Get releases from here
ftp://ftp.scs-trc.net/pub/c64/Party/X-01
http://www.xenon.c64.org/

Prologue

The trip

I'm sure you've read many partyreports full of traveling adventures, so I won't bore you too much. Just some facts: I've left Nitra/Slovakia on Thursday – 11:40 AM and arrived in Veldhoek together with MacGyver and Svan in the evening on Friday. The partyplace was damn hard to find. I'm quite suspicious that quite a few sceners might accidentally left the scene being eaten by bears (or cows?) when trying to find the X-partyplace previous years. 

Damn cool partyplace

The X-partyplace simply rocks! It suits the needs of approximately 100–200 visitors. And those 2 table-soccers ;-). Oh yeah?!. Practically non-stop Snack-Bar and a kitchen, showers, clean toilets and what is most important – separated sleeping rooms with multiple „double-deck“ beds. 

I really wonder when this photo was taken, it looks too orderly.
(check the animated gif at the end ;-). (photo by WOW)

It was the first party where I could sleep without being disturbed by party noise, except of the Thomas Koncina's resolute snoring, but you know, he is a legend, so I should be proud of being able to get so close to him. ;-). As far as I remember, it was the first party where I didn't sleep on the floor (or lounge).

Sleeping CreaMD by Widdy

Friday
Or how to get infamous by releasing your „stuff“ on the party.

Every party has it's first visitors, and it seems we were one of them, but at least we knew that we came soon enough ;-). 

The first people I met were of course the organizers, from which I mostly remember CBA, Burglar (Enno), Spectator and WVL. I'm afraid they remember me too. The first organizer we met was Spectator. He was trying to set up arrows pointing to the partyplace – sprayed on the small sized white plates. The problem was that they were hidden very well, so when he asked us if we saw the „pointer“ to the party place on our way there, we had to disappoint him. Still I must send big thanx to Spek for leading us safely to the partyplace, as it was really complicated to get there.

All organizers were wearing the green X-2001-t-shirts. There were plenty of them & I'm afraid I missed some important people. For example I still don't remember which one of them was Oxbow.

The party was beginning

verrrry sloooooowly

which is nothing unusual.

Except of us (Maccie, Svan and me) there already were guys of the Abyss Connection. MRC & TMA and at least one more. Those dudes aren't new into the scene, but according to their own words, they were inactive for a long time. You can remember them from the previous X, where they released an oldschool demo, I must admit, that I didn't know about them until X-2001. They released another demo on this years' X-party – check it for yourself. Thanx for a nice chat dudes, and see you in your next productions.

After a while I was walking around the partyplace and meeting people. I met Glenn Rune Gallefoss, and Glenn Harald Davanger (all those Norway people are called Glenns it seems), both from Shape with whom I've toasted a beer or two. They are really nice people and in reality 6R6 looks much better than on that scarry goth photo on the Shape homepage ;-). I also met Jordi from Spain which is also known as JRC/ex-The Blasters Inc./ex-TRC. All in all it was a nice beginning of the party. 

Jordi (Photo by SCS&TRC)

Later some two quite strange looking tall guys came and set their equipment near Maccie's SX-64. They looked like a violin players, curly hair, stylish jackets. They looked almost like twins. Few seconds later I've learned that they were Bert & Kamp of Raiders. Yes, those Raiders who later won the wild compo with their original production running simultaneously on 2 synchronized c64s – called Dual Head. So maybe they are twins at last?

DualHead (Photograph by Franky/Role)

More visitors

I had to introduced myself to Silverstar as Maccie forgot to do it. I also met a „Snack-Bar girl“ ;-), a girlfriend of one the organizers. Again I was walking around the partyplace and met various people from various groups and soon after improvised dinner I went to sleep as I was quite tired of traveling and beer just made me even more sleepy. 

„The Snackbar Girl“ – Carmen (Photo by Sinister)

Peace

The most scandalous incident of the whole party happened while I was sleeping. Actually I overslept it, even when I was playing the main role ;-). While I was sleeping I had dream that somebody is shouting at me. Something like „stop pissing from the stairs“, and then, „will you clean it?“ Few minutes (?) later I woke up and found myself lying in the bed. Finding myself in bed I forgot about this „dream“ and fell asleep again. The only strange thing was that somebody took a photograph of me lying in the bed. When I woke up I felt quite well. It was the first party (except of the Cult parties) where I slept in bed and it was really refreshing. Cheered up I went to the party place and spotted CBA cleaning up the table near the snack bar. I asked him if some celebrity came while I was sleeping. He looked at me quite surprised so I repeated the question and he answered something like: „Hey I haven't been there, but I've heard that yesterday you were so stoned that you were pissing from the stairs.“ I was quite puzzled and only I could answer was: „But hey, I'm clean and not wet“, so he explained… Later when I was thinking about it, I've realized that getting up from the party bed, going out of room and facing the stairs is in the same place and direction as the toilet in my flat. Quite embarrassing I tell ya. I hope you will agree with me that we should blame it on those 30 hours of traveling and antiseasickness-pills overdose. A few minutes later I came to the organizers and asked them to give me some „towel“ (sic) so I could clean the mess, but It vaporized meanwhile… gross… 

Now you know why I was so calm and looked so down the following two days. I apologize to everyone who was affected directly, or indirectly by this and lets move on with the report.

Saturday & Sunday

More people

I met a few famous graphicians. I've reacquainted with Rayden, whose nick I finally recognized when I've read it on the ID sticked on his shirt ;-). I also met Cyclone and Sebaloz whom I met for the 3rd time, since he visited both previous Forever parties here in SK (by the way, he was wearing the t-shirt which he won at Forever 2001 ;-). 

Sebaloz (the hidden advertising of Forever party ;-) (Photo by Seven)

After the compos I met DeeKay who told me that he liked my and Agemixer's tune. Later on, after the results were announced Deekay nailed it when he told me: „Hey, I didn't know you were a musician.“ [grumble]Oh yeah, it seems I'll be remembered for making c64.sk and nobody will ever recognise that I'm an active c64 musician. [/grumble]

Rayden and Deekay (from back ;-)

Anyway, let's return to the time schedule…

The flaw of the party was that there was no show before, or after the compos. Nothing was happening. No demoshow, no presentations, no alternative compos. The partypeople had to wait until the evening and were left on their own. At least I had a book with myself, and also meeting interesting people helped me to survive. 

In the early morning I met Street Tuff of RSI who played some steppy hardcore music to me, while Chotaire sitting close to us, was composing a party music. Street Tuff also presented a very interesting Futurama animation streamed from his PC to C64. (How about some demo or wild release Street Tuff ?). Speaking of Chotaire: I imagined him quite differently. Maybe because we had a little clash on IRC. He is not that tall and bossy as I imagined him. He is just a cool and charismatic musician. More luck with your composing next time, Chotaire.

Street Tuff, Chotaire and Lax, The head belongs to Danzig (thanx to Ninja for info :)
(Photo by Seven)

IK+ and Retro Replay

Ninja of The Dreams whom I met on last years' Forever brought a party hack of his 3 player version of IK+ which was later used in the IK+ compo. Guess who won?

Ninja(author of IK+ Gold), MacGyver and Svan (in background) playing IK+ Gold
(Photograph by Seven)

Of course the author himself has beaten all opponents, and many of them great warriors! Ahem, I promised Seven of Digital Excess that I'll mention that he had kicked CountZero's ass in one of the semi-finale matches. So I've mentioned it ;-). 

Rambo (Seven) Rambo (Chotaire) & Rambo (CountZero) – Photograph by Sinister

Another shot of IK+ Gold Edition – compo (By Mr.Mouse)

CountZero brought a couple of Retro Replays and Silver Surfers (created by Jens Sch?nfeld) with him and even planned a presentation of latest software developments. He did it only on his machine, so I've missed it, it seems. A pity it wasn't presented on the bigscreen, this piece of hardware is so beautiful (says a biased & happy owner ;-). I didn't have a chance to talk with Groepaz who is responsible for the Retro Surfer communication software, maybe next time. Thanx for support of this piece of hardware dudes and I wish you a lot of energy for further developments. For latest news about Retro Replay check thist page: www.ar.c64.org. Btw. The Dark Judge also bought one RR&SS to make his future c64 development more comfortable and I'm sure he know what he is doing. 

Setting up the stuff before the compos (Photo by WOW)

The Dark Judge of Focus, the man who stirred the calm waters of c64.sk with his Dark Court 3/2001, came to the party with a small onefiler demo production called Timewaster made together with Sander who did the design featuring simplistic but very atmospherical music by Mindflow. All in all a straightforward message and very effective design, that's all what I can say about it. I hope we can expect more productions like this from Focus in the near future.

The Dark Judge and Enno (Burglar)

Speaking of demos, this party showed a lot of outstanding production and I will mention more of them later. Let's speak about another personal experience.

Warriors of Empire & Raiders of the Lost Wastelands

The Belgium scene had a strong presence at X-2001. Namely Einie, VIP, xIII, Sorex and Alien (meanwhile I was told that he is from Germany :), all of Warriors of Wastelands and Franky of Raiders of The Lost Empire (isn't this kind Warriors and Raiders typical for Belgian groups? ;-).The WOW members asked me to give them an interview for their Internal magazine. I usually don't read interviews with unknown sceners like me (and I suppose I'm not alone), so I told them that it's not a good idea to interview me, but they insisted and you can expect an interview with me in future issue of Internal. 

(from left to right) XIII, Einstein, Sorex (in background), CreaMD, Alien
(Photos by WOW)

Those Belgian dudes got some attention when Franky's provocative compo picture „VOETBAL“ got displayed in the graphic compo: A picture of the Belgian flag sticked to the map contained message for Holland soccer fans. Free translation: „We (Belgium) have been nominated for the World Cup!“. As you probably know, Holland and Czech Republic – did not. Belgian dudes were asking for rerun of the piccy after the compo, but when their claims became too annoying, WVL demonstratively scratched the compopic file from the compodisk ;-). Thanx for Belgian beer dudes and congratulations to your national soccer team.

WVL of Xenon (Photo by Widdy)

64ever!!!

This wasn't some sudden ejaculation. It's a new born (?) Israeli group which probably made the biggest impact on my skeptical attitude towards todays production. This group consisting of Lax, VIP & the man behind the coding – Raven. Raven was spending a really hard time on putting the demo together before the deadline. The demo-production is called INSOMNIA and I must dissapoint you: It's still not released yet. 

Insomnia – screenshot, by Franky/Role

64ever Crew – Lax, Raven, VIP – (photo by WOW)

Coder and Artist behind Insomnia (Photo by WOW)

The demo showed effects like tunnels and such standard chunk-mode stuff (Raven corrected me that it's not a chunk mode, but we have to wait untill the release), cleverly combined with more-or-less technically advanced design improvements. The demo itself is designed around a neat story starting with a computing girl being sucked into the virtual reality. It also contains a few really original vector effects and well fitting music. All in all you saved my day, guys. This demo is sure worth waiting, and I hope raven will get it out soon.
 

Silverstar (Pazuzu ;-)(Photograph by Sinister)

Resource finally received a long time deserved international recognition with their Soiled Legacy – winning demo of X-2001 party. Undoubtedly Soiled Legacy shows a great combination of the decent style, code (almost one-man show performed by Oswald) and attitude. The demo contains important messages praising the dedication of today's scene artists and in the end, quite nostalgic – not very readable note about bankruptcy of Commodore company. The first side is full of action while the second one is little bit slower and has more silent parts while loading. No suprise, it is just an 85% version. Still, it is technically the best demo released at X-2001 and no suprise it earned the biggest applause of the all demos shown. Thumbs up, and congratulations to the first place Resource dudes! 

Drop the basics by Fairlight and Damage was the most communicative demo shown at the party. A pity there wasn't the right mood on the place, otherwise the twist part would have filled the dancefloor with a couple of twisting people ;-). The demo featured a really cool soundtrack. The funniest moment of the demo was the „salute to the whole scene“ part. Hollowman, you're speaking from my heart (or is it stomach? ;-). I really look forward to the Forever 2002 c64 demoshow where this demo will for sure be one of the most successful ones ;-). 

Pricegiving ceremony – Hollowman/FLT in the middle (Photo by WOW)

Another remarkable production was The Moral of the day by SounDemoN/Dekadence and Pater Pi/Church64 showing Windows running a vice emulator and ending with … hm, check for yourself. It's great! ;-) 

What to say about the rest of the releases and compos? Also Hitmen released a sort of teaser production Mongo Bong this time. Abyss Connection showed a couple of old styled hardcore coding in their intro collie demo, Lubber/Padua really hit the nail over the head with his „intro remake“ compo entry called Trilight which showed Triad and Fairlight arguing about the quality of their latest crack intros. As far as I remember the cracked games were Max Payne and Black & White. Trilight really had a feeling of good old times when every third word was lamer and every second some four letter insult ;-)). Worth watching. So is HCL's Starion intro remake which on the other hand ruled on the technical side. 

Competitons (Photo by Widdy)

As far as the graphic compo is concerned, a few more-or-less new graphicians showed ther artwork in the competition. I'm not very sure if rather the simplistic Electric's entry deserved a first place as it looked a lot less worked out as previous Electric's masterpieces. It was simple, but undoubtedly it was one of the few original pictures in the competition. Katon showed a technical very sophisticated and nice picture, but more than probably another remake of some original art. Jailbird's pic was very original composition. Sebaloz's picture was just simple multicolor, still one of the better pictures. Nylu's pic seemed like if it was made before his greatest images and found on some old lost work-disk. VIP's image which is also featured in Insomnia is -hm- cute and as far as I've heard it's his original artwork, so all I can say is thumbs up man!

Music compo was little bit too hurried in my opinion. Each tune played only for 2 minutes which is quite cruel IMO. I know I'm biased and subjective because I'm a musician, but still, maybe the music compo could be performed without big screen next time, as it's not necessary to have video projection during the music playback. 

The other party releases were also very interesting. Royal Arte final 100% version was released, thanks to MacGyver who backed up the organizing and persuaded HCL to look at his finished demo once again and make the loader reliable. Now I can say without any doubt that it's one of the top 3 demos released last year. 

Sebaloz wanted to release Katon's collie on X-2001 party, but unfortunately there was some very special bug in the end scroller of the collection, so he had to postpone the release. What is most interesting about it, is that Sebaloz is not only a great graphician, but also a skilled coder. 

Fanta, Raven(behind), GRG, Reyn Ouwehand, and VIP (Photo by WOW)

Vandalism News, X-2001 issue was really great reading. I was reading it on the early Sunday morning and I would like to thank MWS for the great article about the past&present life of the old legendary cracking stars. The featured Wrath Designs intro was also an amazing experience, not to speak about a little bit too talkative, but still interesting dialogue about the scene between two WD guys. I would also like to send big thanks to Jazzcat for positively advertising c64.sk in his magazine and really thanx to all ediors of this magazine for amusing hours of reading. 

Epilogue

A few hours before the compos I met Sander – the man who together with The Dark Judge, is responsible for the concept and the graphical part of the Timewaster. We chatted about the scene and about the ammount of interesting people being at this years X-party. One of his thoughts I remember until now. He said something like – „If a plane crashed to the X-party place, half of the (C64) scene would be dead.“ Sure thing. The last year's X was the greatest C64 event of the year and I hope Xenon and SCSTRC will keep the tradition and continue to organize one of the most successful C64 parties in the next few years. 

All the best in the new year 2002 to you all.

CreaMD

Very special thanx to… 

Thunderblade, MacGyver, their parents Mrs. and Mr. Mundt, and also to Wotnau and his Mother for hospitality. 

CBA & Thomas Koncina (Photo by WOW)

Party place – photos by Widdy

Credits
Reporter: CreaMD/Dmagic
Correctures: MacGyver & Wotnau/Dmagic, (Sander, Tecmo)
Edited by: CreaMD/Dmagic
Photos: various authors – THANK YOU ALL!!!

Seba/Plush and his girlfriend Antje (Photo by Sinister)

Photo Sources
CBA/TRC&SCS: www.scs-trc.net/parties/
DIGITAL EXCESS: www.digitalexcess.de (Great source of photos, really thanx)
Franky/Role: www.cbmgallery.com/x2001/
Sinister/Extacy: dosgames.nl/X/ (Another great source of photos, thanx)
WiDDY/Genesis*Project: www.widdy.de/x01tn1.html
Xenon: xenon.c64.org/ – direct link here.
Mr.Mouse/Xentax
The Dark Judge/Focus
Warriors of Wastelands (Also thanx for the great photos) 

The Official Party page
 http://www.scs-trc.net/x2001