The Jagfest 'not a realtime article' report!
--------------------------------------------
Okay, so I'm lying a tiny little bit, when I say this is not a realtime
report, as it is now 22.59hrs on Saturday the 14th of June. This part of the
report is being written in a live 'at the party as it happens' sense. Which
also means I am lying slightly to Felice, whom I told a minute ago that I
was not doing a realtime article....
So you can all slap me around later then...
There are presently around 25 people in the basement cellar of the Medway
Manor Hotel. This consists of two rooms, forming the bar area sometimes
known as 'Fagins Retreat'. And that well-known Charles Dickens character may
well have wished to retreat from the sheer weight of Atari computery,
consolery, and people who have been cluttering up his cellar all day.
As the name 'Jagfest' implies, this event is heavily favouring the 64-bit
console side of things. This density of Philips RGB momitors has not been
seen since a coding party, say, in 1991. There are some computers as well.
The Cheshunt Computer Club, and ourselves have been holding things up at our
end. And the MyAtari Team showed up with a luscious black-cased Milan
system, courtesy of the Zogging Hell website maintainer dude, but more of
him later.
Then there are a couple of guys with a Jag devkit wrapped around a PeeCee.
Sorry I don't have names right now, this party has not been big or clever on
things like easy-to-spot name badges, although we did get a flashy laminated
Jagfest weekend passcard. In the very far corner, was a game-capable Nuon
system, of which we have been enjoying edited highlights of Tempest 3000,
and Iron Soldier 3.
You want some background I guess? Well the genesis of the Jagfest, at least
in its UK incarnation, is down to one man, Nick Harlow, of long-time Atari
veterans, the 16/32 Systems empire, which started off as a public domain
library, graduated to a full-time supplier and publisher, and latterly, with
the general decline in commercial Atari activity, went part-time and
internet based.
Nick still manages to get around a fair bit in the Atari world, and he was
feeling the absence of any sizeable gathering at all, since the last run of
the ACC Stafford shows, so he decided to organise a version of the popular
US 'Jagfest' event here. Nick even managed the not so minor miracle of
finding a venue to hold this two day event in, and was able to set up the
event to take place in the early summer. Thanks to Felice, we found our
names on the website before too long, and a time after that, we found
ourselves on the road heading down south...
Friday!
-------
The plan in its original form was, for the organisers and stand holders to
arrive on the Friday night before, in order to set up their stuff, so as to
be ready for the punters who were turning up on Saturday morning onwards. Of
course, as we all know, best laid plans rarely survive contact with reality!
I arrived at Felice's place at around 20-hundred, stopping only to boggle in
disbelief at the mountain of monitors that was travelling down with us. It
looked like he had over-promised things to people again, but we managed to
get it all into his car without too much of a problem. The journey itself
was one of the easier trips ever needed to get to an Atari event, just over
a couple of hours including momentary venue finding confusion, all told.
Breaking up the motorway monotony was an exciting and slightly expensive
trip over the Dartford Bridge and their eternally open tollbooths. On the
other side, we were confronted with an interesting sign thus:
.-----------------.
| Welcome to the | So I exaggerate a bit, but this part of
| County of | England seems to be more aggressively
' . . _ . ___ . nationalistic than many others. There
| |/ |_ |\ | | | were a hell of a lot of WHITE VANSwith
| |\ |_ | \| | ' the Red Cross of St George bumper stickers
| | and not even a major football tournament
| Last bastion of | in sight! As Kent has Dover, the nearest
| OVERT RACISM! | port of entry to France, it tends to be
'____ ________ ___' the kind of place that gets cranky about
|| | Asylum seekers and suchlike....
|| | With sincere apologies to the nice Kentish
'| | people who are over 95% of the population!
'
Anyway, back to the journey, and we arrive in historic Rochester without any
trouble. We have a map of the locality which only leads us slightly astray,
and we soon find the venue, the MEDWAY MANOR HOTEL, a short time later. We
find encouraging 'Jagfest' publicity material littering the reception area,
but no signs of life apart from an elderly hotelier who informs us that
everyone connected with the Jagfest has gone out to eat.
The Jagfest is contained in a basement area, which is presently locked and
silent, and after some useful preliminaries, such as claiming our room, and
claiming a swift pint of Stella on the Jagfest bar tab, Felice then decides
that he is hungry enough to seek out some swift food and justice in the old
town centre.
The charming custom known across several thousand British communities as
'Chucking-out time' is in full swing, as many tired and emotional people
stagger home, with the local police in close attendance. A brand-X chicken
burger parlour satisfies the Felician hunger pangs, whilst gangs of feral
children play in the rubbish, barely noticed by their indulgent parents. We
have a lucky escape as Felice finishes in time for us to avoid listening to
a thick-necked drunk show off his tattoos, especially the one which was a
tribute to the late Princess of Wales!
We get back safely, and decide to head for bed afterwards, and pick up the
thin thread of plot the following morning. Sleep hard and furiously, only
occasionally broken by the distant bewailing of police sirens from the town
centre, and sunrise, which arrived at an inconveniently early midsummer sort
of time like 05.00hrs.
Saturday!
----------
07.15hrs Felice's alarm goes off at pre-agreed time...
07.20hrs, damn that snooze mode!
BLEEP BLEEEEEP! A bit more of this... Time to get up, yawny yawn!
And breakfast follows, we find a gang of pre-arrived attendees, principally
some of the Dutch guys who made the trip over. At least one of these, TXG,
recognises us from the recent Error in Line party. The hotel staff recognise
us as guests, and we recognise the ingredients for the full english styled
cooked breakfast, when it arrived on the scene shortly after.
We head downstairs into the basement of retro-styled fun shortly after, to
discover a scene of people rushing around to set up their gear. The 'nearer'
of the two rooms to the stairs, with a bar in it, seems to be the less
Jaguar orientated part of the show. Tables are being dragged in, but
already, a couple of Cheshunt Computer Club bods are set up, and an
extravagent PeeCee-based Midi studio set-up moves off the central table to
allow myself and Felice to set up at one end.
Also in the same room is a Jag devkit runnin a brief rolling demo of
something called 'Warballs', and the MyAtari editorial staff, in the form of
Matthew Bacon and Shiuming Lai, are at the far end of that room
unfortunately running PeeCee systems and attempting to lash together some
last minute stuff for their 'slghtly' delayed June issue.
Our personal stuff consists of a couple of machines each, Felice with his
Falcon and his laptop (with emulated STe if needed), and myself with the
STe, and number 2 Falcy with the Nemesis accelerator, and dodgy heatstroke-
prone keyboard input.
There is a lot of stuff for sale! The man, Nick sits Buddha-like in serene
repose in his retail cavern just off to the side. There is a wodge of Jag
carts and (mostly) Atari themed CD-ROMs, (unless there is an erotic picture
genre known as 'Atari Hentai'?!) Additionally, there are other gadgets for
the Jag and Lynx on sale as well, and even some ST and Falcon stuff too.
There are also many chances to fill the gaps in your old boxed original ST
software collection, as there is a large secondhand selection available, at
crazy priced, typically less than one Euro a time from one of the other
punters.
Not that anyone ever collected any pirate stuff though, eh! Nick even has a
couple of Battlesphere 'gold edition' cartridges on sale, not that cheap
though... He had also got a couple of of copies of the CDR edition of
'Robinsons Requiem', not that common a sight either.
The other room is where all the Jaguar action is going to take place. Even
before we add Felice's contribution, there are already a ridiculous number
of RGB screens, many of them huge hulking Sony display television sized
monsters. Also in that room, apart from the many Jaguars, most of them
catbox-linked to each other, there is a rare to disappearing Nuon machine,
where selected playings of Tempest 3000 and Iron Soldier III can be seen.
There is even a Jaguar Arcade cabinet, truly the domain of an insane
collector!
To break the console dominant theme a little bit, there are also a couple of
close rivals in the eight-bit world sitting on the same table, an Atari 8-
bit system, showing selected wicked 8-bit demos, and next to it, a Commodore
SX64 portable C64. Neither the owners or the machines were tempted to hack
lumps out of each other, which shows that even the most bitter conflicts
can fade with time..
People are arriving all the time, we even recognise some of them!
Apart from TXG, a fellow survivor of EIL, I can also immediately spot James
Haslam, who is tucked in nicely with the Cheshunt Computer Club. He has
opted to look a lot like Richard Karsmakers, and is in the process of
transferring hair from the top to the bottom of his head. He has also opted
to bring some Falcon flavouring, along with the other Cheshuntites. This
fellow enjoys demos, especially new ones, as much as the rest of us do, and
alongside myself he makes the showing of such things as Earx's 'Delta' demo,
and the Escape "_" EIL demo quite common over the two days.
Of others at the party, we spotted Shiuming Lai in full photo-journalist
mode and trying to make it look like he knew what he was going to do with
all the pictures he was taking. Matthew Bacon opted for a more passive role
by hiding in the corner at the controls of MyAtari.
Several other people made themselves known to us over the two days. Such as
Sacha Hofer, who came all the way from Switzerland to be here, several
people called Nick, inclding Nick Turner, who was heavily promoting a
modified Jagpad controller with a rotary switch in place of the joypad,
apparently for Tempest 2000. He was also press-ganging people into a T2K
tournament so we all could have the experience of trying it for ourselves.
There was also Matthew Preston, part of the MyAtari team, who had the Midi
set-up mentioned earlier, but turned his PeeCee to the running of various
Atari emulators, especially classic 8-bit and VCS games. There were many
others, not previously known to me, and then the day attendees started to
turn up.
We get to see mad Matt Smith, and he's brought a big van with him. I soon
update on his recent movements, which seem to consist of too much work, in
and out of home to do much with his Atari stuff. His ultimate goal is to
move to a much lower stress locale in Ireland. He did go away from the
Jagfest for a while with Mr Pink, so perhaps he may not be so inactive after
all?
Which leads nicely to the arrival of Mr Pink, sometime in the mid-afternoon
period. This is convenient for me to re-unite him with the Error in Line
competition prizes won by the various Reservoir Gods. It turns out that we
were lucky to get him that day, as he is in software developer 'high
season' mode, and the Xmas releases are being coded with lack of sleep.
There is also the small matter of who's missing. We were primed to expect
The Great Hairyness, Lord Yak, Jeff Minter himself, and the Retrovision
dude, Mark Lawson. Neither of them did show up, apparently due to
complications at the Mark Lawson end of the arrangement. This was a shame,
as I'm sure Jeff would have shown *everyone* the best way around Tempest
2000!
We expected to see some rare Jag games, and we weren't disappointed. Whilst
Tempest 2000 dominated through its sheer ubiquity, the real star of the
party was the much talked about but rarely seen 'Battlesphere'. I finally got
to see it, and have a go on it, and in single player mode, I was reminded
somewhat of the Falcon equivalent 'Crown of Creation 3D'. Which wasn't a bad
thing in itself, but where Battlesphere really took off, was the chance to
network up to thirty-two players(!) We had to stick at a mere eight players,
which turned out to be more than good enough..
And there were one or two things rescued from the developers kitchen. Such
as a strange JagCD based wander-around beta called 'Black Ice White Noise',
which uneasily combined a role-player with a beat-em-up. There was also a
developer version of a game I played with at an European Computer Trade
Show, a very long time ago, which was the Jag version of 'Soulstar' on a CD-
ROM. We await further revelations with interest. There were even one or two
new games, produced by indy publishers, such as Songbird Productions, in
their official looking professional Jag cartridge boxes. We also see some of
the lesser known official Atari games, such as the jag version of 'Towers
II', which looked interesting enough, but the consensus was that the Falcon
version was better!
And so we get onto the not so rare Jag games, especially Tempest 2000! It
seems that almost everyone with a Jaguar, has taken the Edge magazine's
single good review of an Atari product to heart, as nearly all the Jags are
playing that game at some point or other, apart from the machine that turned
itself into a dedicated 'Worms' terminal!
With people being forced at (lightgun)point into a vast rolling T2K
tournament, trouble ahead is smelled. This odour of suspicion fails to
disperse when we are confronted with those strange rotary controller things.
Tempest 'duel mode' won't be familiar to most people, and deservedly so. It
puts two players head to head, which lends a squitty character to the
onscreen graphics, and the non-familiar players such as myself, are at an
immediate disadvantage, as they need a couple of minutes to adjust, which
isn't long enough in a "best of three games" situation. Needless to say, I
don't do very well with it.
The T2K torture continues *another* couple of times, as I've been given
three goes at clearing my way up the rankings. Err thanks! It is with some
relief, that I can get back to my rolling showtime of classic and newly
released demos on the ST and Falcy.
Demo rankings by times showed went something like;
The " _ " EIL demo managed to edge out the Delta demo, with the combined
resources of mine and James Haslams Falcons on the case.
Felice let some old time classics such as 'Lost Blubb' and Obnoxious loose
on his machine... And we did not get away without H-Demo IV being showed.
On the ST side of things, I managed to give both Defjam demos some hammer,
especially with the help of an obnoxiously loud Philips monitor loudspeaker
for that lovely soundchip! The Equinox demo 'Virtual Escape' was clever
enough to reboot and run in an infinite cycle, without prompting, which made
it ideal when I needed to leave that machine alone for an extended period.
The same thing happened with the 'Nostalgic-O' demo.
Quite a lot of other demos got in there as well, with special emphasis on
the period 1999 to the present day, and the Error in Line releases in
particular.
People do take an interest in what I'm doing, and some come to chat to me.
This leads to reminiscences about the good old ST style chipsounds, and not
a little bit of demo confusion too. When I swapped my Falcon into running on
the Philips RGB, someone said "This is good for an ST demo", so I had to
enlighten him as to the reality of the situation "Err no, it's a Falcon demo
really!"
The time passes by pleasantly enough. Initial attempts by the hotel staff to
feed and water us start strongly but falter later on. By that time though,
the bar has opened, and has taken up the slack.
As evening draws on, I get to spend some time in the MyAtari corner, playing
with a nice Milan that they've got. This 25mhz '040 machine looks pretty
tasty, in a slick black case, and with a 'borrowed for the day' sleek black
TFT screen. The enhanced 1200 x 784 in 16bit colour mode works out pretty
nicely too. I'm graciously given the thumbs up to play with it awhile, which
was good of them. It can zap offline versions of web-pages onscreen
convincingly quickly, it is also good at doing the GEM-Bench tests, rattling
through those *really* quickly. I spotted the Patrice Mandin ports of Doom
and Quake, but decided not to investigate in case I fucked something really
important with that machine.
It also seems to be less good at depacking Jpeg files than my CT2 Falcy, and
I'd be interested to see how it would handle compressed audio and picture
format on Aniplayer. There wasn't that much material to try with it,
curses! The other big disadvantage of the Milan concept, in its original
form, is the total lack of noisemaking capability, which is why I still
prefer a Falcon by far!
The day guests have left, there are around a twenty-five strong hardcore
left, and the next decision is upon us, where to go for an evening repast.
So the sandwiches of lunchtime a distant memory, we head out hopefully into
the town centre. After some time-consuming and ultimately hopeless attempts
by the Dutch guys to hack the cash machines, a la Terminator II, we head for
a Chinese restaurant which can cope with the sheer weight of numbers.
They are willing, but we still have half an hour to kill, which we do at the
amusingly signposted 'Nags Head' public house. The amusing part of its sign
depicting the 'nags head' in question as a raging termagent of a female that
no-one would want to go to bed with, ever..
They do have a small selection of hand-pumped beer on sale, Nick says to me
"Try the Spitfire, it's very good", so I do, and it is! We barely have time
to drink it before we are moving back to the restaurant, wading through
lakes of hormonally raging underage female wildlife, where fake tans and
even more fake blondness are apparent!
The restaurant smells delicious, and works on a "Buffet the vampire slayer"
principle, where the food is so good, you can go back for more! Most of us
went for seconds and most of us remembered there was a steep hill-climb
home, and and stopped right there. Some of us went back for more, and only
remembered the hill climb afterwards, when it was too late!
As it is, we manage to find a back way home, which was a bit more gentle on
the potential cardiac patients, than the big hill on the main road.
There is a little bit of a final session for the day, and I get into a four-
handed Worms tournament with James Haslam ,and a couple of the Dutchies.
This is a game which is absorbing, but gently paced, perfect for winding
down at the days end. I'm at the 'relearning the controls' stage, and
discovering several fun ways for my worms to commit suicide!
It is not too late when Felice and I head for bed, some carried on a bit
longer, and would have liked to stay up all night, but the decision was made
for them at around 01.30hrs, when the power disappeared!
So sleep you fools!
Sunday!
-------
Felice sensibly sets the dreaded repeating alarm for a later time, which
does its thing at the appointed time again, more than once!
Breakfast is an even more leisurely affair than the Saturday, *of necessity*
with all the tired faces that are around. Some only just make the final
sitting at 09.00. We all pitch in with a variety of travelling stories, one
brave individual making it to Cambodia, so we throw Helsinki, all minus 24
degrees C back at him!
Downstairs into the Jagfest dungeon once more, and we are soon back into he
Tempest 2000 groove. It seems as if this weekend turning into some kind of
Tempest 2000 aversion therapy? But I'm just as bad, as I rediscover the T2K
audio CD lurking in MPEG 2 form on my hard drive. It is all too easy to
leave Aniplayer running in slideshow mode, with my Falcy connected up to
Felice's rather nice PeeCee style speakers.
Something of a battle of the music players with James Haslam follows. He has
brought speakers too. He tends to favour modfiles more, but with neither
system able to better the other, a draw is declared..
I spy some useful hardware items for the rolling CT60 upgrade programme on
sale on Nicks stand, so a new (secondhand) hard drive is purchased, and
hopefully one or two of Mario Becrofts hardware adventures, when the customs
people let them into the country. Now I really need to get that random
craziness heat-stress keyboard input craziness fixed! This did rear its ugly
head from time to time, but I was able to navigate that system using the
Jagpad/Powermouse as an improvised mouse.
There is a bit more tournament based mayhem, as an eight-player 'Aircars'
network struggles to start up, but remains off-air after several attempts.
This is judged to be no big deal, when instead, we can have a Battlesphere
network, which does function as intended!
I had rather more success with the Battlesphere network than with the
previous Jag games. The first session was fun, but nothing to write home
about, as I dived into the game, with a rather weedy default ship. Others
had opted for bigger ships more able to kill stuff easily. So for the second
game, I upgraded to something altogether more lumbering through the school
corridor, but very able to kick ass! The game itself runs a combination of
eight human players, and a similar number of computer generated ones. You
can tell which is which, by the fact that the target indicator is colour-
coded according to which it is.
You can really tell it is a human player you are hitting by the screams of
"Arrghh! Gettoff me!!" from the other side of the table! I'm surprised to
find when the session finishes, that I'm the winner!
So, is Battlesphere gaming network gaming heaven?! Yes, quite probably, And
does anyone want to sponsor me the 130 UKP for a Battlesphere Gold edition
cartridge?! Almost certainly not!
Afterwards, I'm back with James, TXG, and one of the other Dutch guys(Fox),
picking up where we left off last night, with a nice relaxing pre-luncheon
Worms session. This proves to be a more interesting game, with some slick
moves pulled out by all the players. (I might mention my 'four worms offed
with one single shot' at this point!) However, with victory in sight, the
other surviving player gets a lucky break, with an airdropped exploding
sheep, which wipes out my final two team members! Jeff Minter would have
been horrified at the ovine combustion, so perhaps it was better he did not
make it to Jagfest after all?!
A loose straggling crocodile of people sprawl into the town centre for
something to eat, after discovering that there were no arrangements for them
at the hotel. Lunch itself resolves into a pleasant sunny outdoor affair at
a place called 'Wetherspoons, which is a better than average pub/restaurant
chain. We sit outside in the pleasant summer day, and order lots of food.
Their double cheeseburger is very impressive, but ultimately, the hills of
Rochester are there to make us pay for it on the way back. At this point,
some of the Dutch contingent have to catch a train back, and take their
leave of us, promising to be back next year..
Back at the party, and an air of winding down is apparent. There are a few
final items in the order of business to take care of first though. Nick,
inspired by either breaking even, or perhaps even making a profit from the
event, shouts "Have a drink on me!" so I do, making sure to tell the barman
that the coke he is pouring should have some rum to go in it.
There is a fiercely promoted raffle, with a top prize to get the glands of
the gathered Jag Cognosti watering in anticipation, a rare developer unit
'Alpine' Jag devkit. Some people have purchased many tickets in a serious
bid for this prize! The raffle is drawn, and none of the prizes go my way,
ah well, but no sad loss for not getting the 7800 lightgun!
And the Tempest 2000 tournament final is upon us. This huge and sprawling
event, at one stage taking in the population of Cairo, has narrowed down to
the two finalists. This is played out over a best of five rounds, and goes
right down to the wire, in the tradition of all good final rounds. The local
favourite snatches victory from a French guy, winning a rotary controller.
After that, there isn't a lot to tell, it is mid-afternoon, and Felice and I
are packing up and re-stuffing the car with the Philips monitor madness that
came down with us. Another half-hour to fit in a full range of farewells to
the remaining people, and we're off at around 16.00. The journey back is
sunny, pleasant, and mostly hitch-free, apart from one accident aftermath,
witnessed by us, where a lorry attempted to rub the side of a car, which
slowed us right down for fifteen minutes or so.
After stopping at Felice's, I'm back home and online about twenty minutes
later, catching Felice on IRC Atariscne. And that was the weekend of the
Jagfest.
Some last words
---------------
Firstly we have to thank Nick Harlow, that lovely bouncy castle of a former
public domain library proprieter and sometime shop owner. Without him, none
of this would have happened at all, and we'd all still be locked in nostalgic
recriminations of parties past in the UK, never to repeat themselves in the
future.
As it is, Nick did a hell of a lot of work in getting this thing together,
organising the venue, and the website and other publicity. We even got a
mention in the Edge Magazine, who were no doubt amazed that there were still
Jaguar loving losers alive on this planet!
For a small scale party of around fifty or so people, a lot of the
infrastructure and organisation was remarkably professional. I've still got
this lovely laminated weekend pass badge. I'm wearing it as I type now! How
sad is that?!
The name Jagfest implies a console gaming dominated event. Which is what
largely happened, but at the same time, the opportunity was there for the
computer users to express themselves. Some people took it. Apart from us,
the Cheshunt Computer Club put on a pretty good show, and so did the MyAtari
team, and the 8-bit fans. With a repeat performance of Jagfest definitely on
the cards for next year, I feel there is room for more growth here!
For the console dudes, this was also a good chance to show off their never-
say-die spirit, which they did with a range of old favourites (Tempest
2000), rare and new stuff (Battlesphere), and a series of networked games to
emphasis the sociable nature of the Jaguar gaming experience. They handled
their part of the Jagfest very well indeed. Things I'd like to see more of
next time, would be more development betas and work in progress for the
homebrew crews, as we got just a little taste of that this time.
And we got to meet a lot of friends, old and new ones. It was great to catch
up with the movements of Matt Smith and Shiuming Lai. It was cool to catch a
glimpse of Mr Pink, and great to get to know the Cheshunt Computer Club a
bit better as well. I enjoyed fighting worms to the death with the Dutch
guys and James Haslam too. It was cool to get to meet the dedicated Jag
community, especially the people who were trying to sell us a rotary jagpad
until the dying minutes of the party!
There was only a small amount of disappointment, with a lack of Jeff Minter,
but as there will be more Jagfests in the UK, I'm sure we can talk him into
coming along next time!
So it looks like we'll be back in Rochester, city of historic and hysterical
hills, sometime next year!
CiH, for Alive Mag,June '03.
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