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Sorry for drifting off there amidst the Mistigris May Music Madness spree – the release sequence of the revived tracker-music collections was jumbled, and while waiting for them to get sorted out, other hurdles arose in compiling, releasing and hosting the remaining collections (almost all are now free in the wild; they will all get coverage here).

So, where were we?  Sonic Equinox: February 1996, which you can hear through your web browser at the linked hosting at pc.textmod.es.  This was to be the Day 4 release.

As Strongbad would someday say: everybody to the limit.

The infofile will shed some light on the proceedings, but only through some work after the fact – encoded as one of Eto’s exclusive BIN2EXE executables, the only way to get up to speed is to cross your fingers, hold your breath and run it.  Well, here we have spared you the effort.  (This is the last time accessing the info will be so straightforward; future releases saddle the executable with a music soundtrack, which seems to throw a spanner of complexity in the works, but toward the end they also throw us a bone in the form of a transcript.)  The circumstances behind this pack’s creation were apparently relatively uneventful, as told by its words; in this intermediary stage, SE is now not only run by its primary programmer, also the SysOp of its WHQ, but also the public face of the group, penning the infofiles and even packaging the release with what might be termed “programmer art”.

It’s a humble intermediary release; only a fraction of the membership weighs in with contributions, longtime stalwarts Beyond Inertia, Lethal Impact, and perennial fount of creativity Onyx, but the organization regardless continues apace, hinting at projects behind the scenes which may or may not be realized in a public form (SPOILER ALERT: the fishie game never made it).

Gee whiz, that closing line in the infofile has got to be one of the most humble slogans of all time.

Next up – SE_D0896, then we leave Sonic Equinox’s 1996 behind!