tThe Gathering 1997tStrifetfpc07s1f1 THE GATHERING 1997 c09 by Strife/Apathy c08f2The Gathering'97f1 took place in Hamar, Norway, just like TG'96. After the great success of TG'96, it seemed like TG'97 would be THE party this year, with lots of Sceners attending and lots of great releases, with TBL as the big star in all compos. We arrived at Hamar at 12:00, two hours after the party started, and thought we could walk straight into the partyplace, without wasting many hours in queues. But as we enter Vikingskipet, we are shocked! Total chaos, lots and lots of people just sitting, standing, sleeping everywhere, just waiting to get registered so they can enter the party-area. Is this party really organized by the Crusaders? Is this really the follow-up to TG'96? The network had fucked up, and didn't get fixed until around 13:00, so registering was impossible. At 13:00 c102000-3000c08 attenders lined up to get registered, everyone fighting to reach the 6 PC's to register oneself on. TG organizers yelling "back the fuck up!" and total chaos. Not a pretty sight. So we just left the partyplace and went to buy some food and talked with some other friends outside Vikingskipet. Many hours later we finally got registered, just in time before the network once again broke down. Luckily for us, sadly for thec09 500-100008 others that still hadn't got registered. c07 THE ATMOSPHERE c09After the big mess up at the registering, the atmosphere at the party was kind of destroyed. It all seemed like a lamer party without real organizing. We found the 30 seats we had reserved, and gathered together with other Amiga friends, with PC-lamers on the rows around us. f265% f1of the attenders at this party were probably guys with PC's. Seeing all the PC gamer lamers playing Quake and chatting nonsense on IRC, did not make us want to release stuff to entertain the few serious people at TG97. Many people just dumped all their planed releases, and people didn't bother to make banners, they just sat around doing mostly nothing. It all seemed so poor organized that some poeple didn't bother about deadlines either, and delivered hours after the deadline. This worked at TG96, but not here. After 3 days the atmosphere actually got quite good, but then some had allready left the party. c07 WHO WERE THERE? c08When not counting all the PC-lamers, we are probably left with f4600-1000 Amiga Scenersf1. Someone said there were only f4600 Amigaf1 guys at the party, but it was really hard to tell. One thing is for sure, there were more Amiga people at TG96. f2TBLf1 were here, but they were hard to spot, as most of them had gotten an own seperate room at the partplace together with some other elite Amiga Sceners, where they sat peacefully finishing their prods. We visited their room, but it was quite boring there, and filled with smoke! But they were however cooking together some mighty awesome stuff, but what we saw there wasn't released at TG97. To see which other groups that were here I guess you can just check out the results. But there were some groups here that didn't release anything. f2 Donut fetishf1 were working on a demo, but it didn't get finished. Stone Arts which we thought were dead were also here, coding some stuff. f2 Ems-designf1 were also making some cool stuff which didn't get finished. Some less known norwegian Amiga groups that were here:f2 Instinctf1, and some of thef2 Massivef1 guys were here, but they only released some wild demos. f2Spaceballlsf1 seems to be back, and recruited some new members and released their demo. Like at last TG we cruised through all the rows (we had to do something hehe) and this year there were more C64's here than at TG96. There were about 10 C64's here, but still, there were no releases on C64! Pitty.. c07 WHO WERE NOT THERE? c09We had hoped to spot Equinoxe somewhere, so we could get their cool demo from TG96 which didn't get spread by the organizers at all. But we couldn't find them, and we saw no releases from them either. Maybe they got so mad because of the organizers fuck up with their demo at TG96 that they didn't show up? Rumours said that CNCD was going to release an Amiga demo here, but all we saw was a PC-demo I think. Rumours also said that Touchstone/Essence was lurking around and had a release coming, but no signs of Essence either. c07 THE BAD COMPOS c08All the compos that were held the three first days were tragic (fastintro, 64k, 4k Amiga/PC) I only saw the last of the 7-8 fastintros, but people said all were quite boring. The only fastintro on Amiga was one by contraz I think. The introcompo was really boring, nothing really cool on Amiga or PC. This compo was much better last year when there were seperate Amiga40k /PC64k. The joining of these compos ruined this compo. The best Amiga intro was one by a group called vector. It was really good I think, but it was short. The Amiga 4k compo was a disaster. Last year there were lots of Amiga 4k's, so everyone probably thought they would have no chances in the 4k compo this year and didn't make anything. There was only one entry, a 4k by contraz! It wasn't half bad, but TBL had a 4k in the 64k compo which was much better but probably had been delivered to late for the 4k compo. So contraz got 5000kr for their contribution, and if there had been any second and third entry they would have gotten 3000 and 2000Kr (1000kr=£100) c07 THE GOOD COMPOS 09But at the end of the party everything suddenly changed. The wild compo started, and there were 50 entrys, 35-40 which were made on Amiga. This was the big Microsoft & Intel sucks compo! Microsoft even got slagged off in PC- entrys. This was really fun, because all PC guys just watched down into the floor when the great Amiga wild-demos were shown hehe.. c08After all the rumours of what was to come in the Amiga demo compo I knew it would rule! The Amiga democompo sucked last year, the only great demo was tint, but then it didn't matter because tint was so awesome. The Amiga democompo this year was great, it was better than the PC democompo! The PC entrys in all compos this year were really poor compared to last year. A new norwegian Amiga group seems to have been founded, and they are really wild! Procyron was their name I think, and they released two demos, one with some effects and a movie where they smashed a powersupply. Now the best one, was a demo were a guy (a real guy) was puking on a PC (think it was a PC) and pointing at his puke laughing and then puked more and more and just laughed. After the compo I heard the organizer yell at them: "You don't make a demo with an anim where you puke on a PC! that is not the kind of group we want to be!!" Funny. These guys also made a new video for the firestarter song in the Wild compo, and it was fuckings funny! This must be the funniest group in the Scene! c07 WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER? c09The registration system next year better work!! Also the newspaper which they delivered to everyone at TG96, I would have liked to gotten something like this this year aswell. A newspaper with all important information and deadlines etc. Also the joining of the introcompo really made it suck! If it is joined next year aswell I fear it will be just as poor! Split this compo into Amiga/PC again, if there are few entrys on one of the platforms then don't give that big prizes for second and third place(maybe not for first place either?) Anything is better than joining the compos! My friends who left the party early because of its lameness talked to one of the sponsors, and he wanted to know what was so bad. He wondered if it would be better to let all guys with Amiga get one part of the hall, and put all gamer lamers in another part of the hall. To me this seems like a VERY good idea! This would have been great! Reserve 1000 seats to the Amiga people and the C64 guys and some for the PC Sceners. They should be in one end of the hall, so if not all seats are filled then the PC gamer lamers can get the rows closest to the middle of the hall and the Amiga people have one side for themselves. This would really create a great atmosphere! It'll be just like the old days when Amiga was the major (well almost atleast). I think this is an idea for all Amiga/PC/etc partys! Shouldn't be to hard to organize. c07 THE PARTY AREA c08The worst thing at The Gathering is probably the oportunity to get some sleep! Last year we were allowed to sleep in hallways and in the wardrobes. This year however, the security gards kicked all out of the wardrobes and the hallways, which were the only quiet places at the party. This year the only places we could sleep were in the grandstands, and you have to be REALLY tired to get some sleep here with music banging everywhere from the partyarea. And finally after three days without any sleep when you fall asleep in the grandstand, then they wake us all up because they have to clean the grandstands! At seven o'clock in the morning! Is it possible?? This is just stoopid! Clean up when the party is finished god damnet! And they didn't give us any good reason for not being allowed to sleep in the wardrobes and the hallways. Just that people needed the wardrobes to change etc, but that was bullshit! nobody went and changed clothes in the middle of the night! If they had told us it was because of danger if fire broke out etc, then it would be ok, but not because people have to change clothes and take a shower in the middle of the night! Crusaders: Get some REAL places to sleep! c07 DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES! c09Since there was only one Amiga4k this year, I bet the organizers will want to join this compo aswell next year! Don't do this! You are turning TG into a lamer party!! At TG96 there were eight Amiga 4k's, but few good demos, this year there were one Amiga 4k and lots of good demos. You can't know how it will be next year! joining compos just because it was bad one year just ruins it all! I bet there will be many 4k's next year, I atleast KNOW there will be more than 1! you count on it! And if you just manage to make the atmosphere better at the party there will be more Amiga intros as well! The Amiga Scene in norway is growing at moment! Don't join compos!! that suxx! This will just make Amiga people release their stuff at Amiga only partys here in norway like kindergarden7! Is this what you want? c07 THAT'S NICE c08Some things were cooler at TG97 then at TG96 though. After three days with a lame norwegian trying to speak english and pronounce the entrys etc, they changed him with a real englishman. That was real cool, this english guy was really cool! I hope he shows up at TG98 as well! But there were so many sad things about this party, like for example the lame designed caps and mousepad we got which they said was worth half the value of the entrance fee. So it's hard to come up with more nice things. Cool that someone wants to organize such a big party anyway. c07 ALL IN ALL c09All in all the party was ok. The atmosphere was really bad, everybody got lazy because of all the ugly quake yerks, but the Amiga democompo and wild compo were really cool, so they saved the party. If they had not been as good as they were it would have been tempting not to go to The Gathering'98. But I guess I will see you all there, and we will have many releases coming, as long as the crusaders don't fucking join compos!