април 14, 2008
Sredinom marta smo se skupili i posetili Forever 9, demoscene party u Trencin-u (Slovačka) koji je prvenstveno orijentisan prema osmobitnim računarima (C64, Atari, Spectrum). Sledeći članak je pisan na engleskom (posebno se izvinjavam što nije na srpskom ali trenutno nemam vremena za prevod), za novi broj turskog časopisa Plazma.Forever 9 Party Report
During the beginning of this year, I’ve started wondering about two of the upcomming parties I would be able to visit in the first part of 2008. One was Breakpoint, which was my main objective (for obvious reasons), and the other was Forever 9, a party that seemed simple to reach and easy on my pocket. The two events were only separated by a week, so for a while I was hesitating if I should make the Slovakian trip at all, but after a second thought with knowing that the usual crazy Hungarian party-bunch will be going, I decided to label it as a “must-be-there”.
My father in law got a kind of a Hungarian national award for his long lasting acting career and since he was official at the ceremony on Friday afternoon, I asked him if he could take me to Budapest with him, where I’d meet with Posion/Singular. As it later turned out, that was a quite huge mistake :)
First of all, we started our journey suspiciously late. He decided to speed up a bit and Murphy’s law struck on us for the first time: he got stopped by the police. And instead of being polite and get the fuck out there as soon as possible, he started to argue and shout on the policemen, so we got stuck there for about 20 minutes. We were already late and of course Murphy’s law got applied again: there was a really long line of cars at the border. My girlfriend’s father decided to cut the line by passing to the diplomats’ area. He had an invitation signed by the president of Hungary, so after some explanations and putting the president’s sign infront of the nose of the border patrol, surprisingly we actually managed to pass the border, and even quite fastly.
Till Budapest, we had a pleasant ride, but just when we approached the city and got into the dense traffic, we noticed some kind of a strange smell. First we thought it’s coming from the outside but when people around us started to yell we’ve realised that the damn car is leaking some strange stuff out of his body. And there we got Murphy’s law for the third time. And now I was really damn too late.
At that point, I decided to jump out from the car, have a short goodbye and run towards the nearest station for public transport of any given kind. Had about an hour till the departure of my train, and I was still on the edge of the city, so I ran like cheetah in the middle of the utmost traffic at noon with a huge baggage on my side, and tried my best to not to be hit by a vehicle. But after all, I was very proud of myself as I managed to reach the train station and even buy some beer from a quite confused waiter in a chinese restaurant just before the train went off.
Poison and I had a short trip to the border of Hungary and Slovakia where we had to meet with the other Singular guys who came by car from the western part of the country: Cargo, Soci and Leon. After packing up even more beer at a gas station and filling the car with fuel, the five of us finally headed directly to Trencin.Poison and Leon tasting the sweet beer they just bought and posing for the camera
at a gas station near the Slovakian border
After numerous pissing-pauses which made our restless driver, Cargo, a bit annoyed, we reached the party place around 6PM. By the way, Trencin is a small but very pleasant city on the north of Slovakia. It’s clean and cozy, the girls are beautiful and the residents are really nice and helpful eventhought it’s really hard to find a person who knows to speak English. So we were mostly limited to communicate with the locals with sign-language or to try my trick of speaking Serbian in a hope that the Slovakians will understand at least a few words thanks to the similarity of the slavic languages. The actual location was a culture club about half an hour from the city center, quite the usual sized one would most likely expect from a building of such type. Everyone loved the socreal motives around the place, the party area was large, there was a nice lobby, and the sceners would also hang out infront of the building. Mind you, there was a death metal concert on Friday and a punk concert on Saturday just beside the party place so we could even actively study the different rituals of the local extreme underground. :) The only negative point was the lack of showers. I more or less managed to replace the bath with a couple of wet handkerchiefs but I really missed at least one shower after the long trip…
The party place was already crowded when we arrived so we greeted the usual C64 gang who were present at the party. After unpacking our stuff we decided to continue with the tradition of the annual Friday night pub meeting as soon as possible, drink ourselves to near-dead stage and experience the real 8bit party feeling. :) Unfortunately, this time only Poison managed to complete the mission with a huge help of a local sweet but strong drink mixed with a couple of fine beers.The Friday-night drinking posse: Jailbird, Cargo, Sad and Poison (minus Leon, who’s holding the camera)
Later that night, we met Comankh/Agony Design and his girlfriend who tried to find a place for us to grab some food but we managed to get lost in the end. Somehow, Cargo and I went to a separate way from the others and the two of us wandered around the city till we found something to eat and drink. Luckily we got back to the partyplace a couple of hours later and decided to close the day and get to sleep...
On Saturday, Cargo, Leon and I decided to have a small sightseeing tour in the city before the compos, so we left the partyplace and headed towards the beautiful Trencin Castle which was quite near to the event's location. As we didn't wanted to wait for our tour guide, we started to wander around the castle and have some mature fun on our own - like trying to hit people with chestnuts or to observe chicks in miniskirts. The weather was superb so we took our time to get a long look on everything interesting we met with. On our way back, we went trough the downtown to check it out during daylight and also stopped at a shopping mall to fill up our decreasing beer supply, and here goes another pro point to Slovakia for the cheap&fine beer. When we got back, people at the partyplace were slowly preparing for the compos, so we tried to kill the time with chatting, eating or drinking.Trencin castle
Then the compos started and I was wondering if we'll see anything extraordinary this year. Unfortunately none of the platforms brought outstanding stuffs, but the competition was quite nice all in all and there were decent productions. The only demo for C64 was Padua's Shorture, and with its calm flow and nice routines, it was probably the best production amongst all the releases at Forever. Unfortunately I can't remember too much from the Speccy and Atari works, but at least two demos woke up my interest for a Youtube video called "Jozin z Bazin", which is a funny music video from the '70s, and it seems very popular in eastern countries - for a reason, I must add. Other than that, the winning Spectrum demo was also quite exciting, with the typical style from Skrju. The music and the graphics compos were also fine, introducing a solid number of contestants (which actually surprised me - considering that the latest C64 related compos didn't showed us too much to deal with). Saehn's picture was beautiful, and I was really satisfied with my second place for a quickly hacked multicolor piece. Also worth to mention an old C64 scener from Agony Design, Comankh, who announced his comeback with a new picture - so hopefully we'll see more graphics from him in the future. The music competition was a bit weaker by numbers, but Factor6's and A-Man's really great tunes saved the day, at least for me. Oh before I forget, since the party’s main theme were zombies and afterlife, it was a nice touch from Wotnau to start the competition dressed up as a necromantic (or a wizard). Although I couldn’t understand a single word of what he was mumbling :) Also an interesting touch at the party was a huge pack of free Gameboy and PS1 accessories (e.g. junk) that nobody really wanted – but kudos for those who offered them to the visitors.The partyplace
So as the compo ended, we continued to have fun up to the point we run out of beer so I suggested Leon to visit a nearby pub. Leon's initial intention about getting some coffee was put off as seemingly none of the slovakian pubs are selling cofee, only alcoholic drinks (which is quite sympathetic after all). So we stuck to the only choice we had and bought even more beverage. The first strange thing that happened to us that night was a couple of really drunk girls who tried to woke up the interest of the pub's male audience by making up with each other. Sadly they left soon after, the pub was also closing, and we were just starting to get drunk. So the only logical move seemed to us to find another place to continue our fun. After a bit of walk we have noticed a crowd infront of a passage and immediately determined that it must be a place for us. And a couple of beers later we were standing beside the dancefloor when oddly enough, suspicious number od guys started to accumulate just beside us. I raised my eyebrows but I thought, what the heck, it must be a local tradition or something. Yet I almost spitted out my drink when that huge bunch of dudes decided to spice up their dance moves with stroking, fonding and licking each other. Now that was the point when the shocking realisation reached to my beerwashed brain that we’re kinda in a wrong place, at a wrong time.
As we got back to the place, we realised that the party is almost over, so we woke up the guys and started packing. After several hours of travelling, I was sitting at home again, really tired, but full of fresh feelings and very nice memories from a well spent weekend with my friends. Forever 9 was real fun. Not just for the well organised meeting of 8bit enthusiasts, but for all the beautiful and interesting experiences which accompanied the event. Be there next year, and you definitely won’t regret it!
