Scorpius Demo Video

[RichP]

I used ArcEm for that. I don't know if it needs a particular version of RISC OS. I'm guessing that RISC OS 3.1 will be fine.

Thanks David i will download ArcEm and try it on that.

[!FOZ!]

Please does anyone happen to have a disc image for the Archimedes World Nov 1992 cover disc this demo appears on?

[kth]

You can find an ADF disk image of it here:
https://arcarc.nl/archive/Magazine%20Co ... orld/1992/

[IanJeffray]

Lemmings 2 is the only game I know of to change it

The E-Type loading screen does too.

[!FOZ!]

You can find an ADF disk image of it here:
https://arcarc.nl/archive/Magazine%20Co ... orld/1992/

Thanks!

[!FOZ!]

Lemmings 2 is the only game I know of to change it

The E-Type loading screen does too.

Ian, intended thread to post this to?

[IanJeffray]

Lemmings 2 is the only game I know of to change it

The E-Type loading screen does too.

Ian, intended thread to post this to?

Yes. I was pointing out another game that uses non-standard 256colour palette as per Sarah's observation of Lemmings 2 doing so - the quote is from this thread. Sorry if it's off topic.

[!FOZ!]

Oh I see - very interesting - thanks for pointing out.

[wmd]

For reference, there seems to be at least 3 different versions of the Scorpius demo. The first one is a self-playing demo, which has a different stage layout compared to the following 2 playable demos. Some notes:

- the non-playable demo !Help file indicates that it is version 2.01 (09-Sep-91)
- playable demo 1 has no !Help file
- playable demo 2 !Help file indicates that it is from the 18th September 1992
- playable demo 2 has a different "charge" shot compared to playable demo 1
- level is the same in playable demos 1 & 2
- playable demo 1 goes straight to the gameplay after the intro
- playable demo 2 has a similar intro but has a title screen showing some options (p to play and q to quit), and will automatically start a CPU playthrough of the demo stage if you wait a while
- non-playable demo showcases weapons not seen in the playable demos, has a slightly different intro, fewer graphical effects, and a more refined stage design in terms of enemy formations

Playable demo 1 can be found on an Archimedes World cover disc. I have no idea where the I got playable demo 2 and the non-playable demo, I've had them since the early 90s. Playable demo 2 has a !Help file that states that it is "THE FINAL DEMO". Interestingly, the !Help file text admits that the demo isn't very good...

In hindsight, in terms of gameplay, the playable demos don't play that well. They don't run at 50fps and they have the dreaded player ship inertia that plagued a lot of European shooting games of the era. The gameplay in the earlier non-playable demo looks much better than in the later playable demos. Compared to the earlier non-playable demo, the playable demos are a mess. In purely technical terms it is quite impressive, with a lot of large sprites being thrown around the screen, parallax multi-direction scrolling, with other effects like particles and objects with physics (only in the playable versions).