Forever Quattro
Party Report
Submitted by djgruby (DJ Gruby) on May 5 2004
Written by CACTUS/OXYRON
FOREVER QUATTRO REPORT
The fourth part of the pure 8-bit demo party FOREVER was held in Trencin, Slovakia on 14-16 March 2003. 3 main scenes (Atari, C-64 and Spectrum) have proved that the spirit is still here.
I'm typing these words just after coming back home from the event, so I'm not quite sure how many people visited this year's scene meeting, but I suppose there was around 80 sceners, what is really nice amount, especially comparing it to the party date (middle of March might have been not the perfect time to come to Trencin).
My story starts at 4 o'clock in the Friday morning, when I left home. Well, nothing special to say about the journey, it was long and boring... I've come to Trencin around 1 p.m. The first amazing thing in Trencin is its castle, placed on the top of a huge rock. Yeah, a really great one... It's sad that I haven't had an occassion to climb up to the top of it, but I have a hope to do that during the next year's Forever.
It was a little bit tricky to find the party place, as SPS Odevna is quite a big building. The entrance door was on the backside, but eventually I managed to get there. I said "hello" to the main C-64 organiser, CreamD/DMAgic. Then I had a little chat with his groupmate Wotnau. Not too many C-64 people were present at that time, I remember that Lord Hypnos/Padua, Fenek/Arise, Cobra/Fraction/Apidya and maybe a few more have been there already... Elban/Arise was sleeping, his pal Prezes/ex-Samar was doing the same plus he was snoring loudly...
Wotnau was absolutely the best guy of the party. He was causing visitors smiling (or even laughing) by doing lots of funny things (like dancing, the way of introducing compos and more...). As I'd felt a little bit hungry, I went together with Fenek and Wilson (from Atari scene) to the local restaurant. As Fenek had been present at the previous Forever party edition, he told me some things about it and how things was looking like one year ago... After that it was time to fall asleep for a few hours, because I was a bit tired after the long journey to Trencin. In the evening I've had an occassion to have some nice chats with PCH/Unreal, Sigi/Unreal (I hope it's a proper noting of his handle?), Exile/Anubis and Drake/Anubis.
Around 11 p.m. there was a show of some nice C-64 demos on the big screen. I remember "Insomnia" well, a great one... "Soiled Legacy" was also shown, and more... It was enough, so around 1 o'clock I got into the sleeping-bag...
The next day I woke up around 8 a.m. Together with Cobra, Lewis (Atari), Mikey (another guy from Atari scene) and Wilson we went sightseeing Trencin. A beautiful city.
During the party I was having nice conversations with Fenek about the C-64 scene (sceners' mentality, the charts, releases and many more...). That guy was the most C-64 orientated person on the party, who has really sober opinions. Thanks to such people our scene is still alive. Chats with Fenek were kinda different to all those non-interesting discussions and talks on different Internet forums, where many guys are raging without any single sensible argument.
It was really interesting to meet JTR/Protovision on Saturday. He showed me many cool things, like the 4-joysticks adapter, Retro Replay or the original box with instructions and disks of "Enhanced Newcomer" game. The worst thing is the scheme of 4-joysticks adapter is kept in secret by Protovision. :( I can't make it by myself then... 20USD is too much for me...
The best event of a second day was great football match: Commodore 64 scene vs. Atari scene. Because of the bad weather (it was really cold, and a strong wind was blewing...) we have played two halfs, 30 minutes each one. The C-64 scene once again has proved why it's better than Atari people. It was smashing win! The final result of the match was 9:1 (6:1). And the winning team was: Sigi/Unreal, Elban/Arise, Cactus/Oxyron, Prezes, Drake/Anubis, PCH/Unreal. It wasn't called in question that PCH was the main hero of the game. Nine goals for the C-64 representation have been shot by: PCH (4), Cactus (2), Elban (2) and Drake (1).
The wild compo started on 16:45. There was one C-64 game presented (I don't remember the title), but more interesting was an Atari game for 16 players! On 18:00 the main compos started. The only one interesting thing in realtime compo was quite a nice tune by PCH. It was really nice considering the fact it was composed live at the party place.
Before the music competition started I had had a nice chat with Orcan/React. Yeah, that was really nice to meet someone with similar point of view on some topics, f.e. demos... :) We both agreed that there are no good explanations for the fact why so many people consider "Red Storm" or "Dutch Breeze" to be one of the best C-64 demos ever.
Two musics in the compo have impressed me the most. I didn't know the authors, but I was really curious whose tunes seemed to me to be the best. When CreamD told me that my favourite zak was composed by Richard I was shocked. I have never considered Richard to be a good musician, and what a surprise now! He has made the tune, which I liked the most out of all 19 tunes. The second nice music was composed by Smalltown Boy (that guy is really good in this job!). Of course it was the _first_ impression, I don't know if I might change my mind after listening to the tunes once again at my home. I've heard that some people liked tunes by CreamD and PCH much, but I don't know which places they took...
In the graphics compo the picture by Jailbird was a real kicker. There's no doubt about its win (it was simply the best!). Then we had a nice C-64 accent in the Atari gfx compo, the picture by Cobra. Only one intro and two demos in the C-64 compo were presented. Wasn't that much, but well... Who cares? For example, I simply haven't had time to do anything for the compo. I hope that I'll be able to present something nice at North Party 8, which will be held in Warsaw, Poland on the first weekend of August this year. The competitions were over...
In the late evening I was invited by MacGyver/DMAgic to play "Bombmania" with three other guys (MacGyver, JTR and the guy I didn't know). The game was a real kicker. Four players' game is really a lot of fun. JTR was the real master, I've won only once... Later we were playing "Pac It" (a game by JTR)... Or rather testing it: which levels are too hard to play. ;)
Most of people went outside to drink some beer in the local pubs, I've personally felt a bit tired, so the party was over for me, because I felt asleep quickly... Around 4 or 5 o'clock in the Sunday morning someone has let the pigs in the room. I'm not sure if those were really pigs, I'm sure that I've been hearing loud grunting. Later I was told that it was Elban and Prezes coming back to the party place, but I couldn't believe those sounds were emitted by humans.
At the moment when I'm writing this words, I don't know the results of all the compos. Shame on you Wotnau! You said that the compo results will be presented at 6 a.m. on Sunday. I woke up especially for it, and where have you been??? I couldn't wait too long, because we had a train to Cadca on 7:30 a.m. I left the party place together with Cobra, Lewis, Wilson and Mikey, and we came back home...
In the last words of this short report I'd like to thank all organisers of the party (CreamD, Ellvis, CVM, Mike, XI), it was really great event. It's surely the best C-64 scene party at the moment, and I don't think it could be beaten by other ones (of course I mean cool 8-bit atmosphere, the releases can always be better). I hope to meet you at Forever 5 next year, I'll come there for sure! Greetings to all of you C-64 sceners, which I met personally on Forever Quattro and all of you, which I didn't met despite you were there... See you next year in Trencin!
CACTUS/OXYRON
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