UPDATED 3-July-2024
Finally ShadowParty was due to happen.
This would be my second demoscene/retro-event in France after visiting GEMTOS in May and being invited to ShadowParty by p0ke.
As usual prepping meant trying to stuff as much retro things into a backpack, since I travel by bus and trains.
The 520ST didn’t make the cut but the 800XE did and a mini-ST instead.
And to make it easier for people to get my details, an QR code was made
linking to this blogsite.
I had a one-off print made on a T-shirt showing the Welcome screen of the BBS on the backside and the QR code on the frontside.
Friday the 28th of June, ShadowParty starts so off we went to France.
And thus my first trip from my local train station
to Antwerp-Berchem to get on the Flixbus direction Lille.
First stop of the bus at
And then we arrived at
From there I had to take the train to Paris East and then the next train
departing from Paris Nord destination
And finally almost there last train to
A nice friend of Callisto picked me up there and 15 minutes later
we arrived at Givry en Argonne.
And there it was the reason for my 10 hours of travel.
I quickly went up to the first floor where the event was taking place.
I felt a warm welcome as I was greeted by Callisto, p0ke, MooZ and a fellow Belgian, FRaNKy of RBBS.
RBBS
Organiser of the Rsync demoparty in Belgium
RSYNC
Draft beers were provided by the ShadowParty organisers
But we Belgians are picky about our beers (blonde Leffe hmmz), only seems logical if your group is called RoyalBelgianBeerSquadron that you bring your own draft :)
p0ke made some really nice pasta carbonara to fill our bellies.
And first musical appearance, a nice live set provided by L-Sync providing us with Gameboy chiptunes.
Absolutely loved his energy, keep doing what you’re doing !
L-SYNC
Around 02:00 AM I decided to call it a night to rest a bit.
And so Saturday morning rolled in with again a nice breakfast and a mystery tour to
The owner kindly allowed me to use this picture, the videos and other pictures I made are for my eyes only, sorry :)
Saturday was filled with seminars then later in the afternoon musical performances followed by the compos as you can see in the timetable here
TIMETABLE
Impressive seminars done by B.
I met 3 CPC users
- Candy from OVerLanders (not to be confused with the ST crew by the same name)
- CheshireCat from Flush
- Ricoloaz
Since my recent interest in the CPC demoscene, we had some nice chats during the weekend and good demonstration of demos.
My thanks again Candy for the technical explanations and demos !
During the Shaderjam battles we had some more live music performers.
Another energetic set by Pouale , also Gameboy chiptune music, please
look up his name , he has a recently released album that might interest you.
POUALE
Then another nice Frenchman with whom I had nice chat about his moving-up
into the Demoscene from wayback and on Sunday politics since the French
were due to vote on Sunday.
ALKAMA
Then followed by something more known to me , Atari ST chiptune composer,
DMA-SC , really nice set and nice to see you again after we met at GEMTOS.
DMA-SC
And last but not least, also met them for the first time at GEMTOS, was
unaware they were playing here as well but one again nice to see you guys
again and thanks also once again for the nice set.
I still can’t figure out how you can understand all the necessary cabling.
THEOTHERDAYS
In the meantime BBQ had been fired and we were all presented with a nice mix of German mini sausages (provided by Dr.Snuggles & Gnu ? war super toll euch zu treffen), chicken,merguez and oh yeah I forgot , there were veggies too.
And so the compos were shown, I forgot to mention that everything
was streamed live and there was quite an online following also.
All voting was done, with a bit of a delay we were ready for the cherry
on the cake, another Atari ST gem or should I say gwEm , creator of
MaxYMiser, ST-J and Atari ST chiptunes performing a live-remote set.
The evening came to an end for me when even with reading-glasses my eyes
were getting too tired to read another line on my screen.
I received a nice demonstration by 3D63 on the latest hardware available
to create Gameboy chiptunes, wow, loving the passion and energy.
So I hit the sack at around 02-03:00 AM, from what I had been told later
at 08:00 AM Sunday morning, the music had lasted until 05:00 AM provided
by Masami and Marex.
Sunday morning, a bit more gloomy weather but that didn’t stop ShadowParty to bring some more nice seminars.
Cicile and Yoann talked about their groups work on getting the
French demoscene listed as an Unesco art heritage.
Love what you have been doing and indeed BELGIUM what are we doing to
preserve the Belgian Demoscene for future generations ???
Zerkman (Sector-One) who had been sitting next to me, presented his
Atari ST FPGA project called ZeST , unfortunately I had to leave already.
But I will definitely follow-it, I already ordered the FPGA.
I wasn’t there anymore for the results of the competitions sadly enough.
But future-me is really pleased with the results.
And so my journey back home began with a friendly lift by g33kou, thanks once again.
So after an abandoned luggage in Lille causing our TGV from Paris to delay, a very nervous Paris Nord, a late bus I was welcomed back to Belgium with rain and failing public transport, arriving and going to bed at midnight.
My thanks to the organisers,everybody present IRL or online, like GEMTOS
the event has fueled me again to start creating something and giving back
to the Demoscene, my heart has been filled with nostalgia again giving me
the same heart-warming glow I experienced in my teens watching demos for the first time.
LaSTiC signing off …