Review: Mekka & Symposium 2k-1 Wild Demos

Written by mSW

Mekka & Symposium releases judgement by mSW. This is my personal view of the files released over there, not caring about the final results at all. The test configuration is as follows:

PII-350Mhz - 64MB
Gravis Ultrasound 1MB - SB64
Diamond Viper 330
UniVBE 6.53

Trip To Mekka By Digital Overflow - MPG, 64356 kb, 7:40 mins

This one was fun to watch. It tells the story of the Digital Overflow guys' journey to the Mekka Party. The music used here is great to listen to and fits the demo perfectly. Several raytraced movies interrupt the videos. The scene in which they hacked Mc Donald's was very funny, also praying at the Prodigy soundtrack was a nice idea. An unfortunate thing I noticed was that the dudes crashed their car. Too bad they didn't get a lot of prize money.

[Rating 75%]

Daydream By Digital Vortex - MPG, 43161 kb, 3:15 mins

One big rendered movie. A real pleasure to watch. At the end the rendering time is mentioned. Only 14 days... whoow that's long, but the result is great. It features some nice graphic effects timed with some nice sound effects. You get to see a flight over the keyboard, balls falling into water, morphing waterballs, a growing tree with sunbeams shining through it, marbles falling onto a checker board, a flight through a room and again some water morphing effects. And much more. Just a great demonstration of what you can reach with raytracing.

[Rating 80%]

No Quake [Shot] By Chaotic And Sire - AVI, 21613 kb, 1:03 mins

Just a short movie showing some sceners playing with gfx programs and FastTracker. Suddenly they notice someone playing Quake 2. One guy runs to the car, gets a rifle, goes to the Quaker and shoots him/her.

[Rating 55%]

Real Reality By Never - MPG, 320145 kb, 17:50 mins

The idea this one is based on is simply great. It's yet another Second Reality clone. After the excellent C64 version of this golden oldie, it's time for the real life version. The guys from Never managed to peform all effects with real objects. It's just great to watch. Everything you saw in the original demo has now been realized in real life. At the end you get to some sort of making-of. Really funny to see how they did it. It must have taken a lot of time to make this production, and it is for sure a worthy winner. Too bad the telephone bill grows rapidly after downloading such a huge file.

[Rating 90%]

Tribute By Coexistence - MPG, 52611 kb, 5:42 mins

This one is just a movie made on a previous party. The party place looks nice, and all in all it is okay to watch, but it's nothing more than a report of the party. Not really much effort was needed to make this demo.

[Rating 50%]

Wird Shit In Rectum 9 By Subscure - MPG, 33988 kb, 2:39 mins

Again a video made with computers. It features some nice effects and raytraced animations, combined with a goa-trance tune which fits it well. It's like watching a video on the television. A really nice production. It's only a pity that they used a small (1/3) window instead of a full screen.

[Rating 70%]

- mSW^jLY^sOS