Party Review for The Party 1993
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Diskmagazine interviews | Balance Cesium - Connor - Fairfax - ... | z4/94 added 7/96 |
THE PARTY III - REPORT The mother of all parties! Once again it happend: Thousands of freaks gathered in Denmark to one of the biggest happening in the scene: THE PARTY 3. By Wolfman & Cesium This year in strict opposite to known traditions, the party was not placed in Aars, but in the bigger town Herning. For 53 hours, Denmarks biggest exhibition centre was housing 2800 computer freaks gathered from all parts of the world. A merry bunch As said people were practically gathered from all over the world and the mixture of people was quite interesting. Nearly every more or less known group on the Amiga-scene had shown up and the same went for both the PC and C64. As always there were the usual people sitting around playing games constantly and actually not having anything to do with the scene, but quite different from other parties those people were harder to notice in the masses of actual scene-people. Best party place ever! The hall was located just outside the town of Herning, in a industrial zone of some kind. The number of shopping facilities outside the party place was more than limited. But who actually needs to have any shops outside when the party place had a LOT to offer the party attenders. Cafeteria facilities were more than satisfactory and there were TWO bigger main-cafeterias. Besides those there were a kiosk, a little snack-bar and the ice-cream stand. Said in short, you didn't have to walk around hungry... The main party hall was EXTREMELY big and 80% of the party was placed there. On top of that, there was the secondary hall where there as in the main-hall was placed a big screen. When the second hall got full the organizers simply opened a third hall and there were no more problems. The space was somewhere close to unlimited and was generally is was a perfect party place. Herning Hallerne was placed quite far away from everything, but the place itself offered almost everything one could desire. Zzzzzzz.... If you wanted to sleep (And we suppose some did) the space was more than sufficiant, in opposion to THE PARTY 1 and 2 the sleeping HALLS were so big that one had plenty of room to sleep at. Some intermistic walls made it kinda "intimate" and the carpet made it a lot more compfortable. Pretty baaaaby! There were actually more girls than ever before on a party! There were some very cute female organizers (actually hired on basis of their looks, not on their capability!). In the kiosks around the center, there were some good looking chicks too - no wonder why Wolfman kept walking to and forth between the halls... (the kiosk was situated in the middle :-)) (Hrmmmmm! -Wolfie) Besides, the *only* (as far as we know) girl in the scene, Christine De La Queen, was present too, but unfortunately we never got a chance to meet her. The text in the invitation spoke of the female organizers as "facilities". When we asked Stripe if the girls knew that, the answer was quite clear: "Gee, I sure hope not!", but apart from that, Stripe actually claimed that the girls were really good workers and did a good job... A long way from home... One of the most significant examples (if not THE most) of how long people were willing to go in order to participate in this event, was Megazap of Paralax, from Australia!! He had taken a bank loan on about 2000 pounds to travel to Herning. Also other examples of "party extremists" were people who were actually willing to sit in a car for over 24 hours or more, and there were lots of their kind. Party outside... Even though the travelling distance to the nearest discos and pubs was quite big, people still felt like partying outside the party (?). The city of Herning did have pubs and discos to match the needs of the the party people anxious to party (?!)... One of the party's unfortunate want-to-party-outside-this-party people was Lone Starr / Spaceballs who was unfortunately not able to prove that he was actually 18 years old. Those guards were SO stupid... Commodore invaders... The party was partly sponsored by Commodore and the number of people from Commodore present was also quite large. We asked Jesper Christensen from Commodore DK what he thought of the arrangement and his comment surely speaks for itself... "This was the first time for us to support such an arrangement in Denmark but certainly not the last. We had so much fun and of course hope that there will be a Party 1994. Right now we are working on a CD with the best productions which should be spread along with all Amiga CD-ROM drives and the CD might be sold in shops as well to give attention." Great positivity amongst the people in Commodore and this should certainly give motivation for the organizers to make a sequel to the success. Besides from enjoying the party, Commodore also advertised for some of their products, amongst them the CD32 which attracted the most attention. They also made a SCALA presentation, but that didn't quite interest anyone and the poor guy from Commodore must have felt like talking to a wall while standing on the stage. Commodore also held a smaller conference so the public could ask about various things. Long fingers Just before Cola, D'fence, Loop and I (Cesium) were leaving the partyplace, a guy was running towards us and asked if we had seen anyone carrying an A1200 (w/80MB HD), with his handle, TBM / Limited Edition, signed on. I don't know if he ever saw his dearest again. It was also reported to us that some external diskdrives were stolen. It just seems like there can't be a party without someone who has to spoil the joy totally for other people. Obviously the dork brains behind such thefts have lost any sense of conscience and perhaps one should really feel sorry for such miserable twats. The PARTY of changes During the party, the whole division of The Silents Sweden decided to leave. Lizardking teamed up with the reborn Razor 1911, a group which has been expanding with a lot of talented members through the last months. Read more about THAT it in the Highlight-section! Lemon. DIED and there was a chaotic headhunting on the members after the news had been spread. Big brother is watching you Okay, it wasn't that bad... Actually not at all, but a thing which nobody could have helped noticing, was the fact that the organizers seemed to have everything under complete control. The organizers seemed to be able to handle ANYTHING (yeah well) and as far as yours truely remembers it, everything promised in the invitation was kept. Obviously the organizers have gained maximum experience from the two previous parties and that was certainly noticeable here. Continues in next article... THE PARTY III - REPORT PART 2 People meet... Given the fact that over 2800 persons were represented at the party, it was actually a bit surprising to feel the very nice and friendly atmosphere at the place. One could have expected a stressed and rushed atmosphere, but everybody was calm and generally it seemed like people had a really nice time. This is seen in relation to THE PARTY 2 where many people felt that the number of people present was too big. This certainly wasn't the case this time, but on the other hand it was hard finding time to meet all the persons you knew, so perhaps next time the organizers should consider making the party one day longer.... Bus wrecks and egg throwing SKID ROW Sweden had troubles with some TRSI members at the party because they wanted to stand in a TRSI bus which was already full. So these idiots ripped all the tires and crushed the .. TRSI bus! Damage: About 1000-2000$! Besides from this incident there was no actual vandalism. Some PC-owners threw eggs at the technic-room next to the stage in protest of the music competition, but otherwise people behaved like they should and the organizers could concentrate mostly at making the party run smoothly. Best party ever? Well, not much to say there.. YES! The Party 3 was without doubt THE party and I don't see any significant reasons why people should be less satisfied. Just about everything went smoothly and the atmosphere was perfect. The Party "series" has now become a kind of tradition which one certainly can hope will last for many years. Finally a big thanks to the organizers who worked hard to make this fantastic arrangement a reality, nice work guys! NOTE: People are perhaps rightfully wondering what a report from a party held 4 months ago is doing here. Well, the reason is simple: We have received several request from people asking us to publish the report in spite of the significant delay. Simply because they felt that a party couldn't be complete without a report in Upstream... Well, Upstream is not the one to disappoint people and we hope you enjoyed both the party and this report. And as always for the one who dared not to be present: SHAME ON YOU! THE PARTY III Origin - A deserved winner? Complex France were the ones who pulled home the 1st prize in the demo- competition. But did they really deserve it? We've gotten comments from A couple of people around. Estrup / Static Bytes In my humble opinion, the 'moral winner', and the 'should-have-been-winner' of the demo competition at The Party 3 is obviously Arte by Sanity. Now, why is that? First of all, I have never seen a demo with that high quality in both code, graphics, music and last but not least design - the demo fits the music even better than Desert Dream! Furthermore, Arte runs on non-AGA machines which I find extremely impressive. The winning demo, Origin by Complex, requires AGA, without - in my opinion - taking satisfactory advantage of the possibilities when it comes to i.e. number of colours (apart from the end-picture, that is). To me, it seems more like a 68020-demo than an AGA-demo. Not that I don't like Origin - I find especially the Wolfenstein-routine to be very impressive, though the high level of detail has it's costs when it comes to speed. Also the introductory animations and the mapped dragonball are nice. However, Origin quite simply doesn't have the great graphics and music which Arte has. Concerning Full Moon from Virtual Dreams, I really like this demo as well, and I would surely rank it second or third, after Arte. Spaceballs' Nine Fingers was a lot more varied than State of the Art, but probably too much like it after all to win 'again'. Coca / Balance The first time I saw this demo I was really impressed. Great code, great music and great graphics. But I soon realised that I had been fooled by Cesium's million-dollar hi-fi. When watched on a standard 1084 monitor with internal speaker sound, the demo is a drag to watch. In fact, almost the only thing I really liked about the whole demo was the music. True, the demo has several good routines, but it looks like Gengis finished this demo under pressure. The design isn't as good as neither Arte nor Full Moon, and the ending simply SUCKS! Which way is that to end a demo? I guess I should complain a bit about Gengis choice of routines for this demo, but as I'm a coder myself, I know how hard it can be to fill up demo space with non-existant routines. I don't think he used the routines he used to their full potential, though. If he had put them in a better design, and with better transitions, then maybe.. In my opinion, the best demo was Arte by Sanity, and second comes Full Moon by Virtual Dreams. The only reason I can think of that this demo was placed so high is the music, because neither the coding nor graphics are better than Arte and Full Moon. Mr.Hyde / Andromeda So, once more it is proved that the demo containing the best animation wins the democompetition. It's a shame, but history seems to repeat itself. When I first saw the demo at the Party, I had a certain feeling that it would win. But I must say that it didn't deserve the first place. In my opinion, a demo (especially an A1200-demo) should contain much more than a great intro. In Origin's case it seems to me like the rest is just an 'appendix' to the great introduction. From a coders point of view, the demo is not a winnerdemo compared with FullMoOn or Arte. Both Arte and FullMoOn contain better code. For example, the tunnel in Origin was just a precalculated one, just as the Mobile-movie from Spaceballs. (Rumour though, but I believe in it!). To summarize my opinions, here's my suggestion for the resultlist: 1.FullMoOn 2.Arte 3.Origin ... (But: I was very pleased with the fact that 9finGers didn't beat Origin. At least the best animation won!) Gargoyle / Polka Brothers As many others I think that Arte should have won at The Party III. Arte is one piece of work! It contains nice coding and design and some really great graphics. Full Moon from Virtual Dreams is also an example of a good demo, I think it maybe is the one with the best code - it have some really stunning effects To tell the truth I have some doubts about what demo, Arte or Full Moon, which should have won. Spaceballs gave it another try with one of their "movie" demos, I think Lone Starr had done a good job on the routine in the demo. But in these days a demo with only one great routine have its difficulties with winning competitions. I guess it was even harder for Lone Starr because the routine was not a totally new one - it looked alot like the one in Mobile.