Home | E-mail
After Eight Party
Mad Butscher has a gaming overdose From the 9th until the 11th of February the After Eight Party (AEP) took place in Kellenbach, Germany. Friday at 8 o'clock Markus Römer (R.I.K./Kaisersoft) prepared the local sports club for the AEP. In other words, he put all the beer cans in the fridge then waited about an hour for me to arrive. R.I.K. asked me to get him a hamburger from Burger King, but I forgot, so the hunger had to be displaced by drinking a beer. The first to come was Kaiser Dee Dee, a friend of R.I.K. who plays together with him in a punk-rock band called "Die Kaiser" (The Emperors). Kaiser Dee Dee is a fan of Megablast on the XL/XE and played a round of it against R.I.K. It seems that he liked our meeting and lent us his digital camera for the event. Then Matthias Alles (Charon/SDT) arrived. He immediately started to build up some STs and a Falcon. I also built up my stuff, an Atari 800 and a Jaguar so we were busy until Rouven Gehm (Mr XY/SWAT) came in. I thought an original Atari 800 would be a good realtime article computer, but I found out that due to not using it, the keyboard seemed to be damaged. The TV I used also had problems with the NTSC signal of the machine, and only displayed a black and white screen. But we are all flexible, so we used it for playing Asteroids with four players. Therefore we didn't need the keyboard, but the four joystick ports of the 800. Because it was late in the evening, first of all, I plugged the module in the wrong side (into the left slot) and was astounded that it didn't work. Until then, we wrote the realtime article on a sheet of paper, so I had to type a while, as we finally built up an 800XL as the realtime article computer. This time Mr XY got his ST Link cable with him, so we were able to play Lotus Esprit II on two STs with four players at the same time. I hadn't played Lotus Esprit II for a while, but I was not bad. Maybe I was a good opponent, especially because R.I.K. and Mr XY didn't understand that every racing game has brakes. Besides Lotus, we also played Speedball I and II on the ST. Next time we must have a competition in that game. We got more and more tired, and at about 3 o'clock only Mr XY and I were awake. We played Atari Tennis on the XL/XE. I was lucky and won in three sets. That was the revenge for the lost match at the STNICCC party. Then we also slept. Unfortunately I was so stupid to sleep in front of the entrance door, so I froze more then I slept. I had to hear that sleeping in front of the entrance door is stupid for the rest of the day. Now it was Saturday, and after we woke up, we first tried the VCS games we wanted to play later in a tournament. Warlords and Steeplechase are games you can play with four players at the same time because they are controlled with paddles. Warlords is more or less Breakout for four players. Every player has a castle made of stones, and has to protect it against the opponents. Steeplechase is a horse racing game. You have to jump at the right moment, when your horse is near a fence. After that, Charon showed the 3D engine made by tSCc for the Falcon. He wants to code with that engine a Whip! module together with No/Escape. Next the first part of the RAF (Regionale Abbuc Gruppe Frankfurt) (Abbuc regionalgroup Frankfurt) Thomas Grasel (Artax) and Harry Reminder. Artax has relatives near Kellenbach, so he is trained to navigate through these remote hills and was 1.5 hours earlier than the other RAF car. They built up another 8-bit system and played Rally Speedway and Schreckenstein. Because I practised a little bit on Rally Speedway at the last party I thought I could have a chance against the master of Rally Speedway, Artax - but I didn't. Artax selected the highest acceleration and ice roads, so I was more often in the woods than on the road. Even Mr XY had no chance against Artax. But it was a lot of fun. As I said, 1.5 hours after Artax and Harry, the other RAFs (Carsten Strotmann and Marc Mortara) arrived. Now we had enough people to start the gaming competitions. We played Decathlon (XE/XL), Warlords (VCS), Steeplechase (VCS) and Lotus Esprit II (ST). In the Warlords competition I achieved the glorious last place, but in Steeplechase I gained the second place. The first group who played Decathlon had some problems because they often missed the start of a race, so the results weren't that impressive. But once again we could see the RAF effect. As it was at the 8-bit (Burger) Paletten Party (8BPP) as Harry suddenly said, "Give me the stick" and then did the longest jump, this time Marc had some problems with the Competition Pro joystick, but after I gave him some tips, he suddenly made the longest jump of all of us. The highlight of the Decathlon competition was the 400m and the 1,500m race. Here you need to be in good physical condition, because you will do the wildest movements. For about four minutes you have to pull left and right and left and right... These races are the reason that even today Decathon is a well-known game. This time we didn't damage our joysticks. During the competitions Carsten Schwindt arrived, another friend of R.I.K. He had given a Commodore C-16 joystick to R.I.K. a few days ago. Because we couldn't plug it in, so far we spent no time on it. But then we had the idea to go outside for a joystick-throwing contest in the football field. Well the stick was made by Commodore, so we weren't surprised that after three throws, it was broken. But flexible as we are, we bound the two pieces together and continued throwing. Artax and Carsten Strotmann were unbeatable. The following counting to get the final result using the RAF method was too mathematical for me, so I can't say anything about it. Next Andreas Margenheimer (Charlie Chaplin/SWAT) appeared. He had a box full of original Polish 8-bit games and sold them to us. Soon, the box was half empty. Polish 8-bit games are cult games because they have a professional cover and the graphics look like C-64 games. There were about 300-400 different Polish games released in the beginning of the '90s, and they are collector items now. After he put away his box, Charlie Chaplin played Taipan (XE/XL) together with Marc, and Archon (XE/XL) together with Carsten Schwindt while Harry and Artax were playing Fever Pitch Soccer and Raiden on the Jaguar. We also assembled our traditional Checkered Flag Lynx ring. At the 8BPP we had three Lynxes, this thime we had four. You can link together eight Lynxes in this game, so we looked forward to the next party. R.I.K. and Mr XY discovered the flair of Dragster (VCS), they played this game nearly the whole evening, until their record was 6'11 seconds. Even Nicole (Miss Stress/Foundation Two) and Renate (Kaisersoft) appeared to have a look what were are doing. So we had twice as many women at the party than on normal conventions! Next we started an Atari Tennis tournament, but it ended before the final because Artax who suprisingly beat Mr XY in the semi-final had to leave. I can't repeat it too often, Atari Tennis is a cool game. I hope that a lot of people who will be at the next gaming meeting will practise hard, so we will have a cool tournament next time. Later when all the others were gone, Mr XY, R.I.K. and I played Club Drive on the Jaguar. Club Drive is one of the funniest games on the Jaguar and to honor it, we founded the Club Drive Club (CDC). If you forget the aim of the game, you can have such a fun with freestyle driving through the scenery. You can drive up a wall, make a 360 then flip over while you are landing. 42 rulez. It was Sunday already and we finished playing and went to sleep. This time I slept in front of the heater, so I didn't freeze. After a few hours, I was awake, so I woke up the rest (they weren't so happy about it). Mr XY left and R.I.K. and I were cleaning the room. It was very painful for us to destroy the gloriously (drunkenly) built seven-storey beer can pyramid. Following the 8BPP the AEP was the second gaming party we organised, and not the last one for sure. While the 8BPP was held privately at Mr XY's flat, this time we needed a location, so we had to spend some money on it unlike the 8 BPP. There we were six people, this time we were about 12 and a couple of visitors. There will be space enough for more people next time. Once again, you could see that the old games are still full of fun. There are a lot of realistic racing simulations on the market for example, but Rally Speedway and Dragster are as much fun as them, even more.
Results
Decathlon 1. Mad Butscher 2. Charon 3. Harry 4. Mr XY 5. Artax 6. R.I.K. 7. Marc 8. Carsten Strotmann | Points 9983 Points 8989 Points 8537 Points 8487 Points 8247 Points 6185 Points 6084 Points 4835 Points
Warlords Qualification: 1. Artax 2. Mr XY 3. Carsten Strotmann 4. Harry 1. Charon 2. R.I.K. 3. Marc 4. Mad Butscher | Final: 1. Mr XY 2. Charon 3. R.I.K. 4. Artax 5. Harry 6. Marc 7. Carsten Strotmann 8. Mad Butscher
Steeple Chase Qualification: 1. Mad Butscher 2. Marc 3. R.I.K. 4. Charon 1. Artax 2. Mr XY 3. Harry 4. Carsten Strotmann | Final: 1. Mr XY 2. Mad Butscher 3. Artax 4. Marc 5. R.I.K. 6. Charon 7. Harry 8. Carsten Strotmann
Photos by Artax and available at www.communities.msn.de/abbuc MyAtari magazine - Feature #2, April 2001
| Contents Features Reviews Tutorials Regulars Adverts
[ Top of page ]
Copyright © 2001 MyAtari