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reviews of flu
This page holds reviews of Flu - a 4kb intro. The reviews are not modified in any way.
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Reviews available:
1. Maggie (English disk magazine)
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Maggie
Review of "Flu - a 4kb intro"
After Escape's "illness at night", New Beat get on the disease tip and bring us a 4k intro
entitled "flu". This seems an apt name as I am currently suffering with a blocked nose and a
hacking cough (not related to late night MonST sessions!)
In the 'good old days', expectation for a 4ktro was low. They were single screen affairs with
simple effects - I remember a 4k competition at a German party that specifically disallowed multi
screen intros.
But now the effects previously seen on 4k intros are being squeezed into 128 bytes. Dead Hackers
Society upped the ante with their genre defying '4-ever' and '4mention'. Now a 4ktro is seen as
a demo in its own right, multiple effects, graphics, design and we have even recently seen the
introduction of music into these compact intros.
As is customary with New Beat releases, 'flu' has had a mammoth gestation period. We first heard
about it at the Alt party in the spring, and Thomas has been tinkering away with it over the
summer. We are all aware of New Beat's talent and we were quite prepared to wait.
As with their previous 4ktro, 'Blue', New Beat have managed to squeeze some gorgeous graphics
into this intro. The demo opens with a glorious 'Flu' logo which is as good as anything created
in photoshop. A New Beat logo of similar quality follows.
The first effect is a tunnel - don't fall asleep, this isn't the same effect that has been flogged
to death by DHS - this one has a twist. In fact it has a lot of twists - twisting shading lines
that fly out from the middle of the screen. A breath of fresh air in a stale genre.
Rippling water laps onto our screen in an effect which was first brought to our attention in
Avena & Digital Chaos's legendary Fried Bits 3 demo. This is not up the same standard as the
ripples in Escape's recent "illness at night" but is cool all the same.
The next effect is my personal favourite - a large texture map fills the screen, conveying the
impression of a landscape. Each scanline moves at a different speed like a finely detailed
parallax scroll.
And all too soon its over. A large 'The End' logo is stretched and sheared across the screen.
This is a simple but great looking effect, complemented perfectly by the great graphics.
Whilst Flu doesn't quite reach the high standards of the DHS efforts, it is still on of the
best 4k intros. It is the level of polish that makes it really stand out from the crowd, in
this area New Beat are in a class of their own. This is one type of "Flu" that you will be happy
to catch.
pink/rg
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