MJJ PARTY 2 - The Report
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MJJ Prod was a famous ST demo crew during the early 90's. They have produced
high-quality demos - just remember the Anomaly Megademo for example. Since last
year, and thanks to the success of ST emulators on PC, FelX wanted to wake up
MJJ Prod one more time. He has organized the MJJ Party 2 at his home, in Gigean
(near Montpellier, in the south of the France). This party took place from
August 16th to 18th, 2002.
So, who was there? A lot of MJJ Prod members, although some of them weren't
here, such as Bigfoot, Blinis and Niko. 7 members participated to the party:
- C-Rem: a new member. He loves painting 16 colour gfx.
- FelX: the big boss, big fan of ST soundchips.
- Micou: a 68K coder. It seems he was in Vmax before.
- The Squale: he was just here on saturday evening.
- Tooseb: a 68K coder. He likes composing musics too.
- Wilfried: a very talented gfx-man.
- Zorro2: another new member. He is a GFA coder and he came with his wife.
Of course, there was also the familly of FelX : his wife and their 4
children (including the world famous Little Marie - do you remember the screen
about her in the Anomaly Megademo?)
Moreover, some atarists were invited to the party:
- Mr Nours: the famous webmaster and big Atari ST fan.
- Strider: yup, it's me. I wasn't a member of MJJ Prod at this moment.
Brume (Pacidemo and Pacigame webmaster) and Moa (Megatari webmaster) were
invited, but they didn't come.
And what about the hardware? There were about 4 Atari STs (most of them were
1040 STEs), about 4 PCs and 1 Falcon. The main room is quite large, but all
these computers took a lot of place. Hey, wait a minute... What those PCs were
doing here? Don't worry, Steem was running on all of them. Several MJJ Prod
members prefer coding or painting on a PC with Steem because their real Ataris
don't have hard disks, whereas Steem uses the PC hard disk as an ST one. Steem
doesn't need double density floppies anymore, the 68000 processor can be
accelerated, and so on. Emulators offer a new place for creativity. Of course,
all the productions are tested on real Atari computers. So, it seems that Steem
(and Saint also) has contributed to the revival of MJJ Prod as a demo crew.
So, what did the participants? During those 3 days, we were coding,
painting, playing, copying, discussing about the ST scene and so on, also during
the night (until 5 or 6 AM). It was a good place for meeting other atarists and
exchanging ideas or skills. For example, Zorro2 was prepairing the MJJ Player
and I gave him some sources for Falcon compatibility. Tooseb, with the help of
Zorro2, was coding a bootsector. He also tried the SidSound Designer and
composed a soundchip based on a Japanese cartoon for girls called "Candy Candy"
(quite famous on French TV in the 80s). The Squale and Micou were busy with
Devpac and MonST. Mr Nours came with tons of floppy disks - I must admit there
were very interesting things on it ;-)
FelX has organized two game tournaments. Everybody played to Kick Off and
Super Sprint. Of course, we played on real Atari computers, because emulators
can't beat the feeling :) Wilfried won the Kick Off tournament whereas FelX won
the Super Sprint tournament.
Concerning the productions, Zorro2 was coding his MJJ Player, a music disk
with 4 voices soundtracks. FelX wanted to make a demo compilation, it will be
ready in 2003. He has also found some unreleased screen from MJJ Prod (mainly
coded by Bigfoot), it might be interesting.
In conclusion, we all had a lot of fun at this party. On sunday, FelX told
us he will organize the third MJJ Party next summer. I'm sure it will be a
success ;-)
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MJJ web site: http://mjjprod.9online.fr/
Strider
http://strider.atari.org/
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