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Episode 1: The Break Of Dawn
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The SEAL-O-RAMA show too place in on the 10th of September 2000. The ASA
crew decided to make a day of it and we all headed down to south Essex on the Sunday
morning. I personally have not got up so early for many months now (that's the advantage
of being off all summer from university!) but managed to drag myself up in time. The trip wasn't too bad, traffic was fairly light on the way up. It took us about two hours to get there from Portsmouth, and despite some last minute confusion we eventually found the show halls okay. The halls were on the edge of a really nice park and as it was such a beautiful day we could take a walk over to the pond and enjoy the sunshine. There was a fair amount of room inside the venue, it was certainly a bit less cramped than the Kickstart show although our table was smaller. We didn't have nearly as much stuff to sell this time so we were lucky.
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SEAL-O-RAMA!
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We arrived a bit early and started to set up our stuff. The show officially started at
12:00 and there was certainly enough going on to make it last until the scheduled
closing time of 17:00. We were placed near to the guys from Kickstart with our table
so we had fun chatting to them. There were plenty of people to talk to and the atmosphere
was excellent. We made a trip over to the pub across the road too which helped cool
us off a bit :) All the big UK retailers were in attendance. Eyetech were showing off all the usual wares as well as a PC running the Tao SDK. More on that later. Blittersoft made an appearance and Paul Harding and later I had a good chat with them about their products and the future. Analogic were there too, as well as a couple of others. There were a few bargains to be had, although overall I think trading wasn't quite as good for them or the private sellers as it had been at Kickstart, mainly because people had spent all their money at the other show. There were some interesting demos being shown at the SEAL-O-RAMA. Martin Kennedy took particular interest in the Bubble Heros demo, a really nice looking and well produced Bust-a-Move type game. The game was on sale for twenty quid too, although Martin's high score earned him a free copy! It's nice to see people still making high quality games like this for the Amiga. There was also a demo of Gilbert Goodmate, a point and click adventure game being ported to the Amiga.
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I am the Gamesmaster
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The game room was my personal favorite part of the show. There were three competitions
going, the first on the Amiga version of Wipeout 2097. Seeing this game with it's
amazing graphics running on a top spec PPC on a large monitor was a treat in itself. I
decided to have a go and set the pace early with a time of about 1:22 for two laps. A
few hours later no one had managed to beat it, but then at the last minute someone
set a time just 1.2 seconds faster! Try as I might, I couldn't beat it and ended up
only 0.4 seconds off the lead. The winner got a copy of Wipeout 2097, so congratulations
to them. The second competition was on Heretic 2, another Hyperion game. This too was running nicely on an Amiga PPC which was networked to a PC for multiplayer play. I didn't try it out but it looked very nice. The final competition, and my personal favorite, was on Sensible World Of Soccer. Anyone who knows SWOS will realise it's the best football game ever made, period! The likes of 3D Fifa just don't compare. I signed up, thinking that since I hadn't played for many months now I would probably go out in the first round. Well, the first game was nearly over when I managed to score twice in the last twenty minutes of game time (in real time matches only lasted about ten minutes). Shocked at my luck I began to feel more confident about the tournament. With the ASA team cheering me on I steadily worked my way to the finals. In the semis it went to extra time but in the end I prevailed. The final was one of the best matches I have played for a long, long time. My opponent was Glenn Pudney, a SEAL member and the competition organiser. I think it's fair to say our skills were equally matched, at the end of the game we both were convinced that the other had dominated the game. There were many chances, a couple even hit the woodwork, and it came down to extra time. I was holding out for penalties as I just couldn't seem to get one past Glens's defense, but then in the last ten minutes (about 40 or 50 seconds real time) of the game Glen put a skillful goal away and that was it. I let another one in before the end of the game, but I wasn't disappointed. It was an excellent game and I hope I can play everyone who entered again some time.
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Everyones a winner babe
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At 16:00 SEAL handed out the prizes for the show. Some of the raffle tickets drawn
couldn't be found, presumably because whoever had them had gone home. It just shows,
it's well worth sticking around until the end! The prizes were very good, including
a copy of OS3.5, an A1200 Magic pack, a Port Plus and lots of other nice stuff. After the meeting we headed over to the pub for a last drink and then made our way home. We were very happy with the way things had gone. This being the first SEAL-O-RAMA we were all impressed at the organisation that had taken place. We look foreward to next years show! |
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