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                              THE BEASTS STUFF
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"The Beasts? What the fuck?" may  some people  think... at  first  I wondered as
well, but  I have to  admit it  was quite  a while ago  as I stumbled over their
webpage  before  they started  to flood the  scene with  refurbished versions of
their old stuff.

In fact  that was  a small  band from  Spain (yes, Spain!) that  originally  was
active around 199o but somehow I never saw one of their  intros before. Now they
are  back somehow, flooding the ST scene  with  their old stuff, responsible for
this is Spacewalker, this  guy may be  known to the  people that go to Pouet.Net
from time to time, there he is around under the nick Solo.

Ok, since last autumn they released a bunch of small intros and I will check out
a selection of them...

...The Beasts Intro # 1...

This one was  re-released/refurbished  or what  else in January this year and it
starts  with a very simple one plane band logo, later on vertical and horizontal
scrollers  coming up, but  without letters, only blocks. Both  are one plane too
and disting, that  gives the  screen some  slight plasmoid  touch. Later on even
some letter sprites flying around, used to give us some informations.
The whole thing  comes along with an eye tormenting chip noise, arf... And thats
already is it... Damn, damn, oldschoolish... only for fans...



...The Beasts Intro # 3...

The next one starts with some big simple Beasts logo that starts to scroll later
on, with  scrolling rasters in the background. Later on  we get the whole screen
filled  with waving horizontal  scrollers, as well  as we get the letter sprites
again. Nerve killing is the "soundtrack" that consists only  of beeps and noises
of our  Yamaha that  just gives  us the impression  he  may explode in  the next
seconds... ugh... More colourful but  ST demo fans should have seen screens like
this thousand times before...

...The Beasts Intro # 4...

Ok, and  another one... This  one features  several scrollers on all  borders as
well as 3 or more TB one  plane logos, scrolling in different directions with an
RGB effect while  overlaying, that makes the screen very colour and looking very
weird as well... Wooooah... those colours! Gimme da joint ma'an...
This impression gets forced by the cruel tune... dope-da-dope... I would say one
of the better intros...

...The Beasts Intro # 5...

This intro  brings big  one plane  logo of low quality with scrolling rasters in
the  background, vertical  scrollers  on the  right  and left border  as well as
horizontal ones on the lower and upper border.
At last 4 sprite faces jump to the ... errr... noises of the "music"...
Yawn... somehow boring, no?

...The Beasts Intro # 6...

This intro  was released  in February and you may guessed it, also this intro is
oldschool, still a bit too oldschool for me, it  offers a simple one  plane logo
accompanied  with some things  that may be the claws of  a beast, a disting  and
jumping  one plane logo, a small raster  scroll on the low border, rasterbars as
sound analyzers and last but not least a jumping raster scroller.
So damn oldschoolish and outdated that I have to say that even 15 years ago such
screens were one among many others.
The whole  thing is very  colourful and you can  watch it once, maybe twice, but
the horrible chipmusic, or let me say noises, are tormenting  the ears that much
that only hardcore oldschool demolovers may start it again...

...The Beasts Intro # 8...

This one  is also  known  as "Spacewalker Intro"... It  presents us  some static
raster  background, 3 overlayed  one plane  sine scrollers  that give this one a
touch of tridi... not that bad... As well as we can watch at some fake unlimited
sprites in the background.
And this intro  matches it to stay a bit longer on my screen as it features some
noises that can be called "music" for the first time! Wow! :)



...The Beast Intro # 11...

Hui, here comes a last minute entry as this was released short before I finished
editing articles  for this  issue. So what  do we get here? 3 TB one plane logos
that fly around on the screen and flicker to the music as well as some one plane
sine scroller with a raster in its back. So not much to say about just as the
music is damn ear killing again...


So what? Do I have  to say that this stuff is just nice for collectors?! I doubt
it. For people like me and many others, that are 1o and more years active on the
scene and that collected stuff since their first steps on Atari are surely bored
to death watching this stuff, as we saw it so often before.

On the other hand it is nice to see that someone  who wasn't known to us here in
middle europe, starts  to dig  out his  old stuff and I for myself have to admit
that I didn't knew so far that there was a small spanish demo scene on the ST in
the past. All I wish  now is that  Spacewalker will give it a try to create some
new stuff to  show off his capabilities as he showed  us with this stuff that he
is able to do more than just simple scrollers and knows how to code...

Harddisk cleaning is a thing anyone can do and  if all would do it, we may could
not save ourselves from drowning in a flood of low quality releases, harharhar!
So be prepared for some old stuff from my band that may top anything else in low
quality, hehehe...

_________________________________________________________________moondog_o3/2k4_