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                      D  E  M  O  *  R  E  V  I  E  W  S

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                                 "Mathematica"
                                    (Aura)

                               Flowerman of the
                         Pure Bollocks Editorial Team


    This demo, like the 'If Pigs could Fly' Demo, is another running-demo, this
time by Aura. It's made up of around  8 screens,all introduced from a nice text
screen which gives you some  info  on  the  coming  screen.  The intro loads up
quickly enough, and the credits/introduction  part  starts,  with a nice module
playing in the background.  After  all  this,  there is nice pallette-switching
picture(different on  the  STE)  It's  quite  impressive  and  very  well done,
although it does seem a bit out of  place,  almost as if they've bolted it onto
the end of the intro as a space-filler. After this, you can sit back as it runs
through the 8 screens.

1)  Keftales - The first screen is a  simple  large keftale. Keftales are a bit
    hard to explain, but you might recognise  them  when you see them. This one
    uses colour-cycling, and it really is pretty unexciting to watch.

2)  Realtime Keftales - These keftales look  a  lot better than the first ones.
    They're realtime(which makes them a little  slow),  and there's quite a lot
    of them on  the  screen,  all  expanding  and  generally  moving in strange
    patterns.

3)  Keftale Flight - These are probably the best keftales in the demo, and it's
    mighty impressive as you zoom through  the  inside  of a large keftale with
    several smaller keftales making small  disruptions  around the screen. Once
    again, it's a bit slow, but it's still very good.

4)  Cubic-Cybernetic 4th Dimension -  A  bit  of  a  fancy  name  for some more
    keftales (you start to get pissed  off  with  keftales at this point). They
    move in very strange patterns and they  merge  in  and out of the dark blue
    background which makes them a little hard  to  see. Nice if you're into the
    surrealistic!

5)  2d Realtime splines - Yes, it's  splines again! They're virtually identical
    to the one's in the Electra guest screen in the 'Punish your Machine Demo',
    with 5 different settings to create the bendy lines.

6)  IFS-Fractals - This is my favourite  part  of  the  whole demo. It's one of
    those fiddle-about-with-the-parameters job  which  create nice fractal-type
    patterns on the screen.  There's  lots  for  the parameter changing freaks,
    with lots of things to change.  The  bottom  half of the screen is overscan
    which gives more room for the actual piccy. Good stuff!

7)  BDC Guestscreen - According to BDC, this  screen  was done in 2 days, which
    might explain the unoriginality of the shapes. It's another filled 3d demo,
    with the usual cubes and pyramid  shapes.  The objects are extremely large,
    but that's about all I  can  say  about  them.  It  would have been greatly
    improved if the objects were a  bit  more  original, even at the expense of
    speed (3 vbl 3d still looks OK). It's well-coded and fast, but that's all.

8)  End Screen - This is actually  my  second-favourite screen of the demo. The
    credits slide down the screen, with some nice large bubble sprites floating
    up the screen. The bubble-effect is very  impressive and it looks as though
    it would have taken some time to  get  them to move about so realistically.
    There's some different music here as  well,  and the top/bottom borders are
    gone too.


    Overall:

I can't really fault this demo.  It's  not  amazing but it's definitely not bad
either. It's well worth getting, even if the keftales get pretty boring after a
while. The graphics are well drawn, and  the  intro/end music is good, but like
the 'If Pigs could Fly' demo, the  main  music is the same throughout the whole
demo.

    Rating: 70%


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