T H E   P A R T Y   P A R T   2 
               A REPORT 


         by Jester Of Sanity 



The city of Aars, 1500 inhabitants, situated in the north of Denmark was the venue for the biggest semi-professional computer conference ever held during the last few days of 1992.

Almost everyone with a particular interest in demos and public domain software for the Amiga, C64 or even PC was present which added up to an estimated number of 2400 visitors. Just like on the original event held one year before all action took place under the roof of a huge conference hall but in contrast to the earlier party this time halls 2 and 3 were open as well. While hall 1 was exclusively reserved for the Amiga users, hall 2 hosted the C64 and PC crowd and hall 3 was supposed to be the sleeping room.

The beginning of the party was extremely enervating since the registration for every individual progressed at an incredibly low speed. Each visitor had to pay the entrance fee of 120 Danish Crowns for which he got a plumbed wristband and a voting disk. Moreover his handle, country and computer type were electronically registered at the information desk. Having faced that truly unpleasant task the actual party started for most people, except for the ones who were too tired and went to hall 3 straight away.

The very best aspect about the entire party could be enjoyed around the clock: meeting people. Almost every famous name was present, chatting with pals, making new friends and generally having a good time.
A list would be superflous, to my mind, because I'm not willing to write down the entire Eurocharts here. One thing I really liked was the air of friendship and cooperation that lay over the whole place - I did not notice any arrogant or nasty types.

Still there were a few negative sides to the event, as well. These points were without an exception the fault of the organisers. The promised movie- and radio-channels never worked properly. Most of the time the laserdisc programmes were transmitted via only ONE channel but once it was functioning you could not receive it in the second hall for the transmitter was too weak to penetrate the walls.
The biggest joke, though, were the competitions. The music competition was the first one to come for the Amiga owners. A jury made a selection of 34 modules out of a total of 255 entries. I (and not only me) really wonder who that jury was composed of because the major part of the chosen musics were very sad techno or pseudo-jazz pieces.

Another thing a lot of people found rather suspicious was the fact that there was only one German musician (Emax) in the whole competition - could it be that parts of the jury were deliberately trying to keep certain artists out of the crowd's minds? Nah, guess not - or do YOU think so? Anyway, there were some nice entries by for example Moby, Audiomonster, Doh, Lizardking or Mr.Man but the entire competition was declared "sick" by most of the present guys (not only musicians!).

The demo-comp wasn't any better, the only good contributions were released by Spaceballs (revolutionary!) and Anarchy (really nice!). The rest was average or even below that - sad but true. There was only one other remarkable production which came out on the party, namely the "Mirror" musicdisk by Andromeda.
To my mind, it is really setting new standards, especially in terms of design (Well done, Mr. Hyde!). A competition with really nice results was the graphics one. All good scene artists took part and there were a lot of true masterpieces. In my opinion, there was no actual number one, too many of them were of equal quality. Especially the entries by Mack, Rhah and Alex were very much my taste.

All competitions were shown on a big screen (just like last year) and played via a rather powerful music equipment. Spaceballs got awarded for best demo, Moby for best music and Peachy for best picture. I have no idea about the smaller comps like fast intro etc. but who cares, anyway.
A lot of the announced extra-events did not take place - I was really surprised by the fact that there were NO surprise competitions. Still, Kyd/Balle took their show to stage in the middle of the first night but I slept all through the concert. Some people I talked to said they really liked it (or didn't you, Moby?!).

Summing it all up, it can be stated that the party was good fun because of the people who were present but NOT because of the events promised (but not held) by the organisation (sorry, Trix!). Certainly this was the biggest and best demo-party involving the Amiga EVER and you're a git if you missed it.

                               end.