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 INTERVIEW with:                                                   Liesen/Omega
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It has been  very quiet around the  pioneers of our time in  the last few years.
Some of them mysteriously disappeared but some other  ones are seen from time to
time on the net. Today  my interview partner is  LIESEN from the famous  swedish
veteran group O M E G A.


UCM: Hello Liesen.
     How are you?

L:   I'm fine, thank  you. Nice  beeing  called  a veteran (makes me  fell three
     times my age).


UCM: First tell  us a little  bit of your computer  history. When did  you start
     computing/beeing interested in the demoscene?

L:   Most of my  childhood was about  computers. When  I was  ten or  eleven, my
     father bought me a C64, I was enormous  excited about  it, I only thought I
     could get him to buy me a Vic20.
     The man who  sold it to us was an old sailor who was about to go away for a
     very long time. He told me to not just play games on the computer. I should
     use it to write my own program. The sailor made sense, so when I got home I
     picked up the manual and started reading about Commodore Basic.
     Down the road  I picked up assembler and other  languages, the C64 became a
     520 ST and I started reading "Atari ST Internals".
     In the search  of knowledge I met friends from all over the country, two of
     us started  a demo group  we and  we called it "Legend". I made a  demo and
     went to  a copy-party called the New Years party 1989, I showed  my demo to
     the arrangers (The NoCrew) and  they directed  me to  put up my computer in
     the VIP room. There  I meet the Omega members (which all come from the same
     region as me), soon I was a member and the fun had just begun.

UCM: What are you doing in your real life nowadays?

L:   For  many  years  I  run  my  own  company,  totally  devoted  to  software
     engineering. Today we are  four people running it together, but we all have
     our own  specialities, mine  is as  you all  probably  can  guess, software
     development. It has  to be noted that the kind of software that  we made in
     Omega, and  the one I  make today has  almost nothing in common. Today it's
     all about security, stability and functionality.
     I guess most demos are not.

UCM: As far  as I remember GROTESQUE was the  last demo  that OMEGA has released
     back in 1993. What has happened to the group after that time?

L:   Red and I were  developing games, we had a  contract and  everything looked
     just  fine. We were  aiming to  beat  the  living  shit out  of the  Bitmap
     Brothers and their Xenon II, Megablast. We  had both  taken a year out from
     studies, but  we fell  out of  schedule  and  the game  was cancelled, as I
     wanted to continue with my studies. The game was brutal! But  probably lost
     forever as I no longer can find the discs.


UCM: Do you still have contact to the other  OMEGA-members? What  are they doing
     nowadays?

L:   Not on  a regular basis. The last I heard  of them (maybe  a year ago) most
     were working  on game  development. They run a  company together  with some
     members from SYNC and Electra.


UCM: Is there a possibility to see a new OMEGA demo on Atari someday?

L:   I wish. Would be fun, but me for one would be glad I  had enough spare time
     to even dust of my old Atari.



UCM: Name 5 demos that simply blew your mind away when you first saw them:

L:   The B.I.G. Demo
     Whattaheck Demo
     The cuddly Demos
     Electra Demo
     Syntax Terror Demo



UCM: Are you guys going to attend STNICCC 2000?

L:   Sorry  missed it. Was  supposed  to  go scuba  diving in  Thailand  with my
     girlfriend. But I missed that too.



UCM: What are your future plans, if there are any?

L:   I'll probably keep working  with exactly  what I do. Most  days of the year
     I'm a happy programmer. All the other days I  stay in bed (as I'm the owner
     of the company).
     A good plan is to work less, spend more time with  girlfriend, travel more,
     more sports and to put myself more often in danger.



UCM: Brainstorming: Just  write  down what  comes  to your  mind  when  you read
     following words.

A.tari               - Fun machine
B.O.S.S.             - Perfume?
C.arebears           - Nice friends. Got more spotlight than they deserved.
D.iskmags            - Underground news.
E.lectra             - Love these guys. Really skilled and sharp minded.
F.lexichron          - Sound like some kind of toothpaste.
G.enesis INC.        - The creation of worlds?
H.aq                 - A Omega member
I.ce                 - Good with Coke.
J.aguar              - A fast car. Not at all as good a Ferrari.
K.ruz                - The sound of bones braking.
L.ost Boys           - Nice movie. Nice demogroup.
M.Demos              - Maxwell Demo(n)s.
N.eXT                - An OS that died.
O.verlanders         - French guys. Some great stuff. Some less.
P.halanx             - A demo group union which I once was a member of (Legend).
Q.uedex              - Sounds cool.
R.eplicants          - Bladerunner pops up. The Replicats supplied us with a lot
                       of games.
S.wedish scene       - A great scene. Most of us were good friends.
T.he Bladerunners    - A great movie. The natrual born enemies to The Replicats.
U.nion               - I like unions better that the opposite.
V.ector              - Hum.. wasn't that another Swedish group. A Phalanx.
                       Remember that their coder was a really nice person.
W.hattaheck          - A great demo. I  made some  screens in  it. Including the
                       crazy typewritter menu.
X.xx International   - Don't quite remember. Could have been a really good demo?
Y.ak                 - Some kind of animal
Z.uul                - Voodoo magic.


UCM: Thanx. Any last words:

L:   I'd just like to send a big HI to all the Atari users  I ever met or talked
     to. I don't know  much about the  scene now days, but  in the early 90's we
     sure had  a lot of fun, and we all did our best  to inspired each others to
     "punish the machine".


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 MC Laser/The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation^iCEBiRD     [ mc_laser@atari.org ]

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                             http://tscc.atari.org