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         MS2K Live Party Report
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            by Darkhawk/IRIS

 The time has yet again come for having
our beloved  Easter holidays , and yet
again, we say goodbye to our family 
who desperately hoped that THIS year 
we would stay at home and spend some 
time with them, but no, of course we 
don't want to spend time with our family 
when we can come to the annual
 MekkaSymposium  party, held from Friday
'till Monday during the Easter.

So, we started out from Denmark early
friday morning, in good cheers, and
with a box of beer at hand. Maybe we
were a bit stuffed in the car, but
 Ransom ,  Talpa ,  Adonis  and myself of
 IRIS  +  Trez / S๘hesten  had a good time
getting down to  Fallingbostel , the
usual partyplace for this party. Ahh
well, maybe  Ransom  didn't have as 
much fun as us others, not wanting to 
booze at all. Tsk, tsk, he's the 
driver he says.. So what? Ahrm, 
anyway, at the German border, we were 
asked where we were going, since we 
probably looked quite suspect, 
laughing and boozing, shouting at the 
policemen, heh. So, the response of 
the policeman was  "Ihr seid ja 
beknackt!" . Look it up in your German 
dictionary yourself.. 

 Ok, enough of this pre-partyreport
report, it's always the most boring
part anyhow, right? So, we arrived at
the usual place, in the usual town,
with the usual facilities (what? Am I
trying to shorten down this report by
not writing about the important 
things? Guess so, heh..), and parked 
in the usual place. Everything was 
business as usual. And that is a very 
good thing here at the MS of course. 
In my TP report I wrote that it was
business as usual too, but that was 
certainly meant to be understood in a 
negative way! Here, it means that 
while everything is like always, it is 
still as great as ever. 

Ok then, a quick overview. The hall is
able to house 1000 people with
computers they say, but somehow, it
seems a bit less crowded this year 
than last year. Still, there are 
people everywhere, and no empty spaces 
left, so I guess we're quite close to 
the 1000 people. Toilets are those 
 German  ones, where your shit is 
lying there until you flush it down. 
An.. interesting.. experience every 
time, hrmm. Otherwise, toilet
facilities are ok, and there's soap to 
be had too, wow. As for the food, it 
is business as usual too, meaning 
expensive sandwiches, ok priced soda 
and a "German" grill outside with 
wurst and pommes. Hrmm, not exactly 
good, but ok. And out in the town of 
Fallingbostel, there is enough 
culinary variety to b had anyway. 
There are showers too here, so you can 
get a shower everyday, which you might 
need, since those computerparties tend 
to attract sweat, dust and grime. 
Another usual aspect. Sound and 
bigscreen are good as ever, and the 
organizers are not afraid to turn up 
the volume either, which is a good 
thing. I mean, if you don't like loud 
sound, stay at home, hehe.. Yeah yeah, 
coders who have to work must just
manage it, heh. 

The Amiga 4k compo is coming up
shortly, I am typing this on the third
day, meaning sunday (happy Easter,
btw!), and we still have many major
compo's about to come up, so it is
fortunate that I have gotten enough
sleep for the rest of the party now. A
word about the compo's so far. They
have split up the music compo into
three, progressive (techno style), 
alternative (demostyle) and MP3 (not
a bad compo infact, the mp3 by
Wayfinder was great. Ok, that was the
only one I heard, heh). Meaning that 
multichannel and 4channel are mixed 
together (I guess?). The progressive 
musiccompo was so-so, looking more 
forward to the alternative one. Ohh 
yeah, and the seperate C64 music 
compo was cool listening too. There 
were a lot of entries in that one (31, 
first time with pre-selection for a 
C64 music compo?), and indeed, there
have been a lot of contributions in
virtually all compo's. The Amiga 64k
competition was one of the best
introcompos I've ever seen, meaning
that it was enjoyable and contained a
lot of quality. Potion  will 
probably win with their cool intro, 
but I think the  Contraz  intro 
has a nice design and some really 
eye-pleasing routines. There were a 
lot of intros, and just now, the 
Amiga4k  intro compo is over, 
having featured 7 (or was that 8?) ok
intros. Guess the Ephidrena  one will
win, nice one too. Loaderror must be
coding like a maniac when he's not
boozing, hehe. 

And yes, boozing.. This aspect is also
the same as usual, meaning a lot of
dudes gathering outside in the good
weather, boozing and chatting about all
kinds of things. You might think they
could have done that on their own lawn
or something, but the German beer is
cheaper here.. Ehh... Anyway, that's a
cozy aspect with the MS too, you can
booze and chat to friends in a relaxed
atmosphere. And their alcohol policy 
is quite relaxed to say the least. You 
are even allowed to bring it into the 
hall, if you only bring one opened 
beer in at a time, hrmm. Anyway, 
Azzaro/Whelpz  is too far out in my 
opinion, when he says that being 
outside boozing with others is the 
real party, and everything else is 
irrelevant. I wouldn't go that far.

 Rather, it is one more aspect of a
really cool party. Yeah, there are 
some  Polish  people here, and even 
more from  Hungary , but otherwise most 
are  Germans  or  Danes , we had 2 
buses coming down here. The buses from 
Finland, Norway and Hungary were all 
cancelled due to too few signing up 
for them sadly, but still, even some 
Norwegians and Finns have found their 
way down here, which is cool! Next 
year I hope to see even more 
foreigners, then maybe we can get 
those Germans to provide some better
food than bratwurst, hehe.. 

There have also been the usual
surprisecompos, involving unpleasant
bodily tasks aswell as fetching stuff
from a German  Flohmarkt . Well, 
not as cool compos as last year 
though. Might be I've missed some by 
staying outside boozing. I missed some 
of the old ZX Spectrum demos, but saw 
some. Gee, nice to have old demoshows, 
although I would have liked a really 
long A500 demoshow. Well, maybe later, 
although the schedule is pretty much 
booked up today. Ahh well, we can get 
some food during the PC compo's, hehe. 
Anyway, so far the party has run its 
planned course, with no difficulties 
or delays for the organizers. They 
know how to organize this party after 
all the years, and they seem to get 
more experienced from arranging it, 
unless some other party organizers I 
could mention (gee, I guess I just 
did, indirectly, heh). 

 Oki, not much more to write right 
now. I could write a lot of course, 
but I think I've gotten all the more 
or less interesting info off my chest 
now. Maybe I will return later to 
finish this article.

 It is later now, and I have a bit 
more to tell. I forgot to mention the 
usual sleepingtent, located behind the 
hall. It is quite adequate for the 
task, and there you can sleep quietly 
and somewhat warm. I don't hope you're
afraid of small crawling things
though.. As usual, there have been
some live koncerts on the stage, but
not as good or computerrelevant as
usual, apart from the Sidstation
concert, which was nothing special to
my ears. Also, there apparently was
some weird surprise happening
yesterday, featuring a female stripper
on stage. I was out boozing at the
time, so I didn't get to see it, but
really.. Is it that relevant to a
party? Then again, I guess some
sexually underfed teenagers were
somewhat stimulated by it, heh.
Reminds me of older days, like the  TCP
party  or  SIH , they featured 
strippers too. Still, how about hiring 
a prostitute for the  first price  in 
some compo? I mean, if that's the way 
you wanna go, better do it right, 
hehe. Naah, I miss the usual 
scene/Amiga related quizcompos, and 
the old game playing compos. Infact, 
where are all the random prices 
usually being thrown out at all kinds 
of weird compo's? MS is known for 
that, but maybe they don't have 
anymore old  C64 manuals  and  C16 
tapes  to give away anymore. Would be 
sad, I hope the closing  Lionfeed 
event will be held too, that is one of
the cooler things at this partyseries,
and the first time I experienced it,
it was a real rush, heh.
Mhh,  PSX democompo  coming up, time 
to play the part of the reporter and 
go watch it.

 Well, not that astounding afterall, 
but ok watching, especially the first 
oldskool one. However, I have been out 
talking with Steeler, one of the 
mainorganizers, and together with  Dr. 
Dreyer  we managed to get some info out 
of him too, inbetween smoking pot, 
that the dear organizer provided (yes, 
I'm sorry, but now I'm biased, 
everything about  MS  is cool, heh). 
Especially I wanted to know how the 
funding for the party was handled, so 
as to know if they had planned ahead, 
for other MS parties in the future. 
However, the organizing is handled in 
a very different way from the TP
series, they don't get much profit 
after each MS (have you ever heard 
that statement before? I think it's 
true in this case though), so that 
they can't really be sure that they 
have enough money for the next MS. 
Basically they have to start from 
scratch after each time. So far there 
has been no problems in doing this 
luckily. The actual organizing, where 
they get in touch with eachother and 
start the work, is only 4 weeks before 
the actual party starts. The party 
organizers are by now, very 
experienced, and function well 
together, which reflects on the 
overall atmosphere.  

 Ok, the  32k  game competition has just 
been held, and it was a blast really! 
Mhh, cool seeing such small, creative 
games. And the  Turrican 2 remix game 
was sooo great.. It looks like  MS  will 
have the best releases of any party in 
newer history, but the best things are 
yet to come, namely the  Amiga  and  C64 
democompos. Before then, there's a 
really strange surprise compo, 
featured 250DM in the first prize.. 
Sausage water crashing.. YUCK! 
Luckily I knew what was coming, and so 
didn't participate, thank god! 

 Some more general thoughts and infos 
put down here.. First off, I hear from 
Steeler that there are around  1100 
guests  here, a bit more than usual, 
but still, it doesn't seem that 
crowded.. Maybe people have become 
better at moderating their private 
space. Or maybe some people have lost 
some weight, haha. Ahemm, anyway, the 
Amiga demo competition is over now, 
and hrmm, I must say, I had hoped for 
a bit better overall quality here. Not 
that they were generally bad at all, 
but when compared to the amount of 
entries and quality of other Amiga 
competitions, like the 64k compo, I 
had expected better. Many demos were a 
bit short, sadly that was true for 
both the Floppy demo and the Haujobb 
demo (dentro). Still, some interesting 
(and funny) entries, although I guess 
the Loonies demo deserves to win, in
spite of it mostly containing a (seen 
before) 3D engine without special
gimmicks (although it is very
accurate and in 1x1) and runs 
exclusively on 060. I think it is the 
most complete package of all the demos 
released here (with the exception of 
DarkAge's dentro ofcourse, heh). Still 
get the productions and see for 
yourself. Too much 3D only in the 
major demos and too little 
creativity/2D is what I think. 

Enough provocative statements for now, 
it actually took me a long time to 
diplomatically word the last few 
lines, haha.. I guess this about 
concludes the report, since we have to 
compile the mag now. Too bad I can't 
write about the C64 demos, but 
ofcourse, if AEG made something, he 
is almost sure to win, hehe. 

So, next time, don't just read a 
boring party report by a boring 
writer, but visit the MS party, the 
best party series we have ever had! 
That should be enough of a closing 
statement :)