--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      "HALLUCINATIONS" by RESERVOIR GODS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

system ... ST, STe, 1 MB, RGB, STeem 2.4

credits .. code - Griff
                  Mr.Pink
           gfx  - Sh3
                  C-Rem of MJJ Prod
           msx  - MSG

release .. Error In Line 3, April 2oo3, ranked 5th in ST demo competition

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the Reservoir Gods have blown new life into some old scene corpses, they were
able to flood us with ST demo stuff at Error In Line 3 party and after the works
of Damo (former Redlite) we  now  have the  possibilities  to check out  the new
adventures of Griff (former Electronic Images) on Atari hardware. The name Griff
is moving through  the Atari scene like a red  line since many many years and so
it's time to check out what he has done now...

At first, "Hallucinations" runs only  on ST hardware or emulation, it refused to
run on my Falcon but since its a ST demo, this isn't a point to moan about.

The demo starts with a very abstract Reservoir Godsð logo and a quite oldskoolish
chip  music  that reminds  me suddenly  to some  old ST demo  stuff, but  is new
composed by MSG. The RG logo is  followed by a presents logo and  again followed
by a Hallucinations logo, showing also a little gouraud shaded vector pyramid.

The show goes on with some oldschool stuff. So there is a big masked dots sphere
to see, followed  by a ball made of red line  vectors and finally  followed by a
vector "ball" with lightsourced  faces. Not bad  but to say  the truth  not mind
blowing as well.

The next part  is some  way always  the same. You get some  strange and slightly
animated grafix and those come along with several gouraud shaded vector objects.



The left one swings his bat!

The  grafix are  in parts well  done and have a  very own touch, furthermore the
shown objects are getting  more and more  faces as  it seems. Unfortunately  the
changed  colours and  grafix cannot  hide the fact that  here was  played around
with just one effect much too long.

At next  a very  oldschoolish raytracing  animation comes  up, you remember that
thing  where a bunch of  raytraced balls  is diving into  water or something? It
looks nice but quite outdated  tough, just like some stuff we have seen 1o years
ago as first Falcon screens...

The next one is no chair knocker as well, IFS fractales, showing green geometric
objects and later on the  known plants. I remember this kind of effect from some
old demos very well.

The show  more or less  ends up with  a little punisher, we  see a little vector
flying towards a little vector city, are following  the little vector and flying
around  a bit in  the city. That's  a nice effect, I really  like it. It's quite
smooth and fast, not very detailed, but well done anyway.



Where is the little fighter?

Then a nice  EIL 3 logo by  C-Rem pops in and the  demo  ends with the usual end
scroller, bringing  a well known  Amiga tracker music  and the usual credits and
greetings. There seems to be no other way out as to reset the machine.

final words... "HALLUCINATIONS" is a nice  little ST demo, but  over all no real
               ground  breaker. At  one hand  it shows  up that  some old coding
               wizards still know how to torture our beloved STs, but it suffers
               under some old failures too. So there are  some nice effects very
               consequently rode  to death (just like  the gouraud vectors) just
               to stretch the  demo a bit as well as  some parts  look like they
               were taken out of a 1o years old demo, so there is no real design
               and it looks a bit mixed up. A highlight for me is the 3D city at
               the end of the demo. The grafix all have a very strange touch and
               some of them  are quite  nice looking  while  others have  a much
               lower quality. The main music  is a nice old  schoolish thing, it
               reminds me to some old demo soundtracks but avoids real copies...
               The  end tune is  therefore a bit  unoriginal. So the  whole demo
               leaves a quite mixed impression at all.

___ratings______________________________________________________________________

visuals.......  65 % - some nice grafix, some very abstract ones, very mixed
audio.........  8o % - for MSGs main tune... the end tune falls much back
effects.......  5o % - quite old schoolish stuff, gouraud, filled vectors
design........  25 % - no consequent design, some screens are nice, many not
originality...  5o % - overall well known effects, no breaking news

___overall______ð54_%____________________________________________________________

The comeback of Griff suffers  a bit under strange collection of effects and the
mixed putting together. A bit more works may have helped to gain better results.

_.tSCc.__________________________________________________________moondog_o5/2k3_