Pain

By Adok/Hugi


Pain is an international diskmag with Swiss roots. It's one of the few diskmags that get still released, and it's quite popular in the demoscene. The Pain issues released in 2003-2005 are probably some of the best diskmags that were released in those years. Several people from Switzerland have edited this mag in the course of time, including Uli, Chicken, Furball, Fred, Iquito, Cockroach, Asc and Unlock. Unlock is the current main editor of Pain and he was also the main editor of all the issues I'm going to review.

From the beginning of 1994 until the beginning of 2008, 62 issues have been released. The issues weren't assigned numbers from the beginning on, but were published as "Pain {month}/{year}", and only late the editors started to assign numbers to them. The first issue with a number was Pain 02/2001, to which number 46 was assigned although it was actually already the 49th issue. So there is a difference of three between the assigned number and the actual issue number. This is due to the fact that when the numbering was done, the current editors of Pain didn't know about the existence of all Pain issues. Some older issues were only later found again.

Pain can be downloaded from scene.org. Many of the issues got downloaded 1000 to 3000 times. Most Pain issues run fine on modern PCs even without a DOSBox emulator.

The Pain issues from 1994-2000 were reviewed in Pain 02/2002 (the 53rd issue, officially issue 50) and 07/2002. Since these reviews are pretty well written, I think it doesn't make any sense to review these issues again. So I'll only deal with the more recent issues from 2001-2007, which is a whole lot anyway. I want to congratulate the Pain staff for having had so much endurance in creating a good disk magazine!


Pain #46 (02/2001)

Pain 02/2001 is using the same Windows-based engine by P.Doom of Carrots that is used in all of the issues I'm reviewing here. This engine was introduced in Pain 10/1999. After the setup window, where you can switch between full-screen and windowed mode and toggle sound on/off, a loading picture pops up for some parts of a second, and then the main menu appears. With the cursor keys and Enter you can select the section to read (as described in the bottom left part of the screen). In this issue there are "i feel PAiN in your eyes.." (the editorial and internal things), "the News & Reviews", "the Articles", "the Resource Base" and "Platforms Survey". Having selected a section, you get to see the first page of the first article from that section displayed. At the bottom of the screen, the articles menu is displayed. You can flip pages with left/right and switch between articles with up/down. This navigation system is a trademark of Pain, but it's not an original invention of Pain: it was inspired from the (also Swiss) Amiga diskmag "Zine".

The graphics of this issue were drawn by Fred of Calodox, and Splif of Orion. The music comes from Kenet of Mandarine. When you exit the diskmag, a short 3D outtro is shown. It shows some skyscrapers and some little airplanes flying around. This scene was created by Triztan of Vantage.

In the editorials corner, Unlock published an open letter to the Swiss demoscene in which he stated that "the Swiss scene only consists of some lazy farmers milking their cows" and he asked the sceners to become more productive and release things. The reviews in this issue are about graphics, demos, intros, music and games. There are both international charts and Swiss charts. The top 10 of the following categories is listed: coders, 2D artists, 3D artists, musicians, groups, demos, intros; in the Swiss charts, demos and intros are merged into one category "productions". There were 19 voters. As usual, the votesheets had fields for general comments and for comments on Pain, and these comments are published as well as the answers to the poll questions ("Do you want commercial MP3s in demos?", "Would you consider yourself as being elite?", "Do you read all articles in diskmags?"). The charts section was edited and commented by Cockroach.

The articles section starts with an interview with Chaos of Farbrausch. It is followed by an educational article on copyright by Fred of Calodox. Then comes Choi with his tutorial about sound synthesis, and Ghandy states that "Everybody is a Writer". Two articles, by Unlock and Jazzcat, respectively, deal with the development in the PC and C64 scenes throughout the year 2000. The next article is an interview with Raw Style of Lego and Chaotic of Padua. Some of the other more interesting articles are a review of the Nexus 6581 Audio CD (C64 remixes) and a review of the Gravis Gamepad. Apart from that, there are some rambling about the state of the demoscene, boring demos and newbies by people such as Enzymer, Domainator and Optimus, and some other fillers.

The Resource Base consists of the Buenzli 10 invitation, a BBS list (only five BBS's are listed, many have shut down in the meantime) and a beginners guide to the demoscene with essential links). Finally there is the Platform Survey, which is interesting: people from various platforms (Amiga, Atari, C64, CPC, Linux, Nintendo 64, Windows, PlayStation1, Spectrum ZX) were asked the same questions, e.g. how many groups and sceners do they believe to be active in their scene, when was the scene born, what are the main scene countries, how many demos are released per year and so on. Although probably not all data are correct, it is interesting to learn about the individual platforms this way.


Pain #47 (04/2001)

The April issue has the same graphics as the previous one. The music is from Estrayk of Paradox. There are loads of reviews in this issue - about demos, intros, 32k games, commercial games, diskmags, C64 4k intros, the tool visualJockey and the book Hackertales. There are again international and Swiss charts with the same categories as before. 52 voters participated, which is a lot more than last time. The questions asked in the polls were "You favourite scene related website?", "What was the last BBS you called?" and "Would you like to have sex with Unlock?". Instead of the Platform Survey, this issue contains an "Interview Special". The interviewed persons are: Trug of Future Crew, TMK of INK and Dolphin, beyond of hybris/NEMESIS, Sunny of Nuance, Dake of Calodox, Fred of Calodox, Estray of Paradox, and Günther Freiherr von Gravenreuth.

The Articles section starts with two reports of Mekka & Symposium 2001 by PS and Ghandy. Then comes a The Party 2000 report, followed by a Chaos Congress 2000 report. TS explains in an article how to reduce the size of samples in MODs. This is followed by KB's tutorial about the sound system that was used in fr-08. The next article deals with the Glaze3D graphics chip. There are two articles by Darkhawk (Eurochart editor on Amiga), one of them being about online mags vs. diskmags. There's also an article by Ghandy called "Adok and the Royal Dignity", go and read it if you want to find out more. Optimus writes about the CPC scene in the year 2000, the start of a series of articles that was continued in Hugi. The other articles are more or less fillers.


Pain #48 (08/2001)

Pain #48, released at Buenzli 10, featured music by Stanley of Trinity accompanying the graphics from Pain #47. The sections this time are called: "a PAiN in your ass" (editorials), "this is the Scene" (news and reviews), "our favourite Gods" (charts), "the Talkshow" (interviews), "Articles for everyone" and "the small Ressourcebase". The reviews are many in number, with demos, intros, Hugi #23, Oddeology (Oddjob's debut album), Basic Needs (another CD), Lightflow I & II (two more CDs), slengpung.com and games being under the critic's inspection. The charts are based on the votes of 59 people. There are several new categories: Nectarine top requests, Nectarine best rated songs, wild demos, and the intros category has been split up into 64k intros and 4k intros. The poll questions are: "How's your relation of HD-space used for MP3s to space used for demos?", "What do you expect from a wild demo?" and "When did you stop giving serious poll answers?".

The interview partners of this issue are Poti of Black Maiden, Oddjob of 100% Prophets, Scorpik of Sunflower, Alien of Paradox, Bjorn Lynne (Dr. Awesome), and Clawz of Bomb. The articles section starts with an Assembly 2001 report, followed by a report of PS' summer trip 2001 and a VIP 3 report. Then there is a review about Haujobb's appearance on NBC GIGA TV. There is also an instruction guide to building a hometheater. Furthermore, Phoenix announced the "DemoDVD project" which eventually became Mindcandy. The other articles are mostly opinionated comments and fillers.


Pain #49 (10/2001)

The old graphics again, but new music by Estryak of Paradox (a "true oldschool .mod") and new sounds played when navigating in the mag. We have the same sections as in the previous issue. The reviews this time are about wild demos, the Paradox PSX Intro Collection, chipdisks, the Final Fantasy movie, the Soundfactory CD and various games. There have been 70 voters, and the poll questions are: "Do demo size limits still make sense?", "Ever played Quake (or similar games) at a scene party?" and "Your impressions from Bünzli#10 (and if you haven't been there, why?)?".

The articles section starts with Ghandy's "Stuck in a World of ASCII", in which Ghandy talks about his experiences with modem-trading. It's a pretty long article (12 pages). The next article is a continuation of the report about Haujobb being featured on TV from the previous issue. There are party reports of Buenzli#10 and TRSAC01. Zeroic published a tutorial on party organizing. Darkhawk brings us tips and tricks for newcomers. The other articles didn't really manage to stir up my interest.

There are only two interviews in this issue, with Redhound of Scene.org on the one hand and Seven on the other. All in all it's a rather small issue lacking contents, but mind it was created in only two months time.


Pain #50 (02/2002)

This is the big anniversary issue of Pain. It features new graphics by Fred of Calodox and Cru of 100%. There are four tunes, composed by Genox of Vantage, Phred of Nowadays, Dixan of Spinning Kids and MFX, and Gweilo (that's Oddjob and Pausenclown). The sections of this issue are called "I Feel The Glory" (editorials), "This Is The Scene" (news and reviews), "Who's Ruling?" (charts), "Articles", "Party Reporting", "Celebrations", "Past Editors Interviewed" and "The Resources".

The reviews deal with the book Digital Beauties, demos, the

Output 64 CD, AudioMulch (an interactive music studio) and C64 joysticks from an artist's perspective. In the charts section, the Nectarine charts have been dropped. For the rest, the votesheets of 39 people have been evaluated. It's the last time the charts are edited by Cockroach, we find his goodbye

article in this issue. The polls questions are: "Why don't you write articles for Pain?", "What do you think about our 'real-world'?" and "What's your opinion about news in diskmags?". For the first time, there are also so-called "best-of" charts. For these charts, the appearances in the top 3 places of the charts of all previous Pain issues were counted.

The articles section starts with Seven's "Save the Transitions!". Then Ghandy writes about how the hacker Kimble got arrested. Next, Melwyn tells us about ways to get in to demoparties for free, with or even without cheating the organizers. Ghandy tells us about his first experiences with a PC, and an article called "Amiga VS PC" follows. There are tutorials about blobs using marching cubes and MIDI plus Buzz. Optimus talks about the CPC scene in 2001. There are several more articles, which seem to be mostly fillers.

The Party Reporting section deals with The Party 2001 (three different reports), Dialogos 2001, JFF2 Party and 18C3 Chaos Congress.

The Celebrations sections contains a history of Pain, the reviews of all Pain issues released in 1994-1997, and an article written by me on the occasion of the anniversary of Pain. In the next section, the former editors of Pain, Chicken, Furball, Fred, Uli and Iquito are interviewed. The final section (Resources) has approximately the same contents as always.


Pain #51 (07/2002)

Pain #51 has a title picture by Bridgeclaw. It is displayed after the splash screen, which contains a picture by Visualice. The background picture was recycled from Pain #50. This time there is only one tune (like in most issues), which was composed by Reed.

There are reviews of demos, of the film "Demos Of A Decade", Bjorn Lynne's Colony Audio CD and various releases from Mekka & Symposium 2002. In the charts section the Nectarine charts are back. 30 people voted. The poll questions are "Any comments on our 10 MB download?", "Are chiptunes something you like?" and "What do you think about all those Windows-ports of old DOS demos?".

The articles section starts with a making-of report about the demo Propaganda by INF, written by Ghandy, done as an interview with Krav and TMK of INF. Unlock tested Virtual PC with demos from the CD Dreams by Imphobia and wrote an article about it. There is an article about the GameBoy Advance scene, written by Menace. Two party reports are about Mekka & Symposium 2002, one about Symphony 2002 and another one about Synthesis 2002. The interviews, which this time aren't in a separate section but merged with the articles, are with the group Haujobb, with the Merregnon project organizer Thomas Boecker, with the very oldskool musician Rob Hubbard, Dixan and Karsten Obarski (the father of the Soundtracker). The other articles can be regarded as fillers.

In the section "Celebrations Part Two", there are the reviews of the Pain issues of 1998-2000. Furthermore, there are interviews with the Pain writers/editors Eule, Cockroach and Unlock.

Finally there are "The Resources" with roughly the same contents as always.


Pain #52 (11/2002)

In Pain #52 both the splash screen and the title picture were made by Zthee of Vantage. The final 3D scene this time isn't by Triztan, but by Madman of Calodox. The music comes from Netpoet of Park Studios.

The sections of this issue are: "inside PAiN" (editorials), "news

& reviews", "charting", "at parties", "write about it" (articles), "start learning" (tutorials) and "read more" (resources). The reviews section contains Ghandy's "Demospotting" corner, a review of the Power PC demo "Human Traffic" written by Wade, Unlock's audio CD review of "Back in time 3", Ghandy's comment on the review of the Colony audio CD which was published in Pain #51, Dipswitch's reviews of several ASCII collections, Unlock's review of Worldcharts #14, and finally a BBS review by Ghandy.

The charts section contains the Gigolo Charts Live at Assembly 2002 Edition. There are also new Slengpung charts (most often viewed photos and people). The Swiss charts have been dropped. The poll questions are: "Have you ever bought an audio CD from a scene musician?", "Have you ever been working on a demo, or are you just a consumer?" and "Are you a weirdo?".

The party reports section deals with Assembly 2002 (two reports - Acumen and Seven), Buenzli 11, Evoke 2002, Underground Conference 6.22, Unlock's summer holidays, PS' summer tour 2002, Fred's holidays in Helsinki, and Altstork 2002.

The articles section start with the making of Test:23 by Hitmen (a console demo), then come an article about mobile device demos and another one about Scenet vs. diskmag.de. There are articles about the ASCII scene, about Madwizards' demo not having been shown at Mekka & Symposium 2002, IRC ("the scene's kindergarten"), the revival of Worldcharts and the Polish scene. Furthermore, there's a cook recipe, interviews with Barock of The Silents, Abyss of Assembly organizing, Deck of Assembly orgainizing, Ralph Baer (creator of the Odyssey, the first gaming console), and Martin Galway (musician), plus a couple of other articles (fillers).

The tutorials section deals with lossy sound compression (ADPCM and DPCM), Telnet, creating a debug console window in C#, and the fr-08 soundsystem (part 4 of the series by KB started in Pain #47). As a bonus, the sourcecode of a 4k intro by Calodox called Kwak is attached to this Pain issue.


Pain #53 (02/2003)

Pain #53 features a title picture by Wade of Haujobb and a new background picture by Xenusion of Reason and Razor1911, who also created the splash screen. The 3D scene is again by Triztan of Vantage. The music was composed by Alias Medron of Padua, and there's a hidden tune by Skyrunner of Xibalba.

There are reviews of demos, ASCII collections, musicdisks, Worldcharts #15 and the Immortal 2 audio CD. The charts section consists of the international charts and the Slengpung charts. There were 93 voters - a lot. The poll questions: "What's worse, puking at parties or being sober during the democompo?", "Why haven't you ever been in the demoscene charts?" and "A demo a day...? (fill in)".

The party reports deal with Cologne Scene Meeting 2002/2003, The Ultimate Meeting 2002, BCN'02, State of the Art and Chaos Computing Congress 19.

The articles section starts with the official hidden parts list maintained by Rod of Mandula and Unlock of Vantage. Since in Pain usually the first articles

that appear in the menu are the most interesting ones, I wonder whether this is going to be a weak issue? After reading it, I can say: Maybe, yeah. It has a lot of articles, but there are no real highlights. Unlock gives us an English translation of the ARTE TV programme on the demoscene, Bregade11 talks about the historical Commodore One computer, there's yet another cook recipe, Skyrunner talks about the revival of the 4-channel-compo at TUM'02, Crest declares his love to the demo "Heart Shaped Box" by Melwyn, there are interviews with Jesper Kyd, Knos and Djam, Ghandy writes that "sceners nowadays tend to be pure consumers", Wade gives his opinion on Pouet. There are also an article about the Finnish demo scene and Optimus' report of the CPC scene in the year 2002. The tutorials, which are included in the articles section, deal with configuring WinUAE, min/max occlusion volumes, fast alloc and free, and how to make a Win32 Assembler program call a C library.

There's a new section called "A bit imaginary". This section comes from the Jurassic Pack diskmag on Amiga. In it, Zito and others write about science fiction and fantasy literature. Finally, the magazine ends with the resources section.


Pain #54 (10/2003)

Pain #54 starts with a splash screen by H7 of HiRMU, followed by a title picture by Raven of Nuance. The background picture is the same as in the previous issue. There are two official tunes, made by X-Poole of Nuance and Laxical of Danish Gold, respectively, and a hidden tune by Little Bitchard of MFX.

The section structure of this issue is as follows: "pain as you love it" (editorials), "news & reviews", "scene prime" (charts), "the party summer", "our articles", "spotlight" (interviews), "apocalyrica se" (poems), "funk dat - compo guide" (ideas for competitions at demo parties) and finally "resources".

The reviews deal with demos, wild demos, the Spot on Liquid Skies music label, 64k intros, Impressive Impressions (the debut album of Factor6), The Moods Proomoo CeeDee, Iridion II Soundtrack, Black 2 Witchwood (a CD by Bjorn Lynne), the graphics of Breakpoint 2003, an encyclopedia of computer games and some "good old" movies.

The charts are based on the votes of 55 contributors. The poll questions are: "Do you enjoy red interfaces?", "Tell us who _you_ wanted to see among the Scene.org Awards nominees" and "How does Pain change your lifestyle?".

The party section is about Buenzli 12, Evoke 2003 (three reports: Fred, Ghandy, and Seven), Assembly 2003, Symphony 2003, Breakpoint 2003 and The Party 2002.

The top article in the articles section is about the (back then) new trend of making Win32 ports of DOS demos. There is an article about the history of Scene.org written on the occasion of Scene.org reaching the 1 million visitors mark. Dipswitch presents his opinion on "The Future of Diskmags". Unlock talks about the packaging of scene releases in the past and the present. There are again cook recipes and hidden parts lists. Ghandy has written an article about Scoopex. There are also articles about writing and making interviews. The tutorials deal with portable demo coding, volume shadows and common errors in 3D graphics.

The interviews have been conducted with the group Conspiracy, Bacchus of Fairlight, DCP of Smash Designs, K-Rad, BP of Fuzzion, and Yellow Water of Crude. The "apocalyrica se" corner is pretty nice, especially with its scene limericks. (There's also been a thread about that kind of poetry on Pouet.) The "funk dat - compo guide" section is primarily interesting for party organizers, for other people it might not be so interesting.


Pain #55 (03/2004)

Pain #55 is the ten-years-of-Pain anniversary issue. It features new title and background grpahics, which were drawn by Noize of Kolor. The music is from Melwyn of Haujobb and Dixan of Spinning Kids and MFX (tune 1), and from Evil of Scoopex and Surprise!Productions (tune 2).

In the editorials section we learn that boards for discussing Pain have been created at totalkaos.de. The Celebrations section contains statements from sceners about the anniversary of Pain and the complete first Pain issue ever released (01/1994). The reviews section is about demos, various releases of the Buzz scene, wild demos, the Remix64 Volume 2 audio CD, Elapse - Weedlog's Slideshow, Radio's demoshows, Retro Magazin and Primetime #1 & #2 (CDs with old demos from Amiga 500). The charts are based on 76 voters. The poll questions are: "How do you bear Pain?", "What's wrong with today's demos?" and "To be or not to be?".

The party reports and interviews are merged into one section.

The covered parties are State of the art 2, 0a000h 2004, Deadline Reloaded, TUM 2003 (two reports - one by Dixan and Leia, the other by Optimus), BCN 2003 and Boozetuga 0x08. The interviewed persons are Ithaqua of Stravaganza, Mel'o Dee and Ross Bencina of Audiomulch.

The articles section is called "the real content", which says very much about its position inside the mag. The first article is a long one about (then upcoming) Breakpoint 2004, with questions to its organizer Scamp and his answers. In the next article, ps talks about the Nokia 6600 scene. Seven reviews a PocketPC with a GPS carkit. Xenusion's 2D painting tutorials are quite interesting. He first lists various types of painting (pixel, comic, pure painting, manipulative painting) and what sceners do the respective type of painting. Then come the tools needed and instructions how to paint, what techniques there are. In another article, ps explains the philosophy of Minimalartifact. There's another cook recipe,Optimus' report about the CPC in the year 2003 and many other articles which didn't really manage to catch my attention.

After the resources corner, there's a closing words section consisting of just one article, the "Closing Words" by Ghandy. He rambles about diskmags, his thoughts are a bit difficult to follow and I exit the article (and the mag) without having realized what he actually wanted to say.


Pain #56 (12/2004)

Pain #56, which was released at TUM 2004, starts with a nice title picture by Delilah of Skim. She also painted the background picture. There are three tunes in this issue, by Teis of Bypass, Mr. Optic and Reed of Fairlight; the last tune is hidden somewhere inside the mag.

There's a demospotting, diskmag spotting and Buzzspotting, Unlock reviews musicdisks released at christmas, Dipswitch reviews the "The Art Of Realtime" book, Bobic talks about the Remix64 audio CD, Ghandy about The Arts talkshow, then there is yet another review of the Impressions album by Factor6, written by Zito, a review of the Merregnon Soundtrack vol. 2 and finally something about the revived Grapevine magazine.

111 voters in the charts - a new record. Poll questions are: "Why is 'abbreviated' such a long word?", "What's inside if the real party is outside?" and "Pron or Demos?".

In "year of the parties", we can find reports about TUM 2004, Truck's summertrip, ps' summertrip, Function 2004, Buenzli 2004, Evoke 2004, X2004 and Breakpoint 2004.

In the articles section, Gargaj tries to define demos. Dixan writes about the demoscene and VJ-ing. There is a report about the Dreamcast scene by Unlock. Dominei gives hints how to find a girl. Dipswitch talks about Pouet. Unlock reviews the Sceen papermag. Then, after some fillers, there's Dipswitch's reply article on EP's "How To Save The Demo Scene?" from Hugi #29. There's a link collection about Gameboy and NES music and an article about the Spectrum scene. What's interesting is Fred's tutorial on "Newschool Pixelling". Tomcat brings us a tutorial on exporting 3DS Max/Maya to Lightwave.

The interview partners of this issue are Keops of Equinox, Hitchhikr of Hoodlum, Dominei of INF, Random, Blaizer, Crisbot of Universe, Jobe of Matt Current, various members of Moods Plateau and Rotox of Art. The closing words were written by ps this time.


Pain #57 (10/2005)

Pain #57 features all-new graphics by Tomic of Unik and Bypass, and three official tunes (by Jeffie of Brainwave, Qwan of Up Rough! and Teis of Up Rough!) and a hidden tune by Jeenio of Ultrasound. The mag was released on the occasion of XXX/Haujobb's wedding with his girlfriend Eva. There's a photo

report of the wedding included in the mag.

Reviews deal with demos, the book Freax, Sceen #1, a Hungarian demoscene DVD, ASCII collections and the Catweasel MK3 controller for the Amiga that allows you to conect a PC diskdrive.

There are new charts categories: newschool demo, newschool 64k intro, newschool 4k intro and of course the same for oldschool releases, plus musicdisk, alltime demoparty, current demoparty. Number of voters: 125. Poll questions: "What is BASS?", "What is your favourite?" and "Are you happy?".

There are quite a lot of interviews: Curly Brace of Kewlers, Fit, Bandwagon, Abyss aka Shin'en, Zoom of Conspiracy, Smash of

Fairlight, NZO of DCS UK, Xenusion of Plastic, Uncle-X of MFX, Alien of Antitrax2010, members of Up Rough!, Ziona and the Outracks group.

The articles section commences with "The Making Of Iconoclast", written by Navis of ASD. Leia wrote an article about what girls are doing in the demoscene, which is only half funny. D.Fox writes about the history and the future of the TUM party which he is organizing. We can read about Jeenio's demoscene summer tour 2005, the makings of Fiat Homo by Traction and Ocean Machine, there's an article on audio synthesis and tutorials on planning a demo, realtime crystalizing, and parallax mapping. Wade writes about "Life Without The Scene", an article which got some criticism on Pouet. Moreover, the resources section has been merged with the articles section, so the article section closes with BBS ads and the like.

The party reports are about Altparty 2005, Molvania Zscene Meeting 2005 (a fictional party in a fictional country), Maximum Overdose 6, Compusphere 2005, Marast 2005, Abstract 2005, Codex Alpe Adria, Scene Event 2005, Buenzli 14, Chaos Construction 2005, Evoke 2005, Playboy Mansion Party, Symphony 2005, Sundown 2005, Stream MEGA, 7D5 and Black Birdie 2 - quite a lot!

There's a special corner in this Pain issue called "my first demoparty", in which various sceners write about exactly that. This is probably more of interest for people who have been to these respective parties, the rest of us lacks the nostalgic feelings about these parties which are needed to fully enjoy these articles. Finally, the closing words are by ps again. A very nice issue all in all.


Pain #58 (12/2006)

More than a year after Pain #57, issue numero 58 came out. It featured a so-so splash screen by Jayne of Scoopex, a not really outstanding title picture and an excellent background picture by Zoom of Conspiracy. There are four tunes, three of them made by Xerxes of Brainstorm and one made by DJ Joge, who is also a member of Brainstorm.

Apart from demospotting, the reviews corner features texts about the GP2x console, Eurochart #48, Mindcandy II (two reviews - Truck and Enzymer), and (most of) the articles that used to be published in the resources section in old issues (adverts and BBS list).

In the charts, the oldschool and newschool categories have been renamed to lower than 32 bit (<32bit) and 32 bit or above (32bit+). Poll questions are: "Winter & fun or demo & deadline?",

"Let the scene stay underground?" and "Today, Google told me about...". The number of voters is 105.

There's a whole lot of party reports - Evoke 2006, Assembly 2006 (two reports: GaiaSword and Selecta Novel), Buenzli 15, Kindergarten 2006, 20 Years Byterapers party, Euskal 14, Stream 2006, Blip Festival, Outline 2006, Codex Alpe Adria, The Wiikend, Maximum Overdose 7, Pixtur's Demoshow #1, TRSAC 05 and Lamerfest 2004.

The articles section starts with "Faces Of The Demoscene" by Gargaj, which fails to catch my interest. What's more interesting is the next article, "Making Of Chaos Theory" by Zoom. A guy called rc55 writes about his experiences with the UK demoscene. Gargaj writes an article about the Rob Is Jarig demo. There's an article by Dipswitch called "Diggin' The Archives I", which deals with the old "swaplist". This article appeals to me just because I was a swapping partner of the maker of this list and also had a swapping ad in this list. There's an article about the making of Vigil Coma and one about unknown netlabels. A very interesting feature is Bobic's report on "Sceners in the Games Industry", where he lists companies and writes what sceners are working there respectively. There are tutorials about building worlds with a random generator, parametric curves, planning a demo and reverse engineering. The last article (as always, I skipped some fillers) is called "Does making diskmag still make sense?" and was written by Magic and me. (The answer, in short: yes.)

The interviews of this issue are about Phoenix of Hornet, the Andromeda group, Dominator of Kosmiplovci, the Sycini Group, Monroe of Sceen, Starpause, the Brainstorm group, Celal Kandemiroglu (a graphic artist in the game industry), Gasman, Evil, Coma, and the Drifters group. The closings words were written by Ghandy this time, and he talks about being a member of several groups at the same time.


Pain #59 (12/2007)

Pain #59 was released twice, the first release was in December 2007 and the second in January 2008. I'm talking about the final version (the one from January 2008). It has more articles, some errors have been fixed, and an intro has been added. The intro, however, isn't played on the startup of a magazine; you have to start a separate .exe file to watch it.

The title picture is rather unusual; normally diskmags have beautiful women in their opening screens or something else that is visually appealing. This isn't. The next shock comes when the main menu appears: It's all gray in gray. Too much space of the screen is left in bright gray. This doesn't look as good as we're accustomed from older issues. There's also a new font, which requires some time to get accustomed to.

Credits: The graphics were done by Cosmic of Nuance. There are seven (!) tunes in this issue, two of them by Distance of Lackluster, two of them by Kaneel of Bypass and Petitejolie, and one each by Netpoet of Calodox, Sir Optic in cooperation with tEiS of Spaceballs, and Skyrunner of Brain Control.

The advertisements this time have been included in the editorials section, where you can also find a detailed list of all the changes from the first to the final version of Pain #59.

The reviews corner is very small: There are only two articles dealing with various demoscene productions, and there's a review

of Sceen #2. That's another sign that Pain isn't the same as it used to be anymore.

Fortunately there are more party reports than reviews: They are about Syntax 2007, Sundown 2007, Euskal 2007, Assembly 2007, Numerica, BZM 07, Simulaatio 2007 and Tristar 20th Anniversary Party. Finally the party section contains a text by Sir Garbagetruck about how to survive a month of parties. The charts have the same categories as in the previous issue. The poll questions are: "Demoparties: The Bigger the Better?", "What's Moving the Scene?" and "Will you ever change to Windows Vista?". There were only 48 voters this time!

The leading article of this final edition is called "Losing What We Have - A Critical Look at the Scene", and it was written by Preacher of Traction. He basically writes about his concern that the scene might vanish sooner or later unless it changes because kids aren't interested in it any longer. He says the scene needs "a lot more seriousness and professionalism", it must produce more and better demos and promote them more to the world outside.

The article which was on the top of the first edition of Pain #59 is Bobic's "Oskar Fischinger - Optical Poet from Another Age". This is a story about the possibly first VJ in history, born in the year 1900. Dipswitch is digging in old archives again, Ghandy reports about a documentary video about the sources of computer music, Dr. Sybian talks about the important question "What Is Love?", Netpoets writes about licensing and Creative Commons, ps about Kosmoplovci and the Serbian scene, Unlock reports about his visit to Fantoche, an international show of animation film, Bobic writes about Flash demos and Ghandy about the ZX Spectrum (on the occasion of its 25th anniversary). There's a tutorial about OpenGL point sprites by Seven and an obituary for Jim Butterfield (a manager at Commodore). The rest are fillers.

There are interviews with an Italian university professor called Danilo Danisi, who is a fan of the demoscene, Fatboy of Hyperopia, Dubmood of Razor1911, Gina, Paul Whittington (the maker of some science-fiction movies), Sq of Skrju, Tom Luff (of The Toronto PET Users Group), GGN of D-Bug and Bloodrinker of RGBA. The closing words were written by Seven and Unlock, and they are a summary of the year 2007. What's striking is that this issue features no 3D outtro, maybe that's also a symptom of Pain going slightly downhill. Although all in all, the articles inside the articles section are okay, only the presentation and the review corner have suffered from degradation. Let's hope the best for the next issue of Pain, which according to PS will perhaps be made once Zine #14 will have been released.


Adok/Hugi