Surprise

Your Sinclair

Overall 70%

PUBLIC HOUSE RETURN TO DEMO CITY After rounding up the ever so few Coupe demos two months ago, we had a couple of letters asking just what the heck was ESI's 'loads-of-balls-wibbling-around-in-pattems effect' that put them at the top ot the demo tree. In the same postbag, FRED 28 arrived bearing a brand-new demo called Fish and Chips. Putting two and two together thanks to the inspirational qualities of a packet of Fruit Pastilles. SAM Centre is stickily proud to present a mini-Public House. SURPRISE By ESI This was the first SAM demo of any note, and was once given away with an issue of the SAMCo Newsdisk. (No wonder nobody's heard of it, boom boom.) Fortunately, it's PD so you can now get it from just about any SAM PD library. Anyway, longtime followers of the nauseatingly talented ESI will be pleased to see it features plenty of Speccy-ish effects such as bouncing and sine-wave scrollies. It's a two-parter which opens with a madly-scrolling starfield, a massive bouncing scrolly and an two orbiting ESI logos. Speccy owners will no doubt sniff loudly and murmur, 'How quaint' even when told of the sparkling music (well, sparkling bar of music that keeps repeating, anyway). However, being the first SAM demo that didn't whang sprites around the screen using BASIC'S MEM$, it knocked Coupe owners for six. But! There is, as they say, more. A quick press of the SPACE bar revels the proper bit of the demo - coloured bob balls a-go-go. This famous part is very addictive, containing ten or so patterns you can flip between using CNTRL. It scores over the Speccy version in Shock by (a) the use of colour and (b) the improved music. (Okay, so I said the soundtracks were identical in the review of Shock a while back but I was wrong.) That's it, basically, apart from the typically, erm, 'European'scrolly which contains the 'classic' programming joke: how many programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: none - it's a hardware project! (Well, perhaps less a 'classic' programming joke than the only programming joke there is'.) The first part is nothing to get hoppingly excited over, but those spinning, swirling balls still pack a punch. Terribly hypnotic, and probably not at all healthy, Surprise is enormous fun all the same. Now if you'll excuse me. I have a sudden urge to take off my trousers and sing 'Bim Bam Baby' to Andy O.

Greetings Earthlings. My name is Swaig T-15 from the planet Norman, and I'd like to say you're the best audience I've ever had. Give yourselves a hand. No, I mean it.

Zlutek, yeah! He made music, you know. He was a great influence on Dizzy Gillespie and that man who sang 'Shaddapa You Face.' Little known facts, but very true.