The first Alternative Party
The story
Oldschool computer enthusiasts around their machines
The first Alternative Party was held at Nuorisokeskus Palatsi, Turku, on 10-12 April 1998, on the Easter weekend. The event gathered about 130 enthusiasts from Finland, Sweden and other countries — even Canada.
Rappio by Bandwagon, their first MSX demo.
The story of Alternative Party began when Kristoffer Lawson (also known as Setok/Aggression, Aggression being a well-known Finnish Atari demo group) visited the Assembly demoparty in 1995. The mainstream-style rules of Assembly did not allow other platforms than PC, Amiga and C64 to take part in the competitions — and his computer was an Atari Falcon. Frustrated of this, an idea about a party where these restrictions would not exist was born.
A view of the party hall
Before this party, Setok had organised Aggressive Party II, a party held in high regard by Atari sceners. Because the first Alternative Party was to be held in Turku (more than 200 km from Helsinki), local sceners were recruited to help.
The event and competitions
At Alternative Party, the demo competition was not for modern PC's or AGA Amigas. By contrast, all other platforms were allowed. A total of sixteen entries took part in the demo competition — platforms varied from Atari Falcon to MSX Turbo R. The award for the most obscure computer present was given to a weird thing called MC6800 Evaluation Kit II, owned by LoneWolf/WC.
Viznut won the first ever Alt demo competition with his outstanding demo Bouncing Ball II, running on the Vic-20.
The party's graphics competition was limited to ASCII characters and VT100 codes — the winning entry was based on Aggression's classic demo Braindamage. The music competition was Damage's triumph, positions 1, 2 and 4 went to Damage members.
The highly anticipated demo competition was won by Viznut/OCSA with his demo Bouncing Ball II (named after an example program in the Vic-20 user's manual) for unexpanded Vic-20. Both Viznut and Bandwagon (whose first MSX demo ended up fourth) went later on to score victories at Assembly after it opened its oldskool competitions to other platforms than C64.
A retrogaming competition was also held, featuring Frogger on Atari 2600 and the classic Pong on a Conic TV Sports system.
A local newspaper, Turun Sanomat, made a story about us appearing in the issue of 11 April 1998.
