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.
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