When Finnish group Dekadence asks people to party with them in their home country, it’s very hard to ignore their call for long. Therefore, it was once again time to pack our bags, releases, and sunny disposition and head to Scandinavia.
Frequent visitors of an Atari centric party happening during the summer time in Sweden will find similarities between the two locations. Indeed, main 68k inside organisers Britelite and Ricky Martin have confessed that they chose the location because it resembled Sommarhack a rather lot.
Practically, this means a small party, close to a lake, outside large cities, more laid back then bigger parties. And of course: less mosquitos than its Swedish counterpart, and more sauna!
As the name of the party suggests, all 68000 platforms are welcome there. Inevitably the majority of people would be Amiga focused, but in reality everyone was more than welcome, and everyone was respectful of all platforms. Seen at the party: Commodore Amigas of all shapes and sizes (obviously), Atari ST/Es and a Falcon, Sinclair QL, two Sharp X68000 models (which, anecdotally, represent 66% of the total machines in Finland), and one or two MiSTer setups that pretty much emulate all platforms.
Present at the party was CBM Retro, which is practically a one-man-show shop, offering many new gadgets and add-ons for these ancient machines. Also acted as a sponsor to the party, offering prizes for the competition winners. The build quality of the wares is quite good and the person running the show is doing it for the good of the community. So, definitely something to keep in mind.
Not to be outdone by the giants from the Amiga scene roaming the party, there was a decent turnout of people from the ST scene. DHS, SMFX (although playing for the Sinclair QL team once again), Sector One, Overlanders (featuring one of the oldest ST sceners who recently came back to action, Doclands), Extream, Aggression, and a few more.
As for the party itself, there was a time table and it was kept without delays. But in practice, people were mostly there to chat, relax, and (why not) even try to be creative. Zerkman demonstrated a new and exciting feature for the zeST project (hopefully will be stable and released soon), Evil was working on a very hush hush (and on the nose) production that unfotrunately was not ready before the competition deadline was reached, and so on.
Many Finns (and not only) made use of the Sauna and hot tub facilities that the party offered, and it was not an uncommon sight to see someone wearing a towel roaming around the area.
As per usual, there was a small area that was designated for barbecue, and people made use of it for quite a bit, sacrificing meat produce (and not only) to the Norse gods in exchange for fair weather and smooth compos, and probably for their entry for the compos to be ready and working in time.
(Narrator: The gods seem to have been pleased, judging from how the party turned out)
Saturday evening, as per tradition, is the time for the compos. As it turned out, everything went just right: there weren’t a huge amount of entries to necessitate a lengthy screening time, there were almost no technical issues and the few that happened were addressed swiftly and with good spirit from the organisers, the quality of the entries was very good, the party system and online voiting was really simple and worked flawlessly. Put it simply: everyone, including the crew, had a good time. Not long after the competitions finished, the results were announced and the winners were awarded with various prizes and a T-shirt.
One of the competitions involved gaming, and here the organisers had a surprise for the visitors. It was both a competition and announcement for a new game for the Atari ST. Yoomp!, the Atari 800 game by Taquart is coming to our 16/32 systems. So people had both the privilege to try it out, and beta test it - a win for everyone involved.
As usual, after the awards ceremony a demo party is practically over, so people either visited the party place on Sunday morning just to say their goodbyes and perhaps chill out a bit more, or people who had to have an early start just shook hands and hugged people on late Saturday.
Yet another demo party then? Of course. There was nothing extravagant or out of the ordinary happening during 68k inside, and that appeared to have been the intention: good people getting together for a short while and having fun. All the jokes, memes, stories, anecdotes, etc will remain in the memory of the participants for quite a while. Most of them will fade away in time, as it happens, but it’s guaranteed that people who attended will keep a warm and positive memory, which should be enough to leave them yearning for more.
Here’s hoping that the Finns will continue organising parties for us to attend (or contribute). Even if they won’t be called “68k inside” and something else takes its place, it will surely be something to consider.