!Blast From The Past
By Magic/DVN Staff
Blast From The Past: Touchstone

Proloque

   You might remember this Essential coder from the German group who made their marks into the Amiga Scene Historybooks. Touchstone/Essence better known as Thomas Jansen (24) who anno domini 2000 is studying computer science in Bonn / Germany. Read all about his past and present and what happened to Mop/Essence. Fasten your seatbelts. Here we go.

It Started In The Eighties..

   "I started in 1989 in a group called Hardline" Touchstone says and continues "I better not tell you what I did for them because it was really bad :)" Years past when suddenly in 1992 the start of a potential chart topping group was born.. Touchstone: "In 1992 I formed with some members of Hardline and some other great dudes a new scene-group called 'Essence'. My first demo was 'Dreaming' followed by an intro called 'd' that was released on the x-mas-party (TP'93 -ed) in Denmark and got the 2nd place! In those days a guy called "Mop" asked to join and manage a new diskmag he wanted to name 'ROM' so I started coding.. and coding.. and coding.. and after some months, ROM#1 was finished.. And was - as I heard - a success =)"

What Happened Next..

   We all know that some French members made sure Essence lived a little bit longer as God planned it. And Touchstone knew this all but to good. "The time went by and we had a lot of fun.. Members joined and left and after some more demos like the well known from our french members (Jamie and all) called "Thug Life" and "Makavelli" we decided to let Essence die because of lack of time... And thats it - in the short form.." Touchstone commented.. "As I said, the main-reason why I left the scene was the lack of time.. I am heavily working on my diploma and their is not much time left for scene.. anyway, when I was in the scene I respected noone =) All in all I was quite arrogant, but now, that some time flow away, my opinion changed completely! Now I respect everyone who's willing to spend some time to work on a demo... no matter if he's the coder, musician or graphics artist.. But to name some people: of course I still respect all the old Essence-dudes, active or not.. and I LOVE Jazz and xxx of Haujobb... All in all I loved the party when "d" was released... (TP'93).. this was the coolest moments I ever had.."

What Happened To Mop of Essence?

Magic:
"What about you and Mop? Heart friends forever it looked like.. Are you still in contact? How is your relationship with Mop these days?"

Touchstone:
"The best days, this is quite a difficult question.. We were really close friends and another great moment was when I met Mop in Malta but the last mail I received from him was at Christmas and the last mail I wrote to him wasn't answered by him :( To Mop: if you are alive and care about it: contact me.. to the rest: I MISS you much..."

Epiloque

   Aren't we a little bit curious what Touchstone knows of today's Scene? Well Devotion asked him the final question to find out.. "I have seen only pc-demos.. and those are quite cool as I think.. The last Amiga demos I saw were on MS2k.. the one by Haujobb was definatly better than the winning one by Loonies... I have respect to the stuff from Unreal (PC) he's the king... There is always a chance for me to make a comeback, when I was on MS2k I really missed all that, but there is however still no time.." Touchstones commented and finally concludes: "Just a message to the rest of the scene: keep on doing such a good work!!"