### MonogAtari by Cerebral Vortex Cerebral Vortex has managed to delight and entertain the Atarian hordes at Sillyventure past parties in various ways. In 2012 a high level language was forbidden, and they came first for their audacity. This time around a new, or possibly very old horizon is being sought. For the purposes of the rest of this review, switch to 640 x 400 - 1 bitplane and good old black and white. (Only joking, I said, only joking, stop that now!) The history of the Atari ST Hi-res or mono mode goes back to the very earliest days of the machine. This not-quite-VGA mode was intended to provide a 'power without the price' opposition to the Apple Mac Classic's purist display. Spreadsheets, word processors and the odd art package was its destiny. Somewhere along the line, a handful of games got in too. One high profile release was the early Psygnosis game 'Brataccas' (Which was one of an even smaller number of games that used the ST medium resolution mode natively too.) Those people with a VGA to mono adaptor might want to give the Starglider games a whirl in mono mode too. As for demos, these were limited to a handful of experimental screens right at the dawn of the scene. There was also a 1998 "release" at the first Alternative Party by those purveyors of quality stuff, the Senior Dads, but the less said about that, the better perhaps. But there has not been anything resembling a full sized production, until now. We have the combined efforts of Orion, Templeton and 505 for this beast. MonogAtari is a classic 'trackmo' production, promising fast and slick delivery. Does it match this promise? This is primarily an STE demo, although there is a Falcon executable for the hi-res mode on that machine. Let's stop waffling around and write something about the demo itself.. Choose life, choose a white on black to start with, rather than more common black object on white background you would expect with a mono mode prod. After a functional but still modish title screen, the first real part follows. This is an incredibly crisp and sharp multi-faceted 3D object displaying itself with a veiled pair of eyes watching with interest from the top left. Next up, is a distorting liquid dot-plasma, which translates remarkably well to a monochrome world. Here is a more detailed showpiece screen with a false four colour dithering. This has been seen before as a repeat of an effect from an earlier demo. We get a reflective raytracer with a scrolltext. This was previously used to show off that many colours could be combined with an effect, now only one here. The scrolltext is full of greetings. Back to bare white and black, an angular tunnel formed by sections falling down the screen to make a convincing replica of an animated GIF movie (infinite cubes making infinite tunnel.) A Pixar desk lamp provides illumination for a light sourced cube and other objects. Here is yet more evidence of false colour greyscaling with the light shading. This major part culminates in two objects onscreen at the same time, which threaten to Z-buffer, but they don't quite get there. Another one in the difficult but ultimately successful category, with an attempt to create a watery reflective layer with two colours and a greyscale or two. The effect includes a massive rotating and zooming texture which is reflected in bottom darker layer. We just need the 'water' to ripple a bit. Now hitting the final moments of this demo. An intricate screen, with a multilayer parallax scrolling background with 3D solid white rotating bubble sprites over the top. These are forming the word 'silly', then 'End', which it is. From the evidence in front of the jury, we can conclude that Cerebral Vortex are guilty of entertaining the Atari loving public by unorthodox means! As the mini review in the round-ups stated, this has been the first purposely made mono mode demo for quite some time. I wonder if there is going to be another 15-20 year gap before the next one, or if someone has decided that they can 'beat dis!' - Well, we'll see. Ratings: Graphics:- 82% - Manages to overcome limitations of mono mode very well, in some cases, brilliantly. Sound:- 80% - With 505 on the keys, no problems in that department. Gee-Whiz:- 87% - Effects seen before but realised well in uncommon screen mode. Design is actually helped in some screens with start black and white style. Overall:- 85% - The greatness is black and white. CiH - 2014 Back to the Index.