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                      THE DEATH OF THE ATARI COMPACT SCENE
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Hui, moondog takes a look into  the coffee pot  again and today  I want to write
some lines about a theme  that I already had some issues back as well, the Atari
ST compact disk scene.

Maybe  the most "new schoolers" don't  know what I'm writing or  mourning about,
but as the  people that  are a bit  longer in ST'ing should  know, the  Atari ST
compact makers scene was a big part of the demo scene at all.

Short  after the establishment  of the ST demo  scene several people  started to
collect smaller  demos and intros on their "compact menues", as  several illegal
compact makers did with  games and tools. This happened  due the fact  that some
newbies wanted to  contribute with  something to the  growing  demo scene. There
were several  starts known, some did demos  and compacts (like  The Overlanders,
The Black Cats and others) right from  the beginning  while others  started with
compacts only, just like Ripped Off, Persistence Of Vision, Animal Mine and lots
of others. Several other bands started on the illegal side, did cracks, later on
crack menues and changed lately to the compact and finally real demo scene, just
as ACF and others.

Yeps, many big bands did "legal" comopacts, means packed intros, demos, PD games
and tools, modules  and so on. Even my old band .tnb. started to  do compacts at
first, but it did the same as many  others, it stopped doing  them when the time
was right to do "real" demo stuff.

Other bands did compacts untill they vanished from the screen...

Yes, the compact makers scene was a big part of the Atari ST scene from the late
eighties  untill the  early nineties. The most  people that  remember those days
have bound their memories mainly onto Animal Mine's Great Stuff Compiles and the
menues by Ripped Off and Persistence Of Vision. With  the fall of the old school
ST scene  in the years 1993/1994 also nearly the whole  compact makers scene was
dying out. The bands  vanished from  the screen and with them a  lot of talented
people...

But in some way the compact scene wasn't lost at all, since in the middle of the
nineties besides several survivors, like the chaps of STAX and even POV, who did
some menues from time to time, a new bunch of compact makers, mainly from the UK
rises again. The most known team to you  is maybe EFFECT, that produced a lot of
nice styled demo compacts untill 1996.

But a lot of crappy people showed up as well, guys like Impact UK, Adrenalin UK,
Serenade, Golden Dawn, The Energetic and  others kicked  butt with  ripped intro
codes (mainly done by Mac Sys Data of POV). They filled disx with damn old stuff
and pictures, senseless educational tools and programms and so on. They released
a bit wave of those  dumb disx and sometimes it wasn't possible to check the big
output of crap anymore.

Before I collected every compact I could get my hands on, had even rarities done
by some guys from Denmark (UTOS), but since  the scene was overflooded  by those
senseless releases I was bored to death. Those people matched it to  destroy the
image of the old compact scene, who sometimes  even invented  new effex in their
intros and mainly packed stuff on their disx you hardly could get your hands on.

Out of a sudden the release flood of those dull compacts  ended up and since you
know about the connections of the "uk scene" you know why. One guy lost his main
interest and suddenly the "new school compact makers" died out over night.

This isn't understandable, esp. because in the  following years, esp. since 1996
and 1997 the ST scene  slowly came back to life and  there was  enough stuff you
could fill disx with. The only  survivors were  STAX, POV and TYPHOON, the whole
rest was completely vanished. Not even Module compacts were done anymore.

Later on, also the STAX label disappeared from the screen and  since TYPHOON, or
better STRIDER decided to stop their  ST Collections, only POV are left, but now
releasing maybe one disk per year...

I'm still hunting for several disx, esp. from the late old school compact scene,
such as disx done by The Hemoroids and so on, but today I miss something.

Over many years the compact makers were a big part of the ST demo scene and so I
miss something  nowadays. I don't want to mourn around  here, all I wanted to do
with this article  is to remind you to a part of our  beloved ST demo scene that
vanished silently from the screen and not many people even noticed this.

I know that the resources of the nowadays so called ST scene are very limited in
doing bigger projects and I also understand that they  focuse on the point to do
some little demos and trackmos instead of wasting time while compiling some demo
menues. I also  know that the output of other  stuff shrinked nearly to zero and
there isn't much you could pack on such  disx, but I would be  happy to see some
disx from time to time, disx that contain fresh stuff packed together, so that I
know they're on that disk and I must not search my whole HD for them.

Whats left to say? I want to greet the chaps of Animal Mine, who were the rulers
of the  compact disx  scene in my  eyes, because they  always stuffed their disx
with some  rare stuffs and created a lot of kewl intros, that often  have beaten
intros  by other  bands  by light  years (do you  remember their  gouraud shaded
vector stuff for example) in design and originality (often new musix and grafix)

So... if you have any suggestions and views about that topic... let me know!

moondog@atari.org

.tSCc.                                                                   moondog
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