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 BASlC's MEM$, it knocked Coupe
owners for six. But! There is, as they say, more.
A quick press of the SPACE bar reveals 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 Barn Baby' to Andy O.