[ Dreams 2 is a dual (2 cd's) cd-rom media, which contains PC demo scene productions from 1996-1998.The following is a
review of Dreams 2 ]
It was great news to me when I heard from Darkness that Dreams 2 will be released at Wired'98.Dreams 1 was an
excellent scene production so naturally I was looking forward to experience Dreams once again.Only this time
as a bigger and hopefully even better edition.
Few weeks ago, when coming back from work late at night, I checked my mailbox and noticed a bulky envelope.
"Dreams 2" I thought, I checked the stamps - Belgium.Dreams 2 it was, which arrived only few days after I
mailed Darkness.[must be one of the fastest services around :)].The first thing I noticed was the
good quality of the cover itself.The nice images and good design is the work of Pl/Imphobia.The inside of the
front cover can be folded out and it contains information about the making of Dreams2, as well as lot's of
greetings to various sceners.The back cover gives you the basic information about both cd's and starts with the following statement:"This dual
CD includes a collection of all the best productions released on the PC demoscene from June 1996 to July 1998"
- sounds great!Well, let's check these cd's then!
CD 1
The first cd is the cd of demos, intros, diskmags, reports and party results.Simply put it,
the essence of demoscene.The biggest dir is naturally the Demo dir which consists of 141(464Mb) demos,
all unpacked and ready to run.Since each demo has it's own dir by its name, the Demos dir has a text file
Demos.txt which contains all the necessary information like, who released the demo, when and at what party.Neat.The intros
dir is stored by the same principle and it also contains 90 intros(14.4Mb).Both the Demos and Intros dirs seems to include
all the most popular and best productions released during the last 2 years.Also some demos have a Fix dir with the latest
update of a demo.Obviously very practical.The Diskmags dir consists of 16 directories(16 diskmags),
where each directory contains all the issues released during the last 2 years.The Reports dir contains both party reports and
images from various parties.All in all 77.6Mb of party memories.The last dir on the first
cd is the Results directory, which is the smallest in size (almost 800Kb) but
very useful as it contains results from 148 parties!Without any doubt the first cd is essential for every scener.
CD 2
The second cd, is the cd where all the real treasure is for all of us graphicians :)The Graphics dir(218Mb)
has the following subtree:
- 30 mins - contains 30 "30mins irc gfx compo" compos which are held on irc.
- Artists - a showcase from 286 graphicians!(over 4800 pics)
- Disks - 7 slideshows
- Grafx2 - GrafX 2.00 ALPHA 93.3% version of one of the most popular 8 bit pixelling dos proggy
- Theme - images catalogued by themes
The 30 mins dir is definitely worth checking out
just to get an idea of how fast some graphicians can do their stuff.Especially compos 17, 24, 25 and 27 have some cool pics.The
Artist dir is also the most interesting one (for all the
gfx people), as it contains graphics from 286 graphicians[tracers included :)].It is interesting to note that even though
I see most of the scene gfx and always try to include the best of it in GFXZone, I still do miss quite a lot of quality pics, so itseems.For
example, I found two images drawn by Lazur which I have never seen before.Tmk's dir, contains some of his pencil sketches of
Chinen and other pics(which are very nice btw).Some graphicians have also animations and demo gfx(textures, env maps)in their dirs
as well.In Nero's dir for instance, there is a whole set of textures and maps from Fulcrum.Very useful for those who are starting out in demo scene.
The Disks dir contains 5 slideshows, one advert for Lazurs upcoming slideshow and one picture pack from Arcadia with four really cool pics.
There is also an Infos.txt in the Graphics dir which describes, how to view the images, and who's graphics have
been included.
Furthermore the second cd also includes Javademos, 3dfx demos, games, Melons TP7 winner Wild demo, MEGADEMO IV 2(a unique,
platform independent demo), 24 music disks and music from 25 musicians(including Elwood, Dune, Necros, Mellow-d, Scorpik,
Radix and many others).In other words, a lot of cool stuff worth checking out.
On the root of each cd there is a Tools dir which contains all the necessary tools to
fully enjoy the cd's.Even Pkunzip.exe and Dos4gw.exe has been added together with image viewers, tune
players, trackers, and extracting tools.Furthermore, both cd's have a Dir.txt file which contains the whole
directory structure of each cd.Both cd's are about 650Mb in size which gives in total over 1.2Gb of the
best PC scene releases during the last 2 years.
The Dreams 2 is a highly polished and very user friendly production.As the editor of GFXZone, I found Dreams 2 to be very useful
and simply essential to have.For the price of just under 15 US$, I can only recommend it to everyone who is interested in demo scene.
Darkness spent two years on collecting, sorting, mailing people, collecting necessary information, getting permission from
people, etc.All this in order to make yet another great Imphobia production.Well, he definitely succeeded, as all his hard work
and dedication have really paid off in form of these two excellent cd's which, as Darkness self put it: "have been made for You!".
The 2 CDs pack sells for about (only!) 15 US$. For more information
(including complete directory listing and how to order), get the
INFOFILE or email
Darkness/Imphobia
