Review: Shine #4

Written by Adok

Month of release: Mar'99
RAR-packed size: 805,096 bytes
Language(s): English
Related URL: http://shine.scene.org
Main editor: goofy & baloo/replay
Code: baloo
Design: goofy, baloo
Music: croaker/halcyon/tpolm
Text: whisker, psychic symohony, the editors

General Information

Shine IS alive! The staff decided to continue making the zine in spite of the lack of feedback and support. However, due to the small amount of votes and articles, they were not able to put a serious charts- or diskmag together yet, so they decided to release Shine #4 one week before The Gathering '99 as a transitional issue to show that they are still alive. Instead of serious charts, the main feature this time is a tool that translates phrases vital for every demo party attender, such as "we need more beer" and "stupid organizers lost our contribution", into the Scandinavian languages, Polish, Portuguese, and Hungarian. The next serious scene charts are supposed to be published in Shine #5, for which a lot more votes are needed.

Interface, Design

The DOS-based mag system uses and Indoor Music System 0.5 requires VBE 2.0. After a successful start and sound setup, a title text showing "shine issue four special edition translator:kenneth" is displayed for a few nanoseconds, after which you get right into the main menu. The rather innovative interface uses a 16:9 area in the screen, so there are black stripes on the top and on the bottom. In the background one can spot the number "4" and a Gameboy-like set, the rest of it is in a bright blue. The table of contents is displayed right-bound in the center of the screen. Left of it, a little 3D animation is played. You can choose the article you want to read with the cursor keys and Enter. Each keypress makes a black line in the bottom half of the screen trembles; the faster you make keypresses in a row, the heavier it moves. The articles are displayed in a screen similar to the main menu, with the exception of a different background picture and some red lines moving around from left to right, which looks nice. ESC exits the current article and quits the mag when pressed in the main menu. At the end an average FPS indicator is displayed.

Content

About 100 kbyte of text are in this mag. The whole table of contents looks as follows:

        editorial
        charts
        articles
                Shine Awards
                Pasta cooking school
                Poem 1 - zero cool
                Poem 2 - weather wonder
                Poem 3 - skies in black
                Poem 4 - smell
                Poem 5 - remorse
                Poem 6 - streetlife
                Optimal Party
                Meaning of Life
                Party Reports
                Running out of Topics
                Drink on demoparties?
                Comment about Seven's demoreviews
                The Academy Awards '99 results
                Analouge '99 results
                Ambience '99 results
                Hype '99 results
                Volcaninc V results
        translator:kenneth
        adverts
        news

Most contents can be guessed by the headlines. The "Charts" this time consist of just one section, namely the best beer. Carlsberg has won. The "Shine Awards" go to Skal and the rest of the Bomb team for their stunning demo "State of mind", which is "a pleasure to watch". The poems are mostly short and poor. In "Party Reports", Psychic Symphony mocks at phrases that appear in almost every article about demo parties, while in "Running out of Topics" the same author talks about the writers block everyone of us editors has from time to time and which is especially evil for him as he, besides to releasing a new demojournal once a week, has put supporting every active international diskmag with at least three articles per issue into his head. The scene news is mixed with news about movies and showbiz. How fitting: The "Academy Awards '99" also appear among all the demo party results.

Overall Impression

It is good to see that Shine is still alive. The interface of this issue is fine and the translator a funny feature. The rest is not so good, but as this Shine issue was not meant to be a serious chartsmag or diskmag, this does not matter. Let's hope the best for Shine #5, and do not forget to support it!

- adok^hugi