last note: As Earx told me recently, there will be an updated version, since the
           things seen  in the demo aren't running right... so the  stuff I have
           announced in here as "newschoolish" could be bugged  and maybe look a
           bit other on your machines :)

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                           "ATARI BEHN" by EPHIDRENA
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system.... Falcon, 14 MB RAM, VGA 1oo Hz!

size...... 6,6 MB on harddisk

credits... code - nerve of creators^ephidrena
                  earx of fun
           grfx - stoney of ephidrena
           msx  - frequent of ephidrena

released.. Mekka Symposium 2oo2

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It was a lot said about  new demos for Atari that might be released on the MEKKA
party, held in  Hannover/Germany at Easter... but  as always, if there is said a
lot, you  wont get very much out. While  several groups  already announced  long
before the Party not to attend, others gave shortly before the information to be
not there and  after all just about  3o Atarians attended at  all, inlcuding all
the inactive old Atarians, who left the scene years ago...

And so there  weren't much  demos, and no  demos that were announced in some way
before the  Party, no Checkpoint, no Wildfire, no Arsenic, no YM Rockers and not
to forget, no .tSCc.

But in some way  it reminds to the  Symposium'96 were  the most  announced demos
weren't  released as well, but  therefore some  unexpected things appeared. This
time there was a band, nobody thought  about before but seems to show a trend of
the today's  demo scene, that  gives the Atari demo lovers  some hope to see new
stuff. And now the  Amiga group EPHIDRENA, known  for strongly newschool highend
Amiga demos, matched  it to catch some Falcon coder to bring their first release
on the way... "ATARI BEHN"...

The most parts of this  demo were coded by NERVE, a former member of EFFECT, who
joined CREATORS lately as well as EPHIDRENA now. And while  he's spending his ST
works to CREATORS, he  wants to spend his  Falcon abilities to the Amiga guys to
help out to build a new Falcon demo group.

Enough crap, let's start the review...

At first, as you  have seen above, forget it if  you own only a  standard Falcon
without VGA monitor  who's able to run  at 1oo Hz. Since this  is just the party
version of the demo, it doesn't allows a wider range of computers to join...
unfortunatly...

The demo starts without the nearly usual menu screen, offering a strange picture
of a guy who seems to be a bit tormented, brought to the screen in a strange way
I can't describe. There is no  fading or something, but the  picture is built up
by showing more and more snippets and lines of it, leaving the black background.
Dunno... At the same time  a very  strange and noisy  soundtrack starts to play,
giving some kind of technoing and sometimes chilling and ambient sound.

After the thing is removed in the same way, the intro sequence comes up as small
white plots are falling down building up "EPHIDRENA" while the letters are a bit
blinking as they're finished. Then some  more plots are leaving the last letters
to build another word, "on" that will  be left by just one plot, that is writing
the word "Atari" backwards. After all the  whole stuff is falling out of the low
border of the screen... Very nice idea! I like it very much!

After that a floating mirrored texture in dark green/brown colours comes up that
is disting a bit. This  is followed by a quite old effect, I haven't seen for so
many years, keftales! Huuu... Those are wriggling around on the screen.
The next screen gives you the impression as the whole demo fucked up, the screen
is flickering like mad, the title of the demo appears  in white letters, in some
moments it looks like a film that was  jumped from  the role  or something. Very
weird... and so called "new-schoolish".

It goes on with  the keftales, jumping around  on the screen, right timed to the
music. Those keftales  are followed  by another  weird  effect, something like a
very slow flight into a tunnel or something, all held in grey and blending white
colours. This thing zooms a bit and another effect, this time a guest appearance
by Earx of Fun, comes up, giving us the picture from the  intro with the mad guy
in grey colours, that is overlayed with a smoke effect.
Smoke effect? Yeps, looks  a bit like a fire effect but with the difference that
it is transparent and held in grey colours. A nice screen!

Last but not least another weird animation  comes up, showing a simple Fuji logo
that starts to fly animated like a bird, from the screen...
And suddenly  the demo breaks  up, and sometimes  the screen  folds together, at
other times it shows an alert box, saying: Average framerate: 15692.1o78o fps...

Ugh... And the most weird demo of the last time, finds his end... and we have to
write the final words now...

Final words... A damn weird thingie, nobody expected  after all. This  demo does
               not contain any  breaking effects  except the nice  smoke screen,
               but therefore it ports a weird demo style  to the Falcon, that is
               wide spread  on the  Amiga and PC  scene. This  demo surely lives
               from its  design and atmosphere, but makes  problems  in checking
               what is coded and what is just an animation. The musix are really
               nice, the  few grafix  quite ok  but  after  all  esp. the  intro
               sequence rocks. The biggest  drawback is the impertinent hardware
               hunger, since the  only reason  for that seems to be the 6 MB ani
               file... Maybe we will get another standard Falcon version too?!

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originality...  55 % - a real weird design, cool intro, some old effects...
effex.........  3o % - what is effect? old keftales... a nice smoke effect
visuals.......  75 % - mostly nice design, timings, strange ideas...
musix.........  7o % - very strange noise soundtrack with weird passages
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all in one....  58 % - a true new school demo, but with several drawbacks
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While the demo ports a popular  style from the  Amiga/PC to the  Falcon with its
design, it has major drawbacks in the kind of the hardware  requirements as well
as it isn't state of the art on the effects side... But maybe there comes more?!

.tSCc.                                                          moondog . o4/2k2
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