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Inteview with Dr. Outtasight
| found in | Type | Author | Year |
  | Diskmagazine interviews |       AlcatrazAlex - Arakys - Atomic Bubble Gum - ... | a9/92 added 5/94 |
Interview
w i t h
Dr.Outtasight
o f
Crusaders
MD: This time I am proud to interview
one of the best organizers and one
of the most known people in the
Amiga-scene called Dr.Outtasight
of CRUSADERS! He was one of the
organizers of the stunning THE
GATHERING`92-party in Norway a few
weeks ago, and he was also one of
the editors of the great *
CRUSADERS EUROCHARTS * (remember
the great Gallery there with all
the funny pics!).
But with this interview we want to
know more about the big party and
about your thoughts in this time.
Please discribe at first your
overall appearance, your age and
so on...
DO: My apperance is no laughing
matter, I assure you. But if you
really want to know, I'm about
190cm tall and I have long darkish
kinda hair. I smoke quite a lot,
and I drink huge amounts of coke.
At present I am 25 years old, and
I have been dealing with computers
since I was 9. I've had my Amiga
for 5 years. For almost as long
as I have had my Amiga, I have
been the Sysop at our WHQ board
called Home Sweet Home. I can't
say I take the scene quite as
serious as I did back in the good
old days. Well, I have never
really taken the scene to serious,
but nowadays I feel I'm a bit to
old to give it my full attention.
MD: Please give us a few detailed
informations about the legendary
CRUSADERS. We know that they are
now existing for ages but when was
the date of founding, who is the
leader, who is the oldest member
(in scene), organisation and try
to list a few stunning releases,
please.
DO: Oh. I never liked that question.
The reason is first of all that we
have never had a leader. Not one
single person anyway. Second,
that it's a bit hard to say
exactly when the Crusaders was
founded, because it just sorta
happened over a period of time.
But I think we decided to use the
name Crusaders around the
beginning of 1987. Our oldest
member is Fleshbrain. I guess he
must be about 29 by now. When it
comes to stunning releases, I`d
say that's up to the person
watching it, but my favourites
must be Bacteria, Freekd Out and
Audio X. All music disks. I
would say that the music disks
were what has gotten us our fame
and no fortune.
MD: Please talk a little bit about
your activities in the scene! We
know that you have done the great
Gallery but was/is this really
all?
DO: At the moment I'm not doing
anything else than operating my
board. Our group is a bit short
on people right now since most of
them are doing their millitary
service at the same time. But I
have been doing lot of nice things
in my time. I did the Gallery for
a period, I started writing scroll
texts which later transformed into
the Ken stories. I've tried my
luck with doing some music, but
that didn't work out at all. For
a short period I was the editor of
the Eurocharts when El Cubo was
utterly sick with the thought of
handling it. These days I'm doing
my bit with the party. It's
actually over now, but the work
isn't finished yet. I must say
that I did not organize The
Gathering 1992 by myself. That
would have been impossible. There
were about 4 persons from
Crusaders and Deadline involved in
the arranging.
MD: What are you thinking about the
reborn Eurocharts? A few month
ago a little intro (Myspys) by
EQUINOX was spread and they
published that they will continue
the CRUSADERS Eurocharts! Are
they allowed to do this or is this
just pure bullshit? If yes, why
have you chosen EQUINOX? Have
they paid for the rights/code?
DO: You are very lucky. I can now
reveal some well-kept (I hope)
secrets as an exclusive for you.
As far as I know El Cubo will
leave the scene in a short time,
and that leaves me to decide what
to do with the Eurochart. A
couple of days ago I gave Static
Bytes permission to use the name
Eurocharts with some conditions.
We have not decided which
groups/persons are to be involved
in the Eurocharts yet, but to my
knowledge, Equinox alone have not
received permission from us. I
would like to remind them that the
name Eurocharts is in fact
protected by international
copyright laws and any violations
will be prosecuted to the full
extent of the law.
A lot of people have asked me
wheter I'm going to continue the
Ken stories now that the Crusaders
are involved in the Eurocharts,
and I will. I do not know yet
when the first release will come,
but when I clear things up with
Playboy/Static Bytes it shouldn't
be long. Please excuse me if I
got your name wrong. I have high
on coffeine at the party and could
see straight.
MD: What is your opinion about the
scene? We know that you are more
or less one of the `oldies`
(sorry) so please list a few of
the changes from 1988 to the year
of 1992. Do you think that the
scene was better in past or do you
like the present?
DO: Woo. 1988... Let's see. At that
time the modem was limited to
those with a lot of cash of very
wealthy parents, so most swapping
was done by snail mail. Like
always demos couldn't get any
better (but they always do). I
guess the groups didn't put that
much effort into being 'the best'.
Back then buying demos/intros from
other groups was unheard of, and
paying software developers to get
an early version of a new release
was the ultimate sin. Come to
think of it, life was better in
the good old days. But then again
things haven't changed that
much.
In my opinion there are too much
illegal activites going on in the
scene. If each illegal activity
was limited to a small number of
persons, I guess things would be
better, but when everyone does it,
there's bound to be some poor
sucker who have to pay for someone
elses mistakes.
MD: What is your relationship to the
other members of Crusaders? We
know that most members quit the
scene but are they still good
friends of yours?
DO: El Cubo and Dr. Awesome are close
friends of mine. I know most
other members good too, but I've
known El Cubo and Dr. Awesome for
quite some time and I meet them
quite often.
MD: Hard question... Do you own still
all releases like sound-disks and
charts from your group? Do you
have collected them or not, hehe?
DO: I think we have managed to collect
almost everything. At the moment
I'm packing everything and posting
it on our board so that everyone
can relive some good memories.
MD: How many dudes are working under
the CRUSADERS-label now? Perhaps
you could give us a complete
memberlist but it`s not very
important (...)
DO: Well, that's a bit difficult.
Like I said most of them are not
active at the moment due to their
millitary service, but I'll try to
give you some names of the ones
that are left. El Cubo is still
with us, but he's going to be a
father very soon, so I guess we
can exclude him. Then there's
Lazerbrain running our Elite board
called Purple Haze, Swapperboy
doing what he does best namely
swapping, Switchblade and Dr.
Claw are our only coders at the
moment, Intec and Bustman doing
graphics and Fleshbrain and
Nightshade doing the music. When
things cool down a bit we'll do
some serious reorganizing and
streamline our group. We're
always on the lookout for new
coders. All that is required is
that you're a helluva coder and
that you have our sence of humour.
MD: Will we see perhaps more releases
from CRUSADERS in the near future
(the two intros after months of
silence) or are the legendary CRS
dead forever?
DO: I wouldn't say that we're dead.
We sleep a lot. We'll come back.
That`s what I can promise. You'll
just have to wait and see.
MD: Now to your country... Norway!
Tell us something about your
hometown, about the weather and
such crap, please. And of course
about the damned good parties
there!
DO: My home town would be a place
called Lillestrom, but since
there's another place called
Strommen so close by let's just
call the whole thing Skedsmo.
Skedsmo is the name of the county
or whatever. The name Sked comes
from the word Skeid, which is an
old sport the vikings used to do
around here. It has something to
do with dragging something behind
a horse. Anyway, some would call
it the suburb to Oslo, the capital
of Norway, but it isn't. It's a
kind of a farm/tech area. There
are a few farms around here, but
then again there are a lot of
institutes and research facilities
here too. Norway's second atomic
reactor is close (Zap!) and
there's a small millitary air
strip. Right now it has stopped
raining and the sun is coming
through my window and reflecting
in my monitor so I can see for
shit.
MD: Yes, but back to your big party
which was done in cooperation with
DEADLINE. Please tell us a little
bit about the problems of good
organisation (finding a party-
place with enough equipment etc.)
and about the feelings before and
during the party (perhaps
nervous?). Please try to write
lots of things about it, because I
think that this could be quite
interesting for our readers and
perhaps newcomer in kind of
organisation... How many guys
have arranged the whole party,
were there misunderstandings with
the guests etc. or was everything
ok?
DO: Ok. I'll try. About a year ago
some guys from Deadline told me
about their party plans. We have
always had a close cooperation
with Deadline so it was only
natural that we joined in.
Strangly enough just about
everything was very smoothly in
the planning phase.
It all started six days before the
party was to start. When there's
only six days left everyone gets
cold feet and rush around trying
to put the thing together as fast
as possible. The problem is that
the rest of Norway like to do
nothing in their easter holiday,
so we didn't get much support from
the companies that we were to rent
the equipment from. Imagine
trying to collect over 700 tables
from schools, kindergardens and
table rent-outs in 9 hours when
you don't even have a truck to
move them in. But we pulled it
off. We rent a car 07:00 in the
morning and I drove back and forth
between the places picking up the
700 tables with the help of 4
others. We had to store the
tables in a school two days before
the party opened, so around 16:00
we had 300 tables on our truck and
were just about to move them from
the truck and into the school.
Lazerbrain suggested that we
should drive the truck out on a
football field close by so that we
didn't have to carry them that
far. At this point the truck was
weighing around 6 tons. The
result was that the truck sank
down into the field and it was not
possible to move at all. We
finally got it out using a much
larger truck to pull it out
with.
Then again everything went well
until the day we opened. We were
supposed to open at noon, but by
09:00 there were so many people
outside that we just had to let
them in. Unfortunately we hadn't
time to test our registration
systems well enough so early, so
it naturally broke down when there
was about 3 busloads of people
standing in line. We managed to
partially fix that too, and again
everything went smooth.
Then came saturday. D-Day.
DoomsDay. Before saying anything
else, I must tell you that the
following is the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth
(so help me God!). The day before
we had a small disk throwing
competition which resulted in some
damaged keyboards and that a glass
of coke fell on top of our video
projector. It's difficult to find
a new video projector on such a
short notice, but we got hold of a
color LCD overhead display.
Unfortunately it only managed a
VGA picture, which has slightly
less lines than a PAL picture. We
tried to run some of the competing
graphics entries on it at first,
but already then people started
complaining that the bottom part
of the picture was missing. All
this rumbling about trying to get
the overhead to do the PAL mode
took a lot of time and people got
very impatient. I can certainly
understand that! Anyway, when it
was time to view the demos, we got
hold of a 38 inch monitor and
placed that in front of the stage
so that at least a few people
could see the whole picture.
We also had a PC demo competition
and as if we didn't have enough
problems with the Amiga
competitions, the PC demo required
a special sound card. We had a
sound card like that which we had
tested about a billion times
before, but when it was time to
view the demo it wouldn't work.
Of course it worked perfectly the
next day.
What was left of the party did in
my opinion go rather well, and
we're planning The Gathering 1993
at this very moment. Everyone
watch out for a 16 page invitation
around the end of this year. I
would like to apologize to
everyone who in some way got
mistreated either by their
pictures not being shown the right
way, their modules played too
short or their demos stopped at
the incorrect moment. It was our
first party ever, and we have
learned much from our many
mistakes. I hope you had a good
time anyway.
Flip to next article!
MD: And why you have arranged this
party? To earn money, for fun or
for glory and victory?
DO: At the beginning we did actually
think we would be able to earn
some money with it, but as
expences rose and the date
aproached, we knew that we weren't
going to get rich on it. We
didn't actually earn anything.
But I had a lot of fun, and when
we do it again it will be for the
fun of it.
MD: Back to the two party-invitations.
Why do you have released them in
such a `quality` (a few friends of
mine said that the famous
CRUSADERS could do it better and
didn`t like them very much) and
also the second invitation-intro
was more or less only a little
program with a few very fast
picture-routines and a few lines
of text... Was this really `good
enough` for CRUSADERS, they asked?
Please tell me your opinion about
it.
DO: The first intro was done by
Deadline and it was only supposed
to be an information intro. Just
telling everyone that we were
planning a party. The next one
was done by The Crusaders, and
that was only a 'reminder' to the
first one. We only wanted people
to know that there was a party,
and where they could get an
invitation. We spread the
information by the use of the
printed invitiation instead of
using intros like other groups.
And I think it worked well. We
had a total of 1100+ people at the
party.
MD: What is your opinion about all the
other charts in the scene, which
were arranged after the first
issues of the Eurocharts were
already on the market? Only
bloody thieves and idea-rippers?
DO: Not at all. Anyone is free to
make their own charts, of course.
But I would like to see some new
ideas too, not just the Eurocharts
all over again. So as long as
they choose another name than
Eurochart for their productions, I
don't care.
MD: Do you think that the releasing of
special charts has changed the
style of the scene and if yes, in
which way?
DO: Well, yes maybe a bit. I guess
it's more or less a question of
status. If your production is so
good that it is voted as one of
the ten best in a chart where the
voters are not in any way related
to the persons releasing the
production or the group making the
chart, like the Eurochart, it
simply has to be a good
production.
MD: Do you have anything against
PD-Companies or did you make bad
experiences with them? (There was
every time a copyright-notice at
the beginning of the charts).
DO: After releasing the fourth issue
of the Eurocharts it simply was
such a huge amount of work
counting the votes, coding the
presentation and making the lists
that we wanted something in return
for it. We knew then that the
Eurocharts were one of the best
selling products in most PD
libraries, and it seemed only fair
that we would get a share of the
money. The money we got was then
divided up between the persons
working with the charts depending
on the amount of work they had
done.
MD: Why you have included a Gallery
into the charts and who got the
idea?
DO: As far as I remember it was Dr.
Awesome's idea. He was in fact
the inventor of the Eurochart back
in those days. The reason we
included it was to make the
Eurochart more popular so that
more people would read it and so
that we would get more voters.
MD: Please tell us why the `Best
packdisks`-cathegory was took out
of the charts for a while and who
thought that packdisks are/were
not very interesting?
DO: Most cathegories were taken in and
out on request from the readers.
If one cathegory dissappeared it
was because the readers wanted it.
MD: How many guys voted (overall) all
in all for the fourteen issues? A
few thousands? And how many
letters were overall every day in
the Eurocharts-Postbox?
DO: That's a very hard question. We
once thought of saving all voting
forms and digitizing a picture
with the Eurochart team bathing in
them, but most of them were thrown
away when we moved. I guess the
average amount was somewhere
around 400 votes, so that would
make a total of around 5600 votes.
Most people of course voted in
several issues.
MD: Do you know a few interesting
stories for us about special
letters you or El Cubo got? I
mean perhaps a few voters had send
pictures of their naked-mothers or
were there no funny surprises?
DO: There were so many great letters
that it's impossible to begin
describing them. We planned a Hot
Sister competition once, as some
might recall, and we got some very
good pictures for that one. But
the best part of it was all the
different voting forms we got.
People seemed to vote on just
about anything. We got toilet
paper, shirts, socks, physics exam
papers and pieces of paper from
all kinds of things from telephone
books to Amiga Hardware Reference
Manuals.
MD: There were often rumours that the
Eurocharts were faked and
sponsored by several groups! We
from McDisk know that this are the
biggest lies but please give us
your opinion about the mentioned
fact...
DO: As long as the Eurochart has
exsisted no member who was
involved in the project was in any
way doing anything to 'fix' votes,
faking lists or anything to bring
out a false impression of the data
collected from the votes. For
each issue we usually got a
certain amount of obviously fake
votes, but these were thrown away.
We even went as far as to verify
the existance of certain people
that had sent us some very
suspiscious looking votes21.
MD: Last but not least a few keywords
for you and your pleasure... What
are your first thoughts to the
following words:
Bjorn Lynne:
Ok, but he'll probably never speak
to me again after this. As long
as I have known Bjorn he has been
one of the driving forces behind
the Crusaders. I don't mean that
he could have done it alone, but
in the company of other persons
with completely different views a
team would be unbeatable. He has
always been very stubborn, and he
usually gets very angry if he
didn't get what he wanted. And
some times that could get a bit
irritating, but fortunately he got
a very nice girlfriend some time
ago, and now he's mister nice guy
himself.
Unknown Prophet. 20 BC:
Hoho. Well, I didn't want to say
that it was me, but now I guess I
have. I confess. It was me. I
didn't know wheter people would
think the poem was stupid or not,
so I didn't sign it with my name.
PD-Companies:
Bunch of lazy people making money
on other people's hard work.
Pretending not to make a single
penny on it, and still have money
enough for a full page four color
advertisment in a big computer
magazine every month.
The reborn Eurocharts:
At first I would rather seen it
die, but since I really felt like
Playboy of Static Bytes was the
right person for the job I guess
it deserves to live.
Computer = Business:
Not true if you're playing around
with your Amiga and aren't
extremly good at what you do.
It's much easier to make a buck
using a PC or some more boring
computer like that. The Amiga
isn't that big in the industrial
world, at least not here in
Norway. So I kinda combine the
two. When at work I work with
PC's, and when I get home I work
with PC's and the Amiga. On the
other hand, if you're as good a
graphician / animator as Tobias
Richter f.ex, you can easily make
a buck using the Amiga, and then
it's so much more fun.
2nd worldwar:
Before my time, believe it or not,
but I constantly get stories about
it from my parents. To me, and I
guess most of my generation, it's
nothing more than a terrible thing
that happened long ago. Also,
it's one of the two wars that have
not been the result of religious
disagreements. Religion is the
root to all evil.
Tobias Richter:
Very lucky and very brilliant
bastard who managed to make a
living on what he likes best,
namely creating wonderful
animations and pictures using the
Amiga.
Greenpeace:
Pathetic people running around
blocking chimneys, chemical waste
dump sites and preventing the
destruction of the planet, which
is good, but I think it's
unpreventable. In order for the
animal Homo Sapiens to develop
into a more perfect organism we
have to make some mistakes. You
can't make an omelet without
breaking some eggs.
Bustman:
Bigmouthed graphician from a wet
city called Bergen.
Brainstorm:
Rather cool bunch of Swizz dudes
who messed up our living room and
brought us loads of the Swizz
national product: horrible
chocolate.
Diskmags:
A diskette full of text I seldom
have time to read. However I plan
to do more DiskMag reading in the
future. I promise. It's kinda
hard to read a lot of text when
it's on a monitor. If you have to
do something else, you have to
search for half and hour to find
where you left off. But that's
not a good excuse, is it?
MD: What are you thinking about giving
us your favourites? We know that
no member of Crusaders was allowed
to vote in the own charts so do it
now...
Best...
Arcade games:
Elite, Project X, Dawg Fight(PC)
Strategy games:
Civilization
Coders:
Sweinstein. Did Twintris some
years ago.
Music-disks:
Bacteria, Audio X
Amiga graphics:
Rico Holmes "BeanBag"
Pack-Disks:
ANC utility disks
Megademos:
My favourites at the moment are
"Wayfarer" and "D.O.S"
Amiga music:
"Kilimazaro" and "Graveyard
Extended version" Fleshbrain/CRS
MD: Yes, finally you have reached the
end of this hard questions! You
are now able to greet your best
friends and there is also some
space for a few messages! Use
your chance pal, hehe...
DO: It will only mean that I forget
someone, but I could send some fab
hellos to the following people:
Martyn James Brown/Team 17
(Sorry you couldn't play
football with us)
My girlfriend(s)
(No no, it's only you babe!)
Everyone who sent me stickers
(Send me some more, please!)
Everyone whos comments I fucked
up in The Gallery
All Ken fans
(I'm writing chapter 9 at the
moment!)
..and just about everyone in the
whole world, except some certain
people from certain groups that
really makes me sick.
MD: Well, with this part I want to end
the interview.. Thanks to
Dr.Outtasight of CRUSADERS from
the whole McDisk Team for
answering this stuff... Bye, and
hope to see you somewhere in time.
This interview was done by mail.
Arranged by CoNtRoL oF aLcAtRaZ!