the early morning
                              turns into early day
                              a sunset comes they
                                take the colors
                                      away
                                 where you are
                               alternate reality

                              a bit like home yet
                                unmistakably new
                              a morning rain then
                               evening stars come
                                    and view
                                  what is your
                               alternate reality

                              you walk around each
                              corner hoping to see
                               a way to get back
                                 home a way to
                                   break free
                                  and to leave
                               alternate reality
                                  this is your
                               alternate reality



             Gary Gilbertson "Alternate Reality: The City (Intro)"

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           Undercover magascene party report from MekkaSymposium2002
           ---------------------------------------------------------

Friday 28th of march

After  an  odyssey of  seven hours  through the  german highwaysystem we finally
reached  the partyplace  which was  quite  easy to  find. The  area was  already
crowded  with  sceners and their  cars. The first  german word I associated with
those  pictures was "Volksfest" :). Some guys gathered on the grass and built up
their tents.

When  we entered the entrance DMA SC/SECTOR ONE immediatly greeted us. Whoaaaah!
The main hall was already very crowded. People from PC, Amiga and C64 scene were
dominating the room. Only a few atarians made it to the event:

Deez/Mind Design
Scy/.tSCc.
Dynacore/.tSCc.
MC Laser/.tSCc.
Gizmo/.tSCc.
Ray/.tSCc.
Remo/.tSCc.
Baggio/Wildfire
Zounds/Wildfire
Havoc/Fun
Flash/.tnb.
Zerkman/Sector One
Dma Sc/Sector One
InStream/Nature
Hencox/Nature
Bull/Absence.de
Mr. Coke/Absence.de
The Innovator/Absence.de
CiH/Alive Team
Felice/Alive Team
Juri/Newline
Nerve/Creators^Ephidrena
Frequent/Ephidrena
Radi/Interiors
Nytrik/Hydroxid^Cocoon
Fried/Avena
Jet/Avena
Thyroxin/Avena

Well  the presence of  the atari-scene was very very spare and my first thoughts
were  that  no competition will  take place because there  will be no entries at
all.  At least for the .tSCc. falcon demo "BEAMS" I was sure that we wouldn't be
able to finish it for the party.

The opening  ceremony was  really funny. The main  organizers were on the stage,
all dressed like medival knights and a king.
Infront of them  was standing Steeler, also  one of  the mainorganizers. Steeler
was told to unite the demoscene army to defend the scene!
"Defender of the scene!" was the topic of the party.

The  noise-level inside  was really high and  after a while it really sucked. If
you  always  attended small  and friendly  and quiet parties  this means a total
culture shock to you.

After a  while  I found  Gizmo/Icebird^farbrausch^.tSCc. and  got my  organizer-
shirt...  organizer of what? The non-happening Atari-competitions? We were still
talking for quite a while and then I went sleeping.



Saturday, 29th of march

A  new day and  new hopes... the guys from Wildfire, Nature and Mind Design were
working  on  a Falcon  96k demo  for the party....  I also  spoke with Nerve and
Frequent  from Ephidrena  for the first time  and they told me that they already
finished  a  falcon demo for  the compo! Wow, unbelievable  to me we finally got
2 entries at least. That's more than I expected yesterday.

This  day the first compos where happening. There were quite impressive stuff to
see  in  the C64, PC  and Amiga  4k-tros. Heavy code!  Besides the 4k compos the
music  and graphics  competitions where held. The graphics compo for example had
40 entries and you completely lost the overview. It was really too much.

In  the evening  the  Amiga 64k  intro  competition started.  There  was a  real
stunning  64k by Potion called "Planet Potion" which really rocked! Try to watch
this,  it's  really worthwhile. After  that the wild  compo took place with some
very  cool and  also some  very boooooring  entries... There  was also  an entry
containing   many   pictures  and  sequences   from  september  the  11th  2001.
This entry  got disqualified after showing... but why did they show it at all?

The  C64  demo compo didn't got  too many cool  entries this time. The only ones
worth  to  mention was  a demo  called "Evolution" by  Warriors of the Wasteland
and a cool conversion of the comic "La Linea" by Breeze.



Sunday, the 30th of march

The day started off with the fast intro compo followed by the 15sec music compo.
After  that the  PC 64k compo took  place. Well what else to say that farbrausch
entered  again  some  very  massive  releases  called  "Poem  to  a  horse"  and
"ein.schlag"... and they made first and second place with them. Later on the 32k
game  compo  was held with some  very nice entries... unfortunatly not for atari
systems.

The  organizers  realised that they  had some problems  with some Amiga demos to
record  and  the Atari demo  compo was moved before  the Amiga compo. There were
only  two entries. "Atari-Behn" by Ephidrena, which is originally an Amiga-crew,
was  coded by  Nerve/Creators^Ephidrena. The second demo was a coproduction from
all  swedish sceners  on there...  the ehm  ehm Spiceboys.  Their 96k  is called
"Bundestag".

The Amiga demo compo was next and the first entry was ehm... not what I expected
from  the  Amiga scene  today... but  the following  stuff absolutely rocked the
house.  "Little  Nell" by TBL,  "Tribute" by  Scarab and "Demoskope" by Creative
Minds  were some  of  the  fattest Amiga  demos  I ever  saw.  If  you have  the
possibility to see those don't hesitate!



Monday, the 1st of april

Last day and I don't have much to report about it coz after the Amiga demos were
shown  we left the  partyplace at around 01:30 to drive home. After 5,5 hours we
reached  our homebase. Well there were about 50(!) PC demos entered in the compo
and  they  showed about 40  and we didn't  want to watch those  ones in a row :)
If  you wanna  see a  good one  check the  demo from  Federation against  nature
(Absence&Oxyron)  PC  demo "KNIGHTS".  It's just  a preview  but they greet some
Atari crews in the end ;)

After  all I  can't say that I liked it  very much. It was not too bad but there
were  too  many drunken dudes  which was not  funny at all.  It was too loud and
sticky and you could sleep that good in the sleeping tent.

I  suppose there  won't  be  another join-up  next  year  because the  attending
atarians wasn't very happy about the whole atmosphere at this mass-event. I also
have  heard voices inside the scene that don't want to dissapear the atari-scene
easter party tradition. So what's coming next?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                             http://tscc.atari.org