Atariscene Awards 2011-2012

(Prequel note before the full horror kicks off - November 2012 - This is my THIRD attempt at getting something along this vein written! This version was based largely on material written in 2011, intended for publication in early 2012. Well this just did not happen for a number of reasons. Well I'm taking matters into my own hands and kicking this one out finally, here, now!)

Dedicated to those people and things that made the Atariscene day more colourful and interesting this year just gone by, one way or another...

I'm starting this as the autumn leaves are falling, it isn't strictly the end of the year yet, but I think that we've pretty much got a good idea of how this one has turned out, and who are going to be the deserving recipients of the Mag Atari Scene awards. The little gold statues called 'Felices'(looking like the regular Oscars, but with a wine-stained almost-there-but-not-quite sort of expression) are waiting. The candidates are sitting nervously in their best suits and posh frocks, polishing up their acceptance speeches.

Actually I'm not too sure about some of the ones in the posh frocks, better if they kept that sort of thing to themselves and their very close friends? This is going to be a memorable evening, or maybe just a very long night? This is not a popular vote by the way, just my subjective opinions, so you might well feel differently about some of my decisions, but that is tough! It's my article, and no-one else is writing it!

And the first award is for;

The party of the year..

We have such a huge choice. I was going to be all predictable and opt for Outline or some other such event. However, events in the wider world suggest I think again. In this light, the Tottenham/Birmingham/ other random places in the UK riots in August 2011 are clamouring for attention and throwing a brick through my monitor screen, to grab and loot the electronic components from within.

But they won't get it. The little arseholes have kept the Daily Mail in a lifetime supply of happy apoplectic fits and outbursts by their pointless actions. They've even given arse-faced American commentators false reasons to be smug and that is sufficient to condemn them forever.

I'm therefore giving the award to the Sillyventure 2011 party, which really redefined the art of the possible for Atari ST demos, when everyone had thought that the time for such feats had been and gone for good!

Acceptance speech (by Grey) - "Thanks for voting for me guys! Not that the free beer at the party had anything to do with your decision, right?"

Culinary party of the year..

The standards are getting ever higher these days. The VIP meal at Alternative Party 2010 is very fondly recalled by me, but is sadly out of the time frame for this award. Being a greedy guts, the academy committee has carefully considered nominations from the Polish catering crew at Sillyventure 2011, and the Outline curry crew Nuey and Honkey earlier this year. It was a close call, but the Outline curry, in staving off hungry regrets from disappointing pizza's, performed an invaluable service that clinched the award for them. Please note, this is a category which will be repeated next year, so anyone involved in food preparation is invited back to try their hardest!

Acceptance speech (by Honkey) - "Curry does not get any tougher, than this!"

Best demo of the year..

We've had a satisfyingly tough fight between Dead Hackers and a bunch of revived French scene guys this time round. The selection committee have been asked to consider an entire range of emotions in demos from the dark but powerful 'Drone' by DHS, to the colourful and wistfully reflective 'Antiques' by Dune and Sector One. However, we've been overcome by the sheer exuberant colourshock delights of 'STreetArt', as witnessed through a late night tiredness and party viewing filter. BlaBla are the clear winners!

Acceptance speech (by Cyg) - "This year's demo will be in greyscales I'm afraid. My eyes have gone all bandy with the colour bling setting on my monitor being cranked up to eleven!"

Best game of the year..

After a slack period, things have started to pick up nicely with more than a few new things of interest for the Atari scene being released. The nominees included 'Sweety Thingies' From Paradize and Sector One, 'Catch me if you Can' from Cooper of Paradize, but the winner for this one is Orion, with his hugely ambitious 'Myst on a Falcon 030' game called "Elsanar'!

Acceptance Speech (by Orion) - "Got a Firebee? Well I've got a game for you, here!" (Waves around extra copies of the CD-ROM.)

Best utility of the year..

My initial notes referred to a choice between "The browser thing or the paint package thing." I'm referring of course to the 'Netsurf' web browser port by Mono, and the paint package 'GrafX' coming from Saulot. No clear winner here, as both products have different aims and are equally worthy of respect.

Acceptance speech (by Jookie) - "That's all very well, but wait until you see my Facebook client for the Atari ST!" (cries of "Oi, wait until the 2013 awards!" ensue.)

Best music product of the year..

Paulo Simoes, a long-time Atari veteran, released a new digitracker called 'Hextracker'. This adds another member to the family of players and composers for the ST series. Apart from the usual features, it can push the number of channels played back to sixteen on a standard STFM and Paulo has been working very hard to get the ultimate best compatibility.

Acceptance speech - Paulo was unable to attend in person, so he sent a sample disk with the original ST-01 samples on it in his place. Attempts to construct an acceptance speech with this material died away in a barrage of honking noises and crackly squiggles.

Pizza late delivery of the year..

The Supervidel is finally coming? The board design has been finalised and production is being organised with the slowest manufacturer in the world. I'm being a bit harsh on the Nature Brothers, as I'm sure they will get it made eventually, but at the same time, the years are flying past!

Revival of the year..

I constantly say, or more accurately, mumble to myself, "Never say never again!" This piece of self-advice is often applicable to the Atari scene. Sometimes other people overhear me and take notice. This year, we have had the welcome return of Mr Coke back to demo coding form. The winner here though is Doug Little, who appears to have sprung out of a cupboard coding with three hands simultaneously for new versions of Photochrome and other stuff for the STE, the third hand being grafted on from some experimental surgery in the late nineties, no doubt. Doug, we salute your return! (With just the one hand, if you're that curious..)

Best freebie of the year (personal)..

In the course of his work, Felice comes across many items of surplus hardware and goes into 'Felice of the dump' mode. In the course of this generosity, I've had the Dell Laptop that I'm currently writing on, and more recently, a 17 inch LCD monitor which turned out to be good enough to upgrade to my main Mini Mac display. I recall that the Outline organising team ended up with a couple of these as well.

A good trend to most carefully watch with interest..

There's a certain amount of revival and interest in the Atari for porting or improving some pre-existing games, or even games which have been developed for other systems and have not ever been seen on Atari. In that light, we're looking forward to an outcome for the STE specific version of 'Pacmania', mooted by Zamuel, various ST game to Jaguar ports by GroovyBee, R-Type DX for the STE by Bod of Stax, and even various Sharp X68000 games being ported to the Falcon and STE by Anima!

No clear winner yet, watch this space!

Super dad of the last half-decade..

A five way fight between No of Escape, Damo of Reservoir Gods, Sh3 of Reboot, Nerve the fearless Norwegian and newcomer, Mic of Dune. Tears, red faces and torn up 'Baby on Board' rear window stickers ensue. Legs are slapped by their spouses and bedtimes without any tea first follows...

The quietly understated heroes of the year.

The whole damn Atariscene, every last person in it! Quietly plodding along, doing their stuff, even remembering to release something from time to time. Reader, we salute you!

Supervillain of the half century gets his comeuppance special award..

The best cock-up of the year 2011 for me, inducing a proper belly-laugh reaction, was THE EVIL PRESS-BARON'S DEATHSTAR EXPLODING! With the sudden appearance of the tabloid press hacking scandal, we're still working on new instruments and methods to measure how much more muddier Rupert Murdoch's name is going to get. Early casualties include a not really sadly missed 'News of the World' screwspaper, going down by the bows and fiercely firing off distress flares made of vindictive and bitter self-justification right to the bitter end.

The "Engines canna stand it captain!" special award..

BANG! and the nukes at Fukushima are gone! In that light, concern and hard questions about the overall safety of the nuclear industry are understandable. I'm still inclined to think that the German leadership's reaction has more than a touch of knee-jerkiness about it though. The kind of natural disaster that could smash open their reactors would have to be of such a scale, that the planet's crust would be terminally buggered! At which point we would all stop caring. Still, the Frenchies will build some more of theirs for the extra electricity that Germany needs I'm sure.

(Or they could just dig up more coal? Yeah that'll sort it..)

It would be nice to see sometime award..

We're going to launch into a big list if we're not too careful, so I need to keep some sort of control here. Supervidel, SUPERVIDEL!! Some lovely Ephidrena high end Falcon demos including the one that was released on Amiga previously, 'Chips Don't Lie'. I've seen that one under controlled conditions on the CT60 already, but not in the wild yet. Oh yes, some general release for the Firebee sometime would be good for those folks too.

The word or phrase that best describes 2011 and 2012..

"To boldly go, where no one has gone before, to find a planet that can lend us some money!"

And that is all from the Mag Atari Scene Awards for this year, see you again sometime. Don't all rush for the toilets at once, there's only space for a few at a time. (Doh, might as well talk to myself, the floor's going to be slippery as heck with all that poo and wee scattered around!)

CiH - for Mag. Various in 2009, 2011, and 2012.

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