It's arriving... it's arriving... it's arrived! ESI's semi-legendary (everybody knew they were doing one, but nobody knew what it was called) megademo finally makes it to the SAM. The Lyra 2 being a particular fave of mine on the Speccy, I couldn't hit F9 fast enough, so failed to load the program and had to try again, but more rapidly this time.
    If disappointment was a big, blue, coldly-angled cube, I'd be sitting here with a big, blue, coldly-angled cube. The Lyra 3 is a real letdown. From the loading counter between parts (which ever so slowly chugs through up to 600 cycles) to the complete lack of imagination in the various parts, the prog roars half-heartedness. The majority of the effects revolve around scrolly messages - scrollies bouncing round in a circle, scrollies in the border, 24 simultaneous scrollies, scrollies in a ring, vertical sine-wave scrollies and the plain old scrolly in a bouncing bar. Great. (An obvious lie.)
    The Lyra 3 would be a fairly good Speccy demo - lots of fast movement, plenty of parallax starfields - but it doesn't exploit the Coupe's superior capabilities. In fact, it reminds me irresistibly of a Speccy demo - a lot of the effects here can be seen on the Spec, and those that haven't certainly could be. The only new effect that caused my left eyebrow to raise marginally was the ring scrolly, and the only SAM-y impressive part is the finale, which features 18 digitised Boris 'Cert 15 uninhibited fantasy artist alert and we're not kidding about the uninhibited bit' Vallejo pics ported from the Amiga. But I must mention the music - it's excellent. Funky remixes of previous ESI pieces, a couple of new ones - it's the highlight of the megademo.
    The Lyra 3 in a nutshell then: okay for a first attempt, but a great disappointment and (dare I say it) (Dare! Dare! Andy) inferior to many Speccy demos.