If you by any chance read this Rebb, I must say thank you for the greet. Will contact you again soon.
40 & a Blunt is an old-school type intro, featuring several golden oldie effects. It took me back in time and I enjoyed the ride. The music is a cosy chiptune and it fits well with the overall theme of the intro. I enjoyed watching the plasma and copper effect and reading the text at the end of the production (many messages from the creators to other people etc). If you want to watch it yourself, I’ve embedded a video from YouTube below. If you’ve got an Amiga, you can download the intro via the download-link at the end of this post. Hope you’ll enjoy watching it!
Today I decided to relax a bit and watch a few demos. One of those I decided to check out was Jesus Christ Motocross from Nature and Tractor. This production won the Amiga demo competition at the Breakpoint 2009 party in Germany. It is a bit different in style compared to other demos, especially the soundtrack. When you see it I’m sure you’ll understand what I mean. I enjoyed watching it, so I thought I’d share it with you. Hope you’ll like it! I have a hunch that my friend The Heretic will enjoy the music.
You’ll need an Amiga 1200/4000 with at least a 68030 CPU, FPU and 16MB of Fast-RAM to run the demo, as well as a hard drive. If you don’t have an Amiga or an emulator set up, you can watch the video I’ve embedded below.
Strange Days by Venture (screenshot by Old School Game Blog)
Review of Strange Days by Venture for the Amiga 1200/4000
Introduction
Back in the year of 1996, a demo party called Intel Outside 3 (catchy name!) was arranged in Warsaw, Poland. The gathering was organized by a group called Union and roughly 800 people attended the event. Quite a good turn-out if you ask me! It’s worth mentioning that this was the first time PC users were welcome to participate at an Intel Outside party, as earlier editions were Amiga orientated.
The demo we’re going to look at today is called Strange Days. It was developed by Venture, a Polish demo group, and released at the party mentioned above. The winner of the competition was Muscles (legendary demo!) by Impulse, with Embraced by Floppy trailing just behind. Strange Days captured the third place.
I actually wrote a review of this demo for another website many years ago. Thought I’d watch the demo again and write a new review.
The credits for this demo is as follows:
Noster (programming)
Pippen (programming)
Korbatz (graphics)
Majkel (graphics)
Wierza (music)
Requirements
This demo requires an Amiga 1200 or 4000 with at least 4MB of Fast-RAM and a hard drive.
Strange Days
One thing I like about Venture is that their demos have a unique and special style. Often they had an opinion about a subject that they wanted to share with the viewers. This could for example be about politics, war or drugs. This made them stand out from the crowd. Strange Days is no exception, as it contains an anti-war message. They shed light on all the cruelty and the devastating conflicts that are taking place on our planet. Another example is Fallen Angels, which (if I remember correctly), is about the dangers of drug-abuse.
The first part of the demo contains a home-made black and white video by Venture that shows people fighting. Viewer discretion is advised. First you’ll see a car arriving at a desolated area and two guys jumping out of the vehicle. They open the trunk and pull out a poor guy that gets his ass kicked. He then tries to run, but they catch him and.. I will not write more about it, but it’s not fun to watch and fortunately it is just acting. It just seems more real with regular people and the black and white footage.
Screenshot from the video showing a guy lifeless on the ground (screenshot by Old School Game Blog)
After the video is finished, the main part of the demo starts. It contains many texture-mapped 3D effects with various shadings applied. Some of these are a bit slow on a 68030 CPU, so a better CPU (or WinUAE) might be in order to get the most out of the presentation. You’ll also see images that characterizes the evil in our world.
(screenshot by Old School Game Blog)
(screenshot by Old School Game Blog)
(screenshot by Old School Game Blog)
(screenshot by Old School Game Blog)
The music in the background is rough and heavy and fits the design and idea of the demo. It works well with what is being shown on the screen. Everything you’ll see is synced with the music, which makes watching Strange Days a smooth ride. It is clear, when you watch it for the first time, that a lot of work, effort and thought have gone into this production. It is clear, though, that this isn’t a demo to run if you’re looking for something to cheer you up. It’s a demo that reminds you of how our world is and how cruel humans can be to each other.
Summary
In my opinion, there is nothing really wrong about this demo. It has an interesting theme, contains many cool effects and provides you with good music. The effects could be optimized to run better on slower CPU’s, but that is of course easy to say so many years after. After all, many people claimed that the Amiga couldn’t handle such kind of effects to begin with..
Strange Days is not your average demo, but it is an interesting one. definitely worth watching!
Pixel art: Response by Avalon – logo by Typhoon (screenshot by Old School Game Blog)
Review of Response by Avalon for the Amiga 1200/4000
Introduction
I wrote a review of this demo back in 2006 for another website. Today I’m revisiting this classic production to write an updated review. Hope you’ll like it!
Response was Avalon’s contribution to the Amiga demo competition at The Gathering 1995 in Norway. It was only beaten by Deep from Parallax and CNCD, which is a very nice demo. It’s worth mentioning that Avalon competed with groups like The Black Lotus, Gods and Subacid in the compo.
The guys behind Response are as follows:
Aragorn (programming)
Equex (programming)
Typhoon (graphics)
Cujo (ray tracing)
Typhoon (music)
Credits (screenshot by Old School Game Blog)
The whole team came from Norway.
It’s impressive that Typhoon composed the music AND created the graphics. Must have been a lot of work!
Requirements
The configuration needed for this demo is simply an Amiga 1200 or an Amiga 4000. No need for any extras at all. You can run the demo from a floppy disk or from a hard drive. For WinUAE users, I recommend getting a DMS or ADF version of the demo, so that you can watch it with a minimum of hassle.
Response
The first thing you’ll notice when watching this demo is quality of the design. It’s awesome! To me it looks like the guys in Avalon spent months and months of fine-tuning and working their asses off to make everything blend well together. Everything you see on the screen is perfectly synchronized to the music. This makes it a beauty to watch. From start to finish, the same style of graphics and music meets you screen after screen. I believe the word “coherent” is appropriate to use here.
Swirling cube (screenshot by Old School Game Blog)
Ray tracing by Cujo (screenshot by Old School Game Blog)
As usual in demo, there are a lot of effects to watch. Response contains everything from the usual texture-mapped cubes (with great pixled textures!) to a plane flying over a landscape. There is one effect I’d like to mention specifically though, since it really caught my eye. I’ve included a picture of it here, so that you can see how it looks for yourself. It does look a lot better in real-time of course.
Cool carpet-effect (screenshot by Old School Game Blog)
As you can see, there is a red ball in the center of the screen. A wire frame carpet falls down onto the ball and it reacts with real world physics. Outstanding! The cool thing is that the carpet changes its appearance after its collision with the ball. It’s fun to watch and looks pretty realistic. It’s safe to say that this is my favourite routine in the demo.
Apart from the neat looking design and the effects, there are some cool pixel art to see as well. Have a look below and you’ll see what I mean:
Scary beast! (screenshot by Old School Game Blog)
Animal (screenshot by Old School Game Blog)
Great work by Typhoon, isn’t it?
The music in this demo is good. I don’t think it is a tune that I would listen to a lot on its own (perhaps from time to time), but it works perfectly with the demo and that is the most important thing. It’s very atmospheric and can clearly be categorized as demo music.
Verdict
Avalon did a great job with this demo, no doubt about that. With some more technically impressive effects, this demo could have won the Amiga demo compo at The Gathering 1995. The best thing about this production is the design. It’s incredibly well made. Everything you see and hear fits together like a hand in a glove. Excellent stuff. Hope you’ll enjoy the demo, I know I did.
Hope to hear what you all think.
