Review: The Party 8 Demos

Written by mSW

The Party 8 releases judgement by mSW. I give my personal view of the files released over there. Not looking at the final results at all. The test configuration is as follows:

PII-350Mhz - 64MB
Gravis Ultrasound 1MB - SB64
Stingray 128/3D
UniVBE 6.53

6 Feet By Kolor

Whoow, this demonstration has a really fast and optimized 3D engine. The objects are just flying around on my screen. The demo itself looks very nice and has a nice atmosphere and design. Only the bass in the tune is too loud. The lineplant is funny to look at as well.

[Rating 76%]

Analog 801 By Nah-Kolor

Like many of us I come from the Amiga scene, and when I noticed a demo by Nah-kolor my brain went insane and filled itself with nostalgia. Could it be true that yet another great group of the Amiga scene has entered the realm of the PC based computers? Well, they have entered indeed... but this demo doesn't have any feelings at all, and the end is heavily interrupted. The sound is rather nice but also ends in an absurd way. My only tip to these guys is that they should play around a bit longer with the PC and then come back with a smashing production. This one is just a crappy comeback production in my eyes.

[Rating 55%]

Autuas By Embrace

This demo starts with a rather nice picture by boose, and right after that we enter a cave with some nice blue padoos. The logos used in this production are a bit edgy. Perhaps some smoothing would be appropiate in the next production. The music is too ramped. Ramped tunes are out. They were nice in 1997, but don't use them in today's productions! This demo lacks design, which is a pity because it started out so nice.

[Rating 65%]

Curse By Quad

Finally a Dutch production. The Quad guys came from nowhere and became one of the top groups in the Dutch scene. After the great work on their latest productions I could hardly wait to see what they brought us from The Party 8. Well, the demo starts with a great moving wheely thing, which looks fine to me. The music rocks the place, only the singing part doesn't fit quite in. When looking at the first scroller you can see that they watch lots of demos themselves. The Quad logo and the curse are quite simple, but they have the Quad feeling. Then we enter a 3D part. Perhaps it needs some optimizing here because it doesn't run that smooth. But the 'eye-deas' in it are funny. They also managed to use some great artwork. The blob morphing looks weird but is great.

[Rating 71%]

Dreams By Orchid

After this demo had started, I was looking at some faces of sceners. This had last been done a few years ago... Then the music began, and I really liked its sound. The demo continued with some standard 3D-objects and even more pictures. Then the music stopped, and also the demo. Weird thingy, this one.

[Rating 58%]

Grudge By R.R.E.

They seem to be of the opinion that I have a lousy GFX card which doesn't support vesa2. Well, they are wrong, but nevertheless the demo is shown in black and white. This kinda kills the atmosphere because what you get to see seems to be nice. The whole demonstration starts with a helicopter flying around a landscape and so on. But since it was b/w I didn't watch it much further.

[Rating 45%, mainly caused by the b/w factor]

Grundlagenforschung By Digital Underground

Just another plain demo with some nice effects. The demo runs smooth and has a catchy trance track. At the end they make fun of the TBL style intros by saying that they can make goa samples, too. I think that is a funny remark.

[Rating 60%]

Humanism By SkraappaSkruuppi

This demo contains only some messages to the world. It kinda tries to make global peace. The bass in the music is again ramped too much. I think the idea is good, but perhaps next time spend more time to make it look a bit like a demonstration.

[Rating 45%]

Kkowboy By Purple & Blasphemy

The first time I started this demo my videocard went bananas and only showed me some messed up colours. So I restarted my system and disabled the UniVBE driver. This time I got the kkowboy logo displayed on the screen. It has a shiny beam behind it, which looks nice. Some weird sine-splines behaving like the inside of a lightbulb follow. This production is filled with weird moving objects and stuff. It has that strange kind of feeling over it. The music is weird and alternative too, which makes this demo rather nice to watch. To my mind the best thing is the fire ball in the tunnel. The demo ends with some moving circles making a K logo. The ideas are rather new I guess, so it's fun to watch. The only bad thing is the fact that it didn't work fine on my video-card.

[Rating 70%]

Manual By Replay

This demonstration features weird but ohh so nice music. The whole demo is built around the tune. The 3D stuff runs smooth, and everything is just one pleasure for the eye. This all rapped into a weird design concept.

[Rating 73%]

Mattiland By Unknown

This is one of the worst demos released at The Party 8. Damned, they used lots of scanned pictures. This is not a big problem in my eyes, but the quality is so bad - they had better used some zx80 graphics instead.

[Rating 15%]

Moai By Nomad

After the last release I saw from this crew [Sqeezed in coop with Bomb] I developed quite an interest in this production. So after downloading another big file [4.6 mb] I could hardly wait to see what the friends from France would bring us now. The pack contains two files, one for the plain DOS freaks, and one for the Windows people among us. Well, I decided to give the Windows version a shot, mainly because most Windows compatible demos simply crash or bug. So after giving control to Bill I started the Moai32 application. Shortly a window appears where you can configure the demonstration. Well, I only switched it to full screen mode and didn't change anything else. Then the demo starts and whooow... it runs smooth in Windows, these guys are fine programmers.

First we get to some easter-island statues. The clouds behind them look awesome. After moving the credits around, the demo starts loading again. The music changes to some priest-like tune, and we enter a dark area somewhere on the planet Earth. It produces a kinda aztec-challenge feeling. The atmosphere is great, suddenly some man comes out of an opening and starts some voodoo humble jumble. Mirrors move, and the guy is zapped into the earth. At the other end he comes up again transforming the entire room into a disco hall. The music gets funky and all the statues start dancing. This is really funny, and I guess the makers own Bust-A_Groove on the PSX and got inspired by it.

Then the credits part comes, which is rather unusual as well. You are just in a 3D room. All in all this demo is filled with 3D-studio stuff and could be seen as a demonstration of 3D-studio itself. Simply to promote the product. On IRC, this demo was already bombed to being just a simple 3D-studio player. But nevertheless I really enjoyed watching it.

[Rating 90%]

Satisfied By Pdg

Just another plain demonstration. There isn't anything special to see in this one. The parts just link to eachother and the 3D landscape and vector routines are buggy. You can see lots of black point glitching in them, and even some lines. The music and graphics are average, too.

[Rating 50%]

Sloop John B By Blocc

I could not get any picture out of this demo. I only got a module playing in the background and a line which said 'Table-Porno'. So I cannot rate this demo.

[Rating Not Available]

State Of Mind By Bomb

I was a little disappointed at this demo, mainly because it only works with a Soundblaster. Well, I do have one besides my Gravis, but nevertheless it does not seem to play any sound. Even the Windows version produces no sound... or let's better say, it crashes. That's a pity because when you look at the demonstration itself, it is one major dreams you are watching. In my eyes this could have been the winner of The Party 8, but as you all know it didn't win. But how is it possible that a great group like Bomb isn't able to implement a simple GUS-playback routine? Did they forget their sources, or did they simply not have enough time to do so? Well, perhaps there will be a fix soon, and please code it so that you don't have to download the entire demo again! The demo has everything it would need to be a winner. It runs very smooth and has some fast and great looking as well as designed effects. Simply a winner for 1998. Just leech it from your local FTP-server and check it out yourself.

[Rating (actually 95%, but 10% off due to lack of GUS support) 85%]

Tao By Zden & Loonie

Kaleidoscope figures all over the screen. I really enjoyed watching this one, it gives you that house-party feeling. You can use this production straight on the bigscreens at the clubs. I loved the burning effect at the beginning, and the white circle movements are really cewl, too.

[Rating 78%]

Velvetdeluxe By Prone

After this one has started, you have to choose a GFX mode from a very long list. I ended up with the 800x600x32bit mode. This production looks like a mix of some elements. It has the feeling of a Kolor production but also reminds of Clone vs. Clone by Acme. Some weird things are in here, such as splinelines, moving balls, exploding boxes. The pointy ball part looks stunning. Over all a nice thing to watch.

[Rating 75%]

Yume 2 By Infinity

While I was downloading this big one [5.4 MB], I really hoped that this would be one of the better demos released. I have always liked the INF things, so after unzipping the files my heart rate went up a little bit. After the demo has started, it selects the best rate for video your videocard can provide, and then a loooong period of unpacking starts. First we get to some morphing pictures, then some great light effects. And what do we have here... it's that digital girl from Asia. It's like looking at some video clip. The chicks drawn by tmk are smooth sexy women. The 3D areas run smooth and are filled with lightning effects. I can hardly wait for the 3Dfx version mentioned in the info file. Perhaps some people don't like the choice of music, but in my ears it fits this demonstration like a glove.

[Rating 84%]

- mSW^jLY^sOS