T H E   G A T H E R I N G   ' 9 3   R E P O R T


                        By NightShade of the Crusaders


Since I am a member of Crusader's I
will attempt to make this an un-biased
account of what actually happened,
rather than just brag about how good
or bad I thought it was.  I will add a
few comments, but no more.

The Gathering '93 is the follow up to
the hugely successful Gathering '92,
also held in the same hall,
Skedsmahollen in Lillestrom, Norway.
The organisers of this event was
Crusaders and Exile (for PC's).  Last
year the party was held by Crusaders
and Deadline, however, the active guys
in Deadline have recently joined






Crusaders.  I even noticed a couple of
'64 owners at the party.

Actual conference activities did not
commence until Thursday 8th April, but
we opened for business on the 7th for
people to set-up.  I am not sure
whether people were allowed in on the
6th since I wasn't there!  Security at
this event was on a rather larger
scale than any previous party I had
attended, or helped with.  There were
various "guards" walking around trying
to keep an eye on things.  Each person
entering the party was given a
wristband which had his/her (girls
were allowed free-entrance) personal
number, to be logged in to a huge
database (mainly for the voting) and a
short questionnaire had to be
completed.

The hall itself was huge by any
standards and was well equipped to
hold the amount of people expected.
The power supply had to cope with the
amount needed for 100's of computers/
monitors/stereo's etc.  Along with the
hall, there were also various smaller
rooms, which various groups had either
booked in advance or on a first come,
first serve basis.  There were a large
amount of washing facilities, showers
etc. and a few toilets.  A cafeteria
was open every day (although I am not
sure what the opening times were) and
a 24 hour kiosk, which I manned for
quite a time!  Also on offer was a
small arcade boasting a few of the
latest games, as well as some of the
more popular ones - such as Street
Fighter II.  There were 3 or 4 (I
can't remember which!) of the highly
addictive Air Hockey games.  There was
a video room which boasted round the
clock films (I personally only noticed
them on in the evening and early hours
of the morning so i'm not sure whether
"round the clock" is applicable)
showing new films like Cool World and
Sneakers on laserdisc, as well as a
few classics, such as The Lost Boys.

Although there was a football
competition on the Thursday (8th
April), I wasn't involved, so I can't
really comment, except to say that
Crusaders lost :-(

There was also a private TV-channel
(run by Spaceballs) showing things
like latest movies, computer graphic
showreels (such as the "Beyond
Imagination" with music by Jan Hammer
(I think it was called that!) and
"other" forms of entertainment quite
popular at such events!

To show different information and the
competition entries, we had hired an
enormous video screen, I think it was
15 feet long on the diagonal.  To play
the music, we had a 6000 watt PA
system.

Commodore Norway (who were part
sponsors of this event) also came and
showed off the latest Amiga
hard/software.  GVP also showed up
with there latest products.  An
auction was held in the Video Room on
the Thursday - it would have been
nicer if the auctioneer had spoken
English so we could ALL have
understood what he said.

Any party would not have been complete
without the inclusion of competitions.

Four Crusader's members were chosen
(Black Panther, ECS, Dark Elf and
myself), announced on the stage as to
be the people to give all you're
competition entries to and we also
created boxes next to the kiosk, where
entries could be delivered to and over
the next 24 hours or so, we began
collecting all the entries.  The
categories were as follows:

1. Best Amiga Demo (had to work on ALL
   Amiga configurations)
2. Best PC Demo (had to work on a 486
   33mHz)
3. Best Graphics (all to be shown on a
   standard (non AGA) Amiga)
4. Best Music (all tunes to be played
   on a standard Amiga)
5. 40K intro (Amiga only)
6. Most Useless utility (Amiga only -
   I think!)

The deadline for the music was 13:00
on the Friday, the graphics were 16:00
on the Friday and all others were
18:00 on the Friday.

Three musicians (Jason/CRS, Anders
Hamre and myself) and three non-
musicians (randomly picked) were given
the task of judging the music
competition.  We sat through 96
modules and cut the number down to 15.
While this was going on, various other
Crusader members were doing a similar
feat with the other competitions.  We
had to cut down the number of entries
down to;

- 15 Modules.
- 15 Pictures.
- 20 Demos (10 Amiga, 10 PC)
- 10 40K intro's.
- 01 Useless utility (we judged that
     for ourselves!).

From those finalists, the rest of the
party-goers decided on a top 3 for
each category and gave it marks
respective to the position they
thought it deserved.

We were meant to start the competition
finalists at 0:00 Saturday morning,
however, due to typical party fuck-ups
(such as the voting program not
working!) we didn't begin until 1:00.
I was given the unenviable task of
introducing all the demos/music etc.

The 1st competition was the music
competition and that ran relatively
smoothly, except that they played one
of the wrong tunes (I was the only
person to notice it!), Jester of
Sanity's tune was disqualified because
it had already been entered into a
previous music competition and one
group complained that their music was
better than anything we'd previously
played and demanded that we played it,
which we did.

The 2nd competition was the graphics
competition and as far as I remember,
it went fine.

The 3rd competition was for the 40K
intro's, a couple of them refused to
work on a basic A500, a few guru'd
very nicely, but on the whole, the
best intro's were plain to see.  I
would like to say that I felt sorry
for Complex, because we attempted to
play their intro twice, but both
times, it jumped to another Sanity
intro instead.

The 4th competition was the PC demo
competition and apart from the usual
"demo's not working" syndrome, the
best demo was also plain to see.

The 5th competition was an absolute
nightmare, well for me it was, being
on stage!  It was the Amiga demo
competition.  A couple of groups
didn't finish their demo's on time,
even though we stretched the deadline.
Cryptoburners didn't finish "re-
materialised", a great shame.
Phenomena's Enigma II was a fake.  Two
demo's were written on AMOS.  There
were only about 5 demo's left which
vaguely worked!

I wish to apologise for the long delay
between each competition, it was the
usual problems that occur, mainly
things not working.

After the trials and tribulations of
counting the votes (I was so knackered
after doing that, I actually went to
sleep with the only copy of the final
results sheet!  And was promptly woken
up about 2 hours later and told to
present all the prizes!)






            W I N N E R S

           1.Best Musician
         Vinnie of Spaceballs
     Won a 68030 accelerator card

          2.Best Graphician
        Archmage of Andromeda
            Won Opalvision

            3.Best PC Demo
 Can't remember the name of the group
    - but it was the Python demo.
          Won a 486 50mHz PC

          4.Best Amiga Demo
       Desert Dream by Kefrens
          Won an A4000 68040

           5.Best 40k Intro
         won by Dan of Lemon
            Won an A600 HD
I would like to apologise on behalf of
Crusaders to Nuke of Lemon for not
receiving a power supply for his 4
track mixer (would've been useless
anyway 'cos of the different
powersupply's over here!) and to Dan
of Lemon for not winning an A1200 as
he should have (I did ask for you Dan,
but you'd gone by the time I'd got a
reply - it was due to the fact that
they ALREADY had an A600 and Commodore
were offering to sell the A1200 to
Crusaders.  I was told that you could
sell the A600 HD and get an A1200 with
the money anyway - probably true!)

Around 1500 people turned up to the
event, including such groups as
Spaceballs, Andromeda, Cryptoburners,
Alcatraz (Hi! Teo and Brainbug),
Kefrens, Melon Dezign, Lemon etc.  A
new group was formed at the party, a
complete piss-take called the "Pornos"
and i've never seen anybody drink as
much Coke as I saw consumed in Norway
- believe you me, I had to help clear
up after the party was finished, so I
KNOW!

Please keep in mind, that if I have
forgotten anything, I apologise,
however this article was written in a
rush, from memory, to get the deadline
for Grapevine.

    Remember - Pornos forever...!

The Quantum music disk by Crusaders
was advertised at the conference and
was due for release there.  It has,
however, been delayed and is likely to
see the light of day around the summer
time.
                                  end.