I just returned from Breakpoint 2008 / GE. It was amazing.
I can’t remember attending such an interesting event for years now. The hall was crowded, each and every power slot has been exhausted, xillions of TFT’s and CRT’s were glowing and blinking, and hundreds of sleepless people with those digital wet eyes, crawling around, swarming the place, carrying curry wurst, beer or both, stumbling to reach the warmth of their bunkers and continue whatever they were doing previously – be it coding, watching Patricia Arquette Medium, or playing C64 games – yes c64 games, but not on the emulator..

Let me put it simple: It’s an over dose of nostalgie injected straight into your childish ’90 dreams. People brought again their c64′s, modded of course, with LCD’s, even harddisks. It was marvelous to see, in my opinion, one of the best console/custom hw demos yesterday on c64 using ide64 (I wonder if the group won – i must check the voting results afterwards.)

Ok, the atmosphere is a must see, must feel. I have grown up with c64/amiga, back in the 90′ i never had a chance to see the great events like party, gathering, assembly etc. live, that is – to be *physically* there. This was the first time for me, and i think one thing is sure – this is *definitely* *NOT* the last time. I got hooked.

A few words about competitions on sunday, the last day of BP2008 -

The streaming competition was OK. 2-3 songs sounded wonderful (Chromag, Xerxes were – as usual – awesome). But all in all there were just a few entries, maybe 10 all together. 96k game compo, sadly, was canceled, due to having submitted only one entry, which was great ), it was shown, but couldn’t get any prize. Custom hardware / Console compo had one already mentioned fantastic c64/ide64 demo. I found it amazing, still can’t believe it was c64. And the second highlight was a demo on a custom hardware, completely assembled and programmed by some freaks – i fortgot the name of the group and the demo, but i will look it up and edit this post later today.

Now we are coming to my personal highlights, the reason i actually went to Bingen – Amiga Demo& PC Demo.

Amiga demo compo – All (6) demos were 68040/68060 AGA. .. amazing!! Music was by far the best of all compos, technologically speaking – they showed a lot of splendid 3d rendering and image processing, but that was not what i liked the most. The thing is they in general had clever direction & moods, nicely supported by, as i said, wonderful music.

ps.. as I am writing this post, I see that my fav amiga demo won! Actually it was a bit of a drama – the second place demo became the first place demo, after the first place demo rejected the prize being firmly convinced that the second place demo is the real first place demo )) that’s a true knightly spirit, so typical for Amiga generation :].

PC demo compo – a lot of entries, if I recall correctly the number was 25. As it started, a demo after demo was presented and I thought.. “WTF?!”. It was simply degenerate production. Crap, nonsense, bad music, bad direction, bad dynamics. All in all – waste of time.
But then.. the tides have changed – a demo by Excess made me fasten my seat belt again! Followed by a set of supernatural demos from groups like Andromeda, SQNY, Brainstorm, AllStars, Farbrausch.. It was a non stop rollercoaster of high-production, polished compositings and soundtracks which simply sounded like tailored to the visuals – my favorite was Andromeda’s Metamorphosis. It was hard to say, after seeing them all, which one was better than the others. But somehow Metamorphosis is a piece of art.

All in all – a wonderful experience. Our best regards to the guys who brought their C64′s, Ataris, Amigas, Epsons and what else not, to the party. And of course – HUGE congrats to the organizing team. Everything worked like a charm.

I’ll go now dream on.

Links of importance for this event:

http://bp.untergrund.net/

http://www.scene.org/

Yours,

sir_commonwelt