'Fifteen'.

A CD-ROM anthology of fifteen years worth of Dune's doings!

This started life as the 'collector version' of the Fantasia demo. After many delays, something far more substantial escaped from the high walls and towers of Dune HQ. This is 'Fifteen', a CD-ROM of fifteen years of Dune releases and activity.

Apart from those lucky people who signed up to get the collectors editions, this has been made available as a general download, in the form of an ISO image file at the thin end of 280mb! Thank feck for broadband, eh!

Either after burning the image file to a CD, or else by opening the image file on the host machine, we gain access to the contents, to see how exactly Dune have managed to fill all that space. Their story follows below.

The first thing that most people will be drawn to, is the Anthology video file. This is an .avi. It is barely described by Dune as 'A retrospective video of our demo activities on the ST.' This is partially true, as the viewer is taken on a walkthrough of their work starting in 1991. There are some surprises, or possibly connecting up of bits of memory that weren't talking to each other before, as I don't tend to remember anything of what they did before 1993 for some reason. Their earlier work definitely belongs to the oldschool era, but it is already apparent that the standards of presentation and artwork are higher than average. My brain rejoins the recollection party when we get to the part of the film that shows 'Faith' (1993) and it is happily recalling things from there. It takes around five minutes from the beginning, up to the point where we are watching the best bits of Fantasia, but this is not quite the end!

The last couple of minutes are pure high-end animation, sort of a preview of what Dune might try to do next in realtime, but probably not on an Atari platform at that standard, regrettably. There are lots of uber-cool fantasy recreations of 'things', with multiple excerpts of well-known ST demos, (Union, Cuddly etc) playing on different screens in the background. This is the perfect way to finish the hightlights slideshow, and at around 180mb, you can see where the bulk of the data on this image file is!

That is not to neglect or downplay the rest of it. The next port of call for many people will be the 'Dune collection' of image files (.msa) of the dozen of their major releases, and a bundle of single programs in another folder totalling forty-three in all. This is an almost complete collection of the demos and other programs made on the ST, including some never before released stuff. This includes a number of single screens, and a few more bits going up to intro or dentro-size.

An intriguingly titled folder called 'Fuji T-Shirt' is next. This is described as 'some high resolution files you can use to print out t-shirts which celebrate the Atari ST demoscene (and will make you the highlight of any party for sure !).' There are four variations on a theme, a Fuji logo stands out proudly in the foreground, with as many names of famous Atari demo crews crammed within it as possible. In the background are the names of dozens of famous Atari ST demos.

Another popular section is up now. This is the Music Box, which is not quite a full collection of DMA-SC's chiptunes, but rather around half a dozen reworked tunes made with non-chip instruments and into MP3 format.

The 'Pictures Cemetery' is quite an extensive section. It is a collection of old and sometimes unreleased pictures done by the main artists of Dune. There are eight sub-folders for eight artists, showing the high premium that Dune placed on Artistry and design in their demos. Some of the pictures were never used. Out of all of those, Mic's folder contains the most material by far, with over 200 pieces of artwork in there.

'Toy Box' is a selection for the peecee owners in the building, with a collection of miscellaneous programs, including a reinterpretation of the Illusion demo opening, a T-Shirt designer, a screensaver, interviews, hidden stuff and more.

The final folder is labelled 'Wallpapers'. In spite of Dune's scepticism at wanting to provide an explanation, it is a couple of original pictures in various sizes, for people who might want to freshen up their desktop wallpaper.

And that concludes the tour of the '15' Dune anthology collection. There is certainly enough for the casual browser for an afternoons entertainment. There is also a good amount to satisfy the Dune obsessive collectormaniac as well. I wonder if any other long-established crew would be willing to compile and release an anthology CD-ROM of this depth and quality?

CiH, for Alive Mag, July '08

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