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

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                              "If Pigs Could Fly"
                                  (Syndicate)

                               Flowerman of the
                         Pure Bollocks Editorial Team


    This demo is yet another  running-type  demo,  which  seem to becoming more
popular than  the  usual  move-around-the-hardware-scrolling-landscape variety.
After the usual fade, a  'loading'  message  appears  and  the intro is quickly
loaded.
    There's a nice module playing  in  the  background  as  text appears on the
screen. It's not gobsmacking but it's  OK  to  watch. Pressing space starts the
12-screen demo running.

1)  Scary Dots - This is  the  first  demo  here,  and  it  consists of a small
    scroller at the bottom of the  screen, and several 3d-rotating objects made
    up from dots.  There's  some  nice  light-sourcing  on  the  dots, and some
    original chip music accompanying the screen. As the scroller says, it isn't
    particularly impressive.

2)  Shade-Pobs - Yes, it's shade-pobs  again,  this time using little triangles
    as sprites. There's some colour-cycling in  the background, and quite a lot
    of patterns that the sprites whizz  around  in, but unfortunately, it's not
    very original, although it has been programmed well.

3)  Fast-line vectors - This is one  of  my  favourite screens of the demo, and
    it's more original than the  usual  3d-filled  cubes  and simple shapes. It
    starts with a scroller made from  lines,  and it moves about very smoothly,
    rotating around the centre of  the  screen.  After  that, there's some more
    shapes and logos which are a bit more interesting than the norm. The screen
    uses the 4-plane technique to leave  behind  a  kind  of shadow of what had
    been there before as it moves about, which makes it even look even better.

4)  Syndicate Members screen - As you've  probably guessed, this is the members
    list, shown with a nice starfield made from ball sprites in the background.

5)  Lightsourced Lines - This is one of  the more original screens of the demo,
    and Syndicate claim to  have  done  it  before  anyone  else, although they
    weren't the first to show it. It's quite like the cube in the Legacy Screen
    in the 'Punish your Machine Demo', but the lines are light-sourced and they
    darken into the background as it moves  and rotates around the screen. This
    is probably my favourite screen of the demo.

6)  Colour Plasma - Yes, it's another full-screen plasma screen, with a small 1
    plane scroller. There's some  nice  colour  combinations  and patterns, and
    although it's not very original, it's still a OK screen.

7)  Lightsourced vector ball - Instead of  the usual full-screen 3d cubes, this
    time there's a 3d vector-ball. It zooms  up to the screen, rotates around a
    bit, and then zooms off. It's a little slow, but that's only to be expected
    with light-sourcing. It's nice to look at for the time it's on.

8)  Twist Scroll - This screen is  another  good  one,  with two nice 3d vector
    scrolls spiralling up the screen. It's  quite  original, but it seems a bit
    wasted, because the scrolltext is really  small (like the massive scrollers
    in the "Space" demo). Once again, it's nice for the brief time it's on.

9)  Shaded sine-dots - This  screen  is  another  quick  screen, but it's quite
    original. The first part consists of  some  nice sine-patterns made up from
    dots, which form some interesting  shapes.  There's  also a scroller in the
    bottom half of the screen and a little static plasma thing at the top. Very
    good. The second  part  contains  another  over-worked  technique, vertical
    rasters. There's only two patterns they  move  about  in, and it's not very
    interesting.

10) Vector Cube - This one's like  the  line-vector  cube but it uses filled 3d
    instead of line-vectors. It's a cube with some more cubes and things moving
    about inside the faces. It's  not  that  fast,  but once again, it's light-
    sourced and although it's not  on  for  very  long, it's still a reasonable
    screen.

11) Glenz-vectors  -  This  screen  consists  of   a  3d  shape,  rotating  and
    transforming about the centre of  the  screen. It's see-through (glenz) and
    quite fast (there are some 50hz versions in  other demos). It goes on for a
    bit longer than usual,  and  although  it's  not original (again!), there's
    nothing particularly bad about it.

12) End-Screen - This is the greets/credits  screen, with a nice module playing
    in the background. Nothing much to say about this here, just the usual bog-
    standard vertical scroller.


    Overall:

At the end of the demo, it says 'the  next time Syndicate brings you a demo, it
won't be this crappy, that's a promise'.  The  demo  seems to have been made up
from lots of bits of code that the members had lying about from other demo's or
screens that they didn't have room for anywhere else. There's nothing amazingly
original here, but I'm sure that the next demo Synidcate brings out will be far
better than this one. The graphics that  there  are  are well drawn and the two
modules are OK as well, although it could have been improved by using more than
one background chip music for the whole demo.

I known I've given this demo a bit of a hard time, but it's  still worth adding
to your demo collection.

    Rating: 70%


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