SATURNE PARTY 96 
The most awaited French scene event since a few years now, having already been cancelled for two times, was finally withheld on the last week of April. The Saturne Party 1996, entitled after the frenetic cancelling that grabbed the attention of the whole European scene in the past times, is the third part in a series of well-noted events, in the land of nuclear bombings.

History

Saturne have already organized 2 successful Amiga-only parties in Chelles. The first edition gathered around 400 eager sceners, whilst on the second, a more reasonable 700 decided to show up. ROM had already noticed that there weren't too many improvements on Saturne's second try in 1994. 
"It was generally in the same style, without much more effort", told us some French scene-natives. After failing to organize a different party in another French town, with bigger aspirations and more attractive prizes, Saturne announced that they will be mainly concentrating on demo creation to be a bit more productive! ROM knows that during this same period, spiced with disasters, all Saturne members attended The Party 4 in Denmark with a special minibus, sponsored by all the income left from their previous party-experiments!

Strangely enough, only a few weeks later, the Saturne Party 1996 was announced...

BACK IN CHELLES

Many wondered why the organisers were going to withhold another party in the town of Chelles. 
"Of course, we were searching for other bigger and more useful places, but we didn't find many and most were very expensive. We failed twice, before this success, and both times, we had to cancel the event BECAUSE of problems with the better place we had found. So it was quite natural to come back to Chelles", says Vodka.

APRIL's FOOL

Nearly 620 sceners turned up during the three party days. Even though there were a few (30) foreigners coming from neighbourhood countries, the turn-out can't be said to have been totally successful, especially taking in consideration that, unlike the previous years, this was a combined, AMIGA and PC event. 
"We hoped that more foreigners would visit our party", speaks out main organiser Vodka. 
"However all the foreigners who attended this year were very satisfied and some even got prizes. When it comes to the general attendance, I can say that this year the visitors were 50% Amiga and 50% PC. Many French have joined the PC scene, but the Saturne parties were born as Amiga events, and the main French Amiga scene was present too", continues Vodka.

START

ROM noticed that nothing of particular importance happened on the first party day. The main hall had two whole walls made up of glass panes, so the strong lightening made it impossible to hold any competitions during day time. ROM asked the responsible organisers about the matter; 
"We knew that these 2 walls could be a big problem for us, since it is the third time that we use this party place. Since the party complex is one of the biggest places able to welcome such an event we didn't have much alternatives. Moreover Saturne is a registered association in the town of Chelles, so we could rent the hall at a quite low price"

With the big screen out of action, sceners took the possibility to abuse of alcohol in a big way, even though it was prohibited by the party rules! During the first night, the deadlines for the graphics competition was moved to the second day. So trying to cheer up the audience, the big screen became the centre of attention for that one night. Unfortunately, the displayed entertainment was quite limited, and the same IMAGINA and SIGRAPH animations were played over and over again; no historic Amiga or PC productions were shown, but just some Saturne demos.

Fed by the boredom, and inspired by a well-known wild demo from The Party 5, three sceners gave us a side-show on the outside by destroying an Atari ST and two PCs! Some even thought that it was funny, and a few clapped! Someone whispered in our ears that what we had just experienced was actually the "computer crashing" competition!

Almost all the competitions where then held during the second night. 
"We managed to project all the competitions during the last 2 nights of the party, since several contestants, mostly graphicians, told us that their production was not completely finished on the first party day, and that they would like us to delay all contests. We organisers had a long and hard discussion, and we finally choose to delay the graphics competition as asked, to the second night, making a totally new program" Vodka continues to tell us that they, as organisers, could well refuse the cries of the contestants, but since they wanted a happy audience, they just had to adequate themselves.

Between every two competitions, the audience could admire a live State Of The Art show. Some (drunk) sceners whistled and shouted for the girls to strip parts of their robes, and others even went to moan to the organisers that they should have chosen some more sexy girls! 
"We first wanted to show that we can do an original party, and not only one with those classical competitions. We also had a few happy sceners dancing behind the giant screen!", stresses organiser Vodka!

Vote For Moi

Voting was carried out by filling a little book with the preferred 3 entries and putting the scrambled sheet in a big trash can: a really modern vote system, as some suggested! 
"We thought about the most proper voting method for a long time. Disk voting was quite hard to develop, since we would have had to organise programs for both PC and Amiga and copy much disks. We knew that a lot of people would not vote but keep the disk as a souvenir! Network voting seemed like a very good idea, but unfortunately we didn't have enough machines to organise something similar to what Mentasm did at their Volcanic Party (they had PCs from their school available). On the other hand the voting sheet method was very simple to manage, and everyone could vote, regardless of their machine. The voting book allowed everyone to vote as soon as a competition was over, so that we could also count all votes during the party itself, and not only towards the end. Four Saturne members did the counting, and it took us less than 1 hour for every competition" Vodka assures us that by using a yellow paper as the voting form, faking could be kept to a minimum. 
"With this method only the ones watching a competition could vote since it was impossible to ask friends who were not sleeping to vote for you, for number X, without knowing which entry it was!"

INTERNET FREE

Unlike the other big Easter parties, like Symposium or Gathering, Saturne didn't offer any Internet possibilities. 
"We thought about that, and asked some companies for a price. However, it turned out that Internet would be an expensive luxury for us. The entrance fee was kept to USD 25 and we didn't want to double it like other parties do"

MORE VISITS TO SATURNE


"For sure, there will be more Saturne parties", assures us Vodka! ROM heard some voices telling that Saturne might be interested in emulating THE PARTY organisers and have 2 parties per year, with the possibility to hold THE SATURNE PARTY 4 in the first 3 days of November 96. When asked, Vodka didn't neglect such a possibility! 
"For the moment, we will stay in Chelles and organise this same kind of party, with the wonderful ambient we had this year", he says. The organisers believe that they will develop further, special features like the dancing girls and computer crashing attractions, because in their opinion, this is the new format to present scene demos in the best possible way! After the party, some Saturne members have stopped their Amiga activities and are nowadays working on PC. 
"But parties are parties, independent of the machines, if the demo ambience is there", concludes Vodka.


(This reportage was written by Napoleon, Mop and Estrayk)