NeXT (demogroup)

NeXT was a demo crew active on the Atari ST from 1989 to 1992, mostly known for having created The Charts and The Phaleon Giga Demo.

Members

All members of NeXT were French, with one notable exception, Lem, that came from Belgium. Here is the list of individual that joined the group (historical order).

• Zae (Said Adjiat,Founder, public relations specialist and text writer)
• Stwars (Alexis Roos,Coder)
• Pulsar (Jean François Nebbia,Graphic artist)
• PCP (name unknown,Graphic artist)
• Mit (Olivier Lhermite,Coder)
• Dbug (Mickael Pointier,Coder, graphic artist)
• FFT (Richard Perdriau,Musician, coder)
• Chromix (Emmanuel Courossé,Graphic artist, musician, coder)
• LAP (Emmanuel Lary,Musician)
• Lem (Thomas Gonzales,Coder)
• Lonewolf (Xavier Dugast,Coder)

Like many other in demo scene, some NeXT members later joined the video game industry and successfully applied their skills on a number of games: Little Big Adventure, Time Commando, HExplore, The Smurfs, Asterix & Obelix, V-Rally, Arabian Nights, Road Rash, Need for Speed, The Suffering, Iron Storm, Kya, Fifa, Bet on Soldier, Test Drive

Production history

In total NeXT members created a large number of productions, some demo screens were guest entries in other groups demos, the well known 'Charts' were released in the Floppy Disc Magazine Maggie, and some productions were real independant demos.

Most notable productions are:

• The official 1991 Charts Compilation
• The Phaleon Giga Demo

The Charts

The whole concept of The Charts was an idea of Zae who wanted the group to become well known very fast. His idea was simple. The english group The Lost Boys was in the process of creating the first issue of what will become one of the most successfull disk magazine: Maggie. Considering that The Lost Boys was one of the most talentend active group, it was probably a good idea to participate to this disk magazine, and doing the charts was just a simple way to achieve this goal.

Six charts has been produced in total, but they can hardly be linked to particualr issues of Maggie: Production delays were extremely variable on NeXT side due first to the fact that the group was spread all around the French territory, exchanging data using floppies sent my mail, and then second to the fact that NeXT had to communicate with The Lost Boys over the channel also using postal mail.

In 1991 a demo called The Official 1991 Charts Compilation was released, containing an entirely repackaged version of all Charts demo screen, and additional material, including teaser screen of the Phaleon Giga Demo.

The Phaleon Giga Demo

This demo has probably be the longest one in the making of Atari ST demo history. It was originaly started by The Replicants in 1989, and was supposed to include many demoscreen by their friends of The Union. Unfortunately for various reasons they didn't managed to finish it, and decided to stop the project in 1990. NeXT decided to give a try, and collected all the assets that had been produced so far. This included some logos, some demo screens, and a half finished main menu. Considering the state of the project, it was decided to just keep the name, some graphics, and the finished demo screens: Everything else was written from scratch.

"Review of the Phaleon Giga Demo in ST Format"

"Review of the Phaleon Giga Demo in ST Format"

After two other years of work, and despite the drawbacks (some groups decided to not wait and prefered to release their intros earlier) the demo was finaly finished and released, even managing to get some attention from the medias^[1] .

Even if the quality of the whole demo suffered from the fact that some of its content was nearly three years old, the Phaleon Giga Demo managed to remains in the list of classic Atari ST demo because it managed to push the enveloppe:

• It was the first demo on the Atari ST to require four floppy discs
• It contained four different selection menus (Amiga like trackloader, simple list selector, a Dungeon Master and a Shadow of the Beast clones).
• It was one of the first demos to try to exploit the Atari STE, (all palettes are compatible with enhanced color palette, all soundtrack are enhanced on the STE), including the Illusion STE screen (still considered today as a landmark in STE intros.)

Notes

^ Appearance in medias:

1. Reviewed in the magazine, ST Format, Issue 38, September 1992
2. Double page feature in the 'TILT Microloisirs' magazine, issue 105, September 1992, pages 46-47
3. Shown in Micro Kids, a French tv show, as the Demo of the Week (summer 1992).

External links

• NeXT homepage
• NeXT productions on Pouet.net
• Phaleon Giga demo memorial page
• Maggie disk magazine