In Color by Darklite & Offence: Oldschool Demo Review

When Darklite/Offence first ventured on the ZX Spectrum scene several years ago, I was ecstatic. Their first 4K intros showed what pretty much everyone expected: their C64-inspired design sensibilities worked on ZX Spectrum just fine. Their approach to sync with the music was just as dynamic as only some top teams on Spectrum do, their understanding of attributes was phenomenal and their coder Neon, long experienced with Z80 from his work with Tiki 100, could clearly teach other Speccy coders a trick or two. It looked like revolution in the making, and this probably explains why I was looking forward to their larger release with bated breath. "In Color" is the first full-sized demo by the team, and it simultaneously delivers on my expectations, however unreasonable they may have been, and leaves me wanting for more. Let me try to explain.

"In Color" has a lot going for it. It works well as a collection of oldschool effects: the sequence in a pixel circle connects together two uncommon and good-looking effects, the colourful ribbon dot scroller is one of the rare examples of the "move table effect" on ZX Spectrum, and seemingly first from Offence, the masters of move table effects on C64. Chunky multicolour effects in the second half of the demo look less fresh, mostly due to the proliferation of chunky multicolour effects during the last decade, but still, the inside of the torus is very well done. Two screens from PAL are absolutely delightful and the track from Response is punchy and fitting. Of course there are also plasmas and scrollers of several kinds, not all of them exactly beautiful, but all very fast and that's kind of what you'd expect in a properly-sized oldschool demo, esp. one that lasts over 5 minutes.

So what more do I want? Well, probably more effects that cannot be classified as plasmas and scrollers (even if I thought that the very first plasma was actually quite good), more layers within individual effects, more sophisticated transitioning between the effects, and, fundamentally, more happening beyond the effect show itself. I know it is almost unfair, but the dry presentation style that felt justified and fitting in 4K productions is not changed here substantially, and it is an approach that feels just dated. Do we need another "PowerUp"-like demo, with no lame texts, half the number of effects, but much better synchronization and pixel art? Apparently we do, if the top place of the Revision's oldschool demo compo means anything..

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