Party Review for Assembly 1994
found in | Type | Author | Year |
Diskmagazine | Essence Andy - Christine De La Queen - Covert Action Team - ... | a8/94 added 4/97 |
THE ASSEMBLY 1994 Written by Shade of TRSI and exclusively commented by Mop. The Assembly is one of those few scene events that deserve to be called A party, not only because of the fact that it is one of the three bigger party arrangements taking place every year, for three consecutive seasons, but also because of the high number of yearly attenders. Atmosphere and organization The Assembly 1994 offered some very good conditions to all attenders; a very rare thing found in today's party arrangements. Unlike The Gathering 94, there were absolutely no problems whatsoever with the electricity plant and other main party essentials. Everyone was always kept informed of the various happenings taking place, via a big information screen, something which is definitely a must for such a big scene event. The Assembly was some kind of "heaven" for PC sceners, and without surprise, the majority of the attenders were PC owners. Yet the Amiga was still heavily represented, something which the main competitions reflected, but unlike other parties, the PC domination at this event could be felt more than ever. Problems? No party is exempted from problems, small as they might be. The most felt lacking, arose right after the competitions were over, when the organizers did NOT want to spread the competing releases, mainly because of a CD ROM disk that had to be built up, obviously containing all the competition entries. This only brought problems for the masses; not everyone was able to get hold of all the released stuff. It got even harder to acquire the party stuff when Alien of Virtual Dreams suddenly disappeared with the hard disk containing all competition entries! Shame on you Alien! It also seems that most demo producers were not willing enough to spread their productions for the poor sceners of the street! If some kind of agreement was set up between the party organisers and the competitors, just to make the released CD ROM, a more sought after piece of software, we really don't know. A party with a bad spreading campaign of the released stuff is not a very good party; After all, it's the competitions that keep parties' memories alive after the event has ended, and surely it is the releases that keep the competitions alive; so what is a party when the present attenders, who have even paid an entrance fee, cannot copy the released stuff, at their own ease? LAME or what?! The organisers tried their best to arrange some enjoyable events, just for the pleasure of all attenders; There was even a techno concert including some babes, terrible music and a lousy playback system! We must admit that the concert wasn't that bad after all, but it could have been executed much better, if more time had been invested in rehearsals. The Party Place The Assembly 1994 took place in a quite big Ice Hockey hall in the middle of Helsinki, the capital of Finland. Due to lack of vacant space in the main hall, some additional tables were set up in the hall ways, which eventually surrounded the whole hall. These hall ways were quite big, and there was never any problem for the ones sitting there to miss any important part of the party, due to all the entrances all over the place. The hall was supposed to be equipped with air conditioning, but the heat was sometimes unbearable. The ones sitting beside the main entrance didn't feel much of the heat (lucky them), but for the rest of the party animals, the summer heat was simply a continuous pain. A cafeteria selling the usual kind of party food and also exquisite meals was open by day time, and a little kiosk was open 24 hours a day. To sum it up in few words; This particular party place has been a good choice, except for the unbearable heat. The party animals! Several groups showed their presence at the Assembly, both the so called elite and the more unknown ones. Trsi, Complex, Absolute!, Stellar, Alcatraz, Parallax, Pygmy Projects, Abyss, Darkzone, Grif, Spaceballs, Desire, Surprise Productions, Sonic, Razor 1911 and Triton are just a few of the cream groups that managed to show up at this year's Assembly. Fortunately enough, not many "party lamers" could be seen running around, and most of the attenders had a certain degree of computing knowledge; the gamers could be counted on two hands! The Competitions Like every party, the competitions brought their own share of problems and delays. After some more delays, which eventually was no big problem for the visitors, the competitions finally seemed to start off. Some technical problems occurred during the showing of the demo entries, and some more delays became necessary, but all in all, this was not bad, even though the organisers might have thought out a better way to avoid such unwanted last minute troubles. In addition to the main competitions, some extra and crazy compos were also arranged; Hard disk throwing, disk throwing, modem throwing, Doom playing, and what have you! Once again the craziness of the Finish scene has shone very brightly! 4 CHANNEL MUSIC COMPETITION first prize was won by LizardKing of Razor 1911. second prize was won by Petroff of Absolute! third prize was won by Yolk of Parallax. GRAPHICS COMPETITION Destop of CNCD came first. RWO and Zinko of Polka Brothers came second. Louise of Insane came third. AMIGA DEMO COMPETITION Stellar placed first with Mindflow. Virtual Dreams of Fairlight placed second with Breathtaker. Parallax placed third with Drool This! AMIGA 40K INTRO COMPETITION Pygmy Projects won the first prize with G-Force. Razor 1911 won the second prize with Falu red color. Stellar won the third prize with Darkroom. The Releases This was definitely a party of great releases when it comes to the Amiga and C64 scenes. The PC could not offer the same quality software as the two Commodore wonders, even though there were some good demos. Byterapers showed off with a great C64 demo; Obviously there is still a lot of activities going on, on this machine! The Amiga results speak for themselves; The presence of several good groups usually end up in several good productions, and so happened at this year's Assembly. Alcatraz, Stellar and Virtual Dreams, just to mention a few names, really showed off their hard worked on productions, although Alcatraz didn't gain too much success with the much awaited sequel to the original Odyssey. But after all, this is quite an understandable fact; Finnish sceners do respect Finnish groups more than others, and Alcatraz doesn't seem to be too much known in this country. The number of presented intros was quite big, but unfortunately, most of them, were just a show of the usual routines; line tunnels, shade bobs, vectors, scrollers, dot worlds and bitmap zoomers and rotators ruled supreme. Of special notice was the bitmap tunnel sequence in Hello's intro, while Complex's Dive must surely be the most original intro of this year. The bitmap zooming star field is a treat by itself! Razor's Falu intro had it's own share of originality like the vector house part, complete with raining clouds and the pixelized vector hand. Stellar, the Finish masters of intro making, produced a nice intro based on strange whirlpool effects. Many of the entries in the demo competition required an AGA computer to even start running; others demanded the ownership of a super Amiga, with tones of memory and a beefy hard drive. This advancement has been happening in the PC demo scene since ages, so who are we, to whine about this fact? The advantage of making use of super Amigas is obvious; new effects become possible, and older ones can be highly optimised, but how many sceners do really possess such a super machine. Since we in the Rom Team are a bunch of poor magazine makers (we can't even pay attention!), we weren't able to boot such mouth watering demos as Mindflow, Drool This, Odyssey 2... what a pity! The graphics and music competitions were of the usual standard one would expect from the top artists that did compete. Lizardking's winning module could be smelled from miles, in being a Lizardking masterpiece; his style has now become a kind of legend in the Amiga music scene. Picture contributions from known artists like D-Design of Razor 1911 and Jugi of Complex were quite disappointing. It would be quite interesting to point out that most pictures used the new AGA graphic modes. Maybe at this point in time, we'll never see again any artists coming up with decent pictures using the old ECS limitations. Other competitions C64 DEMO COMPETITION first prize was won by Beyond Force. second prize was won by Byterapers. third prize was won by Trinomic. C64 MUSIC COMPETITION Genius of Palace came first. Thor of Extended came second. Agemixer of Astral came third. C64 GRAPHICS COMPETITION Electric of Extended placed first. Mire of Panic placed second. Mr. Sex of Byterapers placed third. MULTI CHANNEL MUSIC COMPETITION Stargazer of Sonic came first. Cube of Hysteria came second. Lizardking of Triton (and Razor 1911) came third. PC DEMO COMPETITION EMF won the first prize with Verses. Cascada won the second prize with Holistic. Iguana won the third prize with Harthquake. Legend Design won the forth prize with Warp. Epical won the fifth prize with Images. PC 4K INTRO COMPETITION Dust came first with Stoned. Epical came second with Optimize. Schwartz came third with Fractals. PC 64K DEMO COMPETITION first was Prime with Airframe. second was Tet with The Magic Circle. third was Jamm with Fyvush. fourth was Complex with Placebo. fifth was Spirit with Psychic Flight. But after all our whines, we must admit that The Assembly 1994, was a good party. There were the usual problems every event cannot avoid, but these should have never arose on such a major one. We strongly urge all the sceners not present at this year's Assembly to attend, next year; You don't want to miss that one too, don't you?