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                         "XMAS 2ooo INTRO" by PARANOIA
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system... any ST, STE or Falcon with 1 MB RAM and RGB or VGA monitor

credits.. code - The Paranoid
                 Evil of DHS (demo engine)
          grfx - Strange
                 The Paranoid
          msx  - Luebke
                 The Paranoid

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To create XMAS intro seemed  to be some kind of new trend in the  Atari scene of
the late nineties and all found its climax in the DHS XMAS INTRO ONLINE COMPO in
1999 with several better and less impressing releases.

Also the freax of PARANOIA worked on such an intro but failed in finishing it in
time and so the stuff was laying nearly one year not touched on some harddisk...
and short  before XMAS last year  they digged out the  sources of the  intro and
brought it to an end and released it... btw... it was the only XMAS intro in the
last year at all...

Ok, enough of that... time to check up the intro...

The demo starts with a blipping chip music and a black screen. The music is made
with the  XLR8 editor by SENTRY and sounds quite ok, nothing  in comparison with
all the sid  and buzzer stuff that is around, but not bad  at all. Furthermore I
have to say that the demos starts to nerve with the time...

On the screen you can see a  lightsource flying around and  in the background it
enlightens a static PARANOIA logo, nice effect and idea.
The screen disappears and a  picture by Paranoid  comes in, showing one of those
trash-santa-girls sitting on an Atari and 3 disx labeled  with the 3 groups that
firming under the label LUNATIC ASYLUM, Mind Design, Loud! and Paranoia. The pic
is quite ok but I still don't got the point about a girl in a Santa dress... the
german readers can check my article about that topic somewhere in the magazine.

The pic is removed from the screen and a red PARANOIA logo comes up, the same as
in the intro... The left and right borders are opened and a scrolly starts to go
in the lower part of the screen, also red coloured... that looks quite ugly...
But that screen features something more, a parallax  scrolling background! Huuh,
how long we haven't seen that anymore?! Therefore some oldskool bonus points :)

The next screen  starts with the saying "LUEBKE ROCKS" and a photo  of Luebke in
greyscaled appears... but I don't see someone rocking... maybe we have different
views about that? There sits just a freak with headphones in front of his Atari.
Dunno...

Ok, the pic scrolls out and another  one appears, showing  5 freax on a table. I
guess  it's the PARANOIA gang, isn't it? On the  left side of the  screen one of
those wellknown sierpinski triangles it  built up and removed  to make place for
some waving dots stuff.

And so it goes  on... those waving areas  consisting of dots are  changing their
waveforms  from time to time, the  scroller goes on  and on, with some craptalk,
the credits and greetings stuff... And because it seems we have  reached the end
I smashed space and the last screen appears... the desktop!

That's it... nothing more to  say as those  5o kb of intro stuff  are over and I
can write the...

...final words...

What to say? This intro  isn't breaking any records or limits, it's just a small
XMAS intro with a few nice effex. The music doesn't rocks really but is quite ok
as well as the grafix. One big minus point is the completely lack of design, the
wellknown  black backgrounds and the chosen  colours in the scroller part aren't
state of the art... Anyway, in my eyes it is the  best PARANOIA demo  release so
far, no question, I like it much more than all those other intros and even their
HERESY demo wasn't something I would start  more than one  time. That intro runs
the 4th time atm... ;)

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originality...  5o % - Err... nothing special... but original msx and gfx
effex.........  55 % - nice intro effect, dots, scroller, parallax scrolling
grafix........  65 % - intro pic is ok, font and logos are just lower quality
musix.........  6o % - good blipping music but a bit boring and nerving...
design........  3o % - black backgrounds, no real transitions, bad colours...
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all in one ...  52 % - quite ok, another step out of the dark...
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.tSCc.                                                                   moondog
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