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E-JagFest Reports
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E-JagFest was really great!
Lars came to me on Saturday, so we could prepare some stuff.
On sunday, I waked up at six o'clock, packed a few things and waited for
Lars. When he came, I loaded my stereo into his mum's car and we drived to
the room. When we loaded everything out of the car, we began setting up
all the stuff. (Then you realize how much stuff you have!) I started with
my stereo so we could at least come into the right mood (D2k soundtrack,
and Bad Religion)
At 10 o'clock, my father came with Thomas who he drove from the railway
station to the room. Soon after, two others came in, and we all set up our
stuff. Then, we noticed a really cool car coming, with a big Atari fuji on
it! (Awesome, I want that too!) Then Richard Turner and Matthias Domin
came, and it was really nice to see these experienced programmers! Also
Peter and his friend came, along with Peter's mum, bringing some really
nice cheese cookies (?)
Rouven Gehm came, bringing ALL Jag games!! I, and the others were able to
see a lot of awesome games!
Then, the room's owner suggested to install the projection screen, so we
could connect the Jag to it and play BattleSphere on the big screen. To be
fair, I really didn't understand the game's interface, thanks to the
confusing radars (no manual) It looked great though.
Lars and I were so drawn in by all this that we almost forgot the game
competition and by the time we remembered, it was too late already.
At 6 o'clock, some people began to leave, and when everybody had left, we
began deinstalling our stuff.
I would like to thank everybody who came!
-DvD
Wow! The Jagfest was great. It was amazing to see all those cool people
together. I had a great time and the atmosphere was superb. It was nice to
see people you never seen before or knew just from the net. I have to say
that it was the coolest experience since I own a Jag. Thanks to all of you.
And finally I could get my hands on Battlesphere and play it at least for
a little while. WOW!WOW!WOW!
Hey you guys at Scatologic did a great job. I WANT THIS GAME!:-)
A friend of mine couldnct stop playing it. Everyone around him had packed
their stuff to leave because it was getting late but he was glued to the
screen. He couldnct let his hands of the Joypad. I'm sure I would have
ended like this if he hadn't insisted to play after I played it for a
little time. Thanks...now I have only one question... :-)
Who is going to give me his Battlesphere....
Ohhh so many? I see, I still have to wait a little.
So good night, Icm going to sleep with a smile on my Face.
-Peter
I forgot one thing wich perhaps is one of the most important facts. I
wanted to thank the DvD and Starcat for organising this great Jagfest. I
know that everybody apreciated it. Thanks guys, see you next time
-Peter
eJagFest (AKA Euro JagFest) was a great success!
We won the title "Biggest JagFest 2000" no doubt!!
Matthias Domin and I arrived soon after the event started, I think we were
the first foreign people to arrive, and at first we were disappointed to
find that only 5 people were already there. As we started to setup our
machines, new people kept on arriving, so many that tables, power sockets,
and monitors were in short supply, yes it was rocking!
Rock music was playing the background, with Jaguar games in action all
around the room. There was a bar with soft drinks to buy (and some
Groelsch!!) but no food to speak of. (We all fasted for Jag!) Lars had
written an "eJagFest Demo" with a nice parallax display, and built-in Jag
CD player...
Soon after we arrived, a ceiling mounted projecter was brought into action
(good job I thought to put my extra long SCART - A/V cables) and so lots of
games were played on the 15' projection screen! As if that wasn't good
enough, a few minutes later, the stereo sound from my A/V lead was being
pumped through the wall mounted speakers shaking the room!
I brought 2 Battlesphere cartridges, and 2 Aircars, other people brought 2
Dooms, so networked games were going on virtually all day. Battlesphere was
played both networked and single-player, although people found it hard to
"get into it" at first, I tried to explain it, and demo it, and I also put
up the "Yakkity Yak VLM" cheat on the projector but we didn't put up the
real VLM as comparison.
Other games demo'd were the Songbird games, with Protector, SkyHammer, and
Soccer Kid in gameplay. I think probably every Jaguar and Jaguar CD game
was played, and it was a great opportunity to see how many Jaguar fans
there are, having so much fun!
There were some contests running, and I hear that there were some prizes,
posters, and wot not, but unfortunately I was too busy to get involved. I
heard plenty of "Ultra Vortek" and Primal Rage in action, along with a
constant background of Tempest and NBA Jam, no doubt some Team-Tap games
as well.
Publicity for eJagFest was very limited; and the location was good, but for
a one-day event still a long way to travel. People travelled from all
around Germany, and Holland, and there were guys from Belgium, maybe other
countries. (I'm English, but living in Germany and I added an English view!)
Sorry if I've forgotten your nationality here too!
Even driving at 120+ M/H (cool German autobahns!) we had a long drive, and
the journey back was also very tiring, as rain was so heavy we kept
expecting to see "Noah's Ark" floating across the motorway (No, four hours
of high-speed night driving in the pouring rain is never the most fun end
to a day).
Several BJL Jaguars were in use, and Matthias and I fielded questions all
day about Jaguar development from interested people, including a group of
Falcon game programmers who were interested in bringing a bit of quality
gaming from Falcon to Jaguar perhaps. Some of us also had Alpines, so Alpine
demos were also demonstrated, but BJL was the devkit of choice!
(Jugs fatally flawed due to upload speed and lack of Battlesphere carts at
the present time in Europe!!!)
Nearly everybody had a Lynx with them, and Matthias Domin was demonstrating
the new Songbird Lynx racer, in both single player and networked play. I
was too busy talking to people and showing demos to get to play much else,
Lynx or Jaguar, except Protector.
I saw all the BJL demos running at some point, and people were very
interested to know about some of the "announced" games which have not been
released. I had to point out that these are mainly just intro demos, and
very few real games are available today. (e.g. Arkanna, Assassin, and stuff
from BadCoder). Also Gorf, Jagmania, Native, and some prototypes. (I wished
we'd had a small demo of Gorf-Pluz too!) Only Songbird/Scott Walters have
some of the games which were not released, can you help us next year?
People were really pleased to find that the BJL has several "underground"
games built-in, and we hope that next year more demos will be released.
A European team of programmers had been hoping to release a new game for
the show, but other factors meant that this will have to be a follow-up
event.
Matthias was demonstrating TOS running on the Jag using the "Jaguar Engine"
card, but the IDE LS-120 drive was playing up after bumps on the journey,
but it raised a lot of interest, especially among the Falcon owners who
liked the idea of developing directly on the Jaguar in 'C', with keyboard
and mouse and hard disk. BiTmAsTeR be praised I say!
There was no selling/buying done at the show, no dealer tables, but there
were people involved with the Jaguar market one way or another, and one guy
(forget his name) was talking about Nuon Extivas which should be in Europe
early next year. (Yeah!) There was a lot of interest, but apparently now
Samsung say they are completely SOLD-OUT of them, so delivery will be a
long-time, even in America!!
At the end of the day, (once several people had left) we got a group
photograph done, using the self-timer on my camera, and we would all have
been in the picture had I not blotted Lars out trying to avoid blotting
out several other guys! (I had to dash from the camera to get in shot.)
I gave a disk of photos to Lars (Starcat) so do expect to see them on the
eJagFest site soon.
DVD should know total visitors, but I suspect it will be lower than the
real number, because we saw people we never got to talk to, coming and
going all day, but it was certainly over 20.
I had a great time, and tiring as it was, I'd do the drive again, as talking
to so many possible new developers was good, only the future will say if
any of them end up doing good stuff on Jaguar! It certainly made me feel
less like the only Jag owner in Europe, playing games, and the number of
younger Jaguar players bodes well for the future!
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