An insight in the happenings at Assembly '99

Written by odex

This is not any kind of party report, but I really have some words to say about this year's Assembly.

It was the fourth time I visited Assembly and the only thing I can say is that I was disappointed at the quality of the party even more than ever before, although I didn't expect much from it as a demoparty.

Where should I begin? Ok, the organizers ran out of tickets. A couple of my friends came a bit too late (friday evening), and the organizers didn't have any tickets left. Well, my friends were lucky because I had just talked to Kozmik/Nextempire who told me that he had a couple of extra tickets which he could give away if someone wanted. BIG thanks to Kozmik for giving those tickets for free!

Another thing was that most of the security guys were total assholes. For example if you just went to smoke a cigarette outside in front of the main entrance where they saw you all the time they still checked your bags when you came back in.

When I complained about this they just said that "Why don't you give your bag to the luggage service?" Sure, it was quite expensive in my opinion.

They didn't let most of my friends in when the Amiga 64k intro competition was beginning because their breath smelled like booze. Most of my friends had only drunk a couple of beers so far; they were not drunk at all, and they didn't have any booze in their bags. Luckily they got inside after one of the main security guys had gone outside himself to smoke a cigarette and the other security guys didn't know anything about the whole thing.

Before the Amiga demo competition they showed some classic Amiga demos on the big screen. I thought that I'd ask if they could show Haujobb's "My Kingdom". Well, I went to the control place and asked who of those guys showed these demos. I was standing behind the "organizers only" lines but still they started to yell (and they actually yelled VERY loud!) at me that they wouldn't be going to show any Amiga demos anymore if I asked anything. Yep, a very relaxed atmosphere.

But the most anoying thing at Assembly '99 was the visitors. As there was something like 4000 people most of them hadn't ever heard about the scene. When the compos started they just kept playing the music loud and they didn't turn off their flashing lights etc. After the organizers had yelled themselves very loud that even every monitor had to be turned off most of the people did it - but not all of them.

I'm not saying that every Assembly visitor should be interested in demos and the scene but they could even show some respect by stopping playing Quake for a couple of minutes. Isn't Assembly supposed to be some kind of demoparty after all? Should every bigger party be seperated in "scenezone" and "gamezone" as Remedy was this year? I think that they should because as far as I know gamers are a problem for the other visitors at every bigger party.

Well, although there were many bad things about this year's Assembly I really had a good time at Boozembly, see you there next year again!

odex/cycla