The Atari Scene is most certainly not dead!

A demo round up from since the last time this was reported.

Confession time. It's been a long time since any sort of publication was attempted, diskmag, blog or otherwise. The absence of the Alive diskmag and Low Res writing teams do not mean that the Atari scene in general has been inactive. We are pleased to confirm that the exact opposite is the case. However this bequeathes a new problem to the next poor fool brave enough to attempt some kind of reviewing process for their publication. Upon looking seriously at this for the first time in a long time, we find there is quite a decent body of work, definitely too much to cover in one go. In fact the activity levels would have satisfied two or three regular diskmag issues, which is quite an achievement in these reduced times.

So I'm opting to be reasonably comprehensive and lazy at the same time. We're going to cover the highlights from the time since February 2011, which as any fool knows, was the last Low Res release date. We should be able to cover pretty much most, if not all the demos released since then. So apologies to anyone who got missed. Also I'm not ruling out individual reviews of some very outstanding demos, STreet Art by BlaBla keeps coming to mind here for some reason.

As for the rest, your place in Atari scene history is not overlooked or forgotten, your story is here.

2011

Taking our starting point after the release of Lo-Res 4, this would be the Dead Hackers Sommerhack invitro. This offers the usual DHS quality, big effects on a small screen and ambience in a small but appealing package. This intro features some STE quality effects runnable on the STFM series, with an ace soundtrack from Excellence in Art.

NoExtra released a very fully featured invitro for the AC2011 party in April. A nice blend of old school effects and new school design ran sweetly on a 2MB STE.

YM Rockerz made a welcome reappearance with their latest sound chip music disk, 'Seven', including tunes from many of our favourites including the shy and reclusive Tao.

RNO provided one of the highlights for Outline 2011, a strong entry in the 98ktro category. This was called 'Natrium'. It featured some strong design and advanced texturing that scaled up very nicely on the big screen. It looked pretty good when we got it home too.

'Superstar' 96k was a collaborative effort between Positivity, Sector One and Alive, Whilst not as high-powered as the RNO entry, it had a nice unified design and was a worthy contender at Outline 2011.

The Paradox STE demo for Outline 2011 was called 'Blue Period' as it featured a lot of that particular colour, and the many shades of it that could be displayed. It also had the latest STE Blitter incarnation of the 'Fuji bumblebee flying through deep space' effect made famous by Escape on the Underscore demo on Falcon, many years ago.

We enjoyed a SV2011 oldschool invitro from Aggression and others, including Mystic Bytes and the surprise appearance of a UK demoscener NE7 on the ascii logos in the readme text!

Sommerhack 2011 would be the summer vacation for the Atari demo scene. This brought a veritable hatful of entries, from No Monkey by Tomchi, Maximum VBL by Hylst and Sector One, but head and shoulders above the rest was the excellent and erm, summery 'Summer Delights' demo by the Dead Hackers Society. Lots of full screen effects for the STE series abounded. One ardent fan, 505, was moved to describe it thus "What the heck! A Falcon demo on the STE!"

The long inert Atari Spiceboys came back to an unexpected life with a riff or possibly a rip of of the Nyan cat meme. This was called 'Kisse Katten' and started off with some promising 'straight' effects that may have been left over from the DHS Summer Delights demo. Of course, things changed and went rapidly south at the end!

At the Sunrise party, taking place in darkest Luton, a small intro was offered called 'Shorty' by Torment.

Out from nowhere. Checkpoint kept us entertained in a harsh fashion with their Morphonic Lab 10 invitro. This was a full demo in size, with lots of fast moving and chunky effects and top of the class coding with a vicious sound chip soundtrack. It's cool, but just don't go looking for anything soft and relaxing there!

If the Spice Boys hadn't provided sufficient warning beforehand. It was definitely too late to switch off your screens as the Cerebral Vortex version of Nyan Cat arrived for the Atari STE. You could customise the colours, the speed and movement, if you really wanted to.

gwEm releases a 128 byte music demo - Described as an impossible music demo which ran on any Atari ST and could go on for hours without repeating, due to some random procedural thing. It will grow annoying some time before that though!

Ah, the SillyVenture 2011, what superlatives can we deploy to describe this, as all the good ones have been exhausted already. SV2K11, the greatest, potato, of an Atari party in the last decade? A veritable glut of demo releases for the ST were unleashed on to a far from apathetic public. In fact, I might be tempted to say a bit more about these releases separately. However, here they are now.

Checkpoint presented the 'Job Rotation' and '4z' 4ktro's.

We enjoyed the 'Base Case' Demo by Live! which was also presented as the Sommerhack 2012 invite.

One of the ones which was expected before the party, 'Antiques' from Dune, Sector One and friends.

"Who put the A1200 in my ST?!" - otherwise known as 'STreet Art' from Blabla.

Perhaps less technically strong that some of the others, but with good thematic design. 'Electroilluminations' by the Mystic Bytes

And of course, there was this in-party production for the Atari STE 'SV2011' by Paradox.

And did I mention there was a shedload of killer Atari VCS demos, and more demos and games for the Atari XL series too? This was the party that had something for everyone, even if Falcon 030 entries were a little bit light on the ground.

However, the higher end Atari machines were not completely forgotten as the CT60 demo 'We Reached Stars' was released by Orion at the Alchimie party in France, on the same weekend as the Sillyventure party! This demo was a welcome debut on that platform for Orion and resembled some of the early efforts by Evolution. Not that this is said as a bad thing at all. Hopefully more will follow in due course.

Another escapee from the Alchimie party was a neat STE demo called 'Infinite Lives of the Blitter' by NoExtra, that acted as a well-coded and put together tribute to how demo's were made in 1993.

To draw a festive line under what had turned out to be an eventful year, a small Xmas themed intro was released by Torment.

2012

This year arrived, speaking gently. A NoExtra compilation of some old but unknown material opened accounts, but we remained quiet until it was nearly Easter, when Spring arrived and hibernating coders came back to some sort of life.

Something unheard of first, an Atari ST invitro for a major Easter coding party unlikely to feature a big Atari presence. a Revision 2012 invite by Checkpoint, Dekadence and Titan. This was smallish but perfectly formed with high quality effects.

After the delayed release of the 'Antiques' demo (See last year and SillyVenture), the next news came from Tomchi with an 8k intro called 'Pakaka'. His first venture into assembly coding and hopefully not his last.

The news for this part of 2012 tended to congregate around new games, with semi-commercial ventures from Cooper of Paradize offering a pre-registration with a raffle prize for a Falcon 030 with his game 'Catch me if you can'. Meanwhile, Orion offered the very ambitious CD-ROM based graphical adventure for the Falcon, which had more than a little resemblance to the old classic 'Myst' called 'Elansar'.

After a slow start, Sommerhack 2012 came along with high expectations bundled in with it. It did not disappoint!

Attempting to wring more drops out of advanced combinations of Atari STE and state of the art bulk storage, was their big demo 'Drone' - Yet another Falcon 030 demo hiding away in an STE. Dead Hackers have really got this one sewn up!

In a totally different, poignant change of mood production, Xia of Excellence in Art comes up with the goods in a tribute to his deceased dad. All the best and be strong fella!

We are also treated to a follow up to the stunning 'STreetArt' from last year, as 'Japan Beauties and Troubles' continued the high colour mayhem started by BlaBla. We keenly wait to see what they have got planned next!

And cheekily rounding things off, the not at all serious party report! Is the bird really the word?

A long time absent fan of the Atari from olden Avena days makes a welcome return, as Mr Coke is back! he's got a 4ktro called 'Dasda' which was released at the Nordlicht demo party in July.

The raiding of other people's parties by rogue Atari productions continues, as Rave Network Overscan, who are more and more of an established Atari crew, release a restrained but very well put together demo called 'Protein' which gets third place at the old school competition of the Assembly party.

As the damp summer grinds on, excitement about attractions later in the year starts to rise. Paradox are first up with an invitro, which also serves as a tribute to the recently deceased Jack Tramiel. The 'Jacktro' fulfils all these remits admirably, with some optimal use of higher resolution grayscale graphics in a classy slideshow. Not to mention the excellent hybrid sound chip and sampled tune.

Sundown 2012 brings up September, which this author had the pleasure of attending, and Torment delight us with another small intro.

Swiftly moving into October, with Outline 2012. This party is perilously exposed by a late arrival this year. We do get some fitting and enjoyable 'party outside' action with the bonfires, not to mention the best curry on the European mainland. There are even a couple of Atari entries, starting with 'Yet another 4ktro' from Mr Coke. This condenses down to one impressive effect, and the biggest in-party joke involving a pre-calculation bar, ever.

Our senses are assaulted, in nice ways, by the 'Morphonic Lab 11 invite' from Checkpoint. Which actually gives a lot of good value and effects for an invitro, more of a demo really.

Moving forward a little bit. some more invitro action from Extream with a Falcon 030 Sillyventure 2012 invitation with parts of it in an old BBS style, ascii text and all. I also ought to mention a rather wild Atari VCS invitro by Tjoppen, which coaxes plasma out of the old beast that it did not know it had!

Finally, to bring this round-up to a close, anticipating the outburst of new releases from the Sillyventure 2012 party, a small music disk for the Falcon called 'Gwime', by gwen was released. Well, only 'small' for the executable part, but some nice big soundtracks in full on digital format.

So that is the end of the rounding up process for the time since February 2011. There may well be more pleasant surprises with at least a few of the things mentioned here reviewed separately, or else discussed in more detail.

Thanks go to Dead Hackers Society for having all this info in one place, and the Video Database to allow me to refresh my memories on some things quickly and easily without breaking off from writing this.

CiH - For 'Mag' - November 2012.

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