\I[The Good Old Days|By Ant/Three Little Elks|Section: The Scene of Ours]
\F2\4\MThe Good Old Days
\F1\1\MA Scenologic Adventure
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\C[ClipArts/pinnen.Chnk]
Recently I laid my hands on some pack disks from the "golden days" of 1988 (A big thanks to Point/Spots for lending me them!). It's very interesting to see how the demos/intros looked back then and to see how they have developed. After some demos with exactly the same putting up, with raster bars, a logo on the top, a sine scroller and all that, you get sick and boot Nexus 7 by Andromeda as quick as possible instead, to recover from the design-nightmare! But, with all respect to the sceners of that time, what I have experienced during my time in the scene, the scene back then seemed to suck. Some sceners complain about the scene of today and claim that there were much more friendship in the "good old days". But according to what I've seen, I'm not too sure about that.
How did the scene look in the eighties? Let me give you my view...
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There was an "I'm elite"-syndrome, much bigger and accepted than it is now. But nowadays we can see a sort of "grunge" and "anti-elite" movement in the scene (with groups like Polka Brothers and mags like Oepir Risti), that is making the scene-atmosphere much better! There isn't any elite anymore, but there is GOOD artists that are respected for their work! By the way, with the pack disk experience I had, I can do a little comparison. What was the name of a pack disk back in the late eighties? "Cool is the rule". And what is the name of a pack disk nowadays? "A pack of fun"... It says it all! :-)
The productions sucked, if you weren't a scene-addict! I must confess that I adore watching old megademos, but you don't want to watch them twice because of the boring design! But how does the demos of today look? Yepp, you know the answer. And the onefile demos just looked all the same, with all those sine SCROLLTEXTS! I don't hate these old productions, in fact I have the deepest respect for the sceners who were active at that time, but if you compare the productions back then with the productions of today, you will come to the conclusion that the scene of today is more fun to be a member of!
Yes, friendship was the case. I'll give you a cut from the greetings list in the "Cool is the rule"-pack disk (by Silents!) that I borrowed...
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\1HERE'S THE GREETINGS IN RANKED ORDER:
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1. BAMIGA SECTOR ONE & QUORAM
2. MEGAFORCE
(...)
9. TRILOGY
10. IPEC ELITE
11. THRUST
12. ACCESSION
13. THE ACCUMULATORS
(...)
20. DESTINY
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-IF YOU AREN'T IN THIS RANKINGS YOU BETTER BE FASTER IN THE FUTURE. THE BEST WAY TO GET A GOOD PLACE IN OUR RANKINGS IS TO SEND US HOT ORIGINALS. THAT'S ALL !!!!
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\2Yepp, so much for the (swapper) friendship! But how does it look in our glory days? There are longer letters than ever, and even the most elite swappers (swappers and traders are the only elite in the scene of today! :-) ) write (quite long) personal letters (Not all of them. /Note (Exactly, not me. /Frame (Are you an elite swapper, Frame? /ToJ)))! And what about the parties? They were called "copy parties" (which is a cool word!), but what do you do on such a party, according to the name? You run around and copy new warez... But the name of the parties of today is "demo-conference" (Let me suggest "computer festival" or "multimedia festival". /ToJ) or something similar (not in Poland actually /Ed.), and at a conference, you talk to people! Of course I understand that there were friendship in the scene in the late eighties (I hope?!), but it just seems that sceners were more interested in the stuff inside the screen, than the stuff outside the screen... Some people complain about the parties being to big and commercial, but hey, what would the scene be today without the big Nordic parties? The scene is BIG, and therefore there are big meetings! People say that there were smaller parties which made the attendants get to know each other better than at a big party. But we've got such parties nowadays too, like Compusphere and the Yodel Conference here, in western Sweden!
I can't understand people who say that the scene was better back in "The Good Old Days"! Just look how everything is today: the quality of diskmags, the design, the friendship! Huge respect to the people who was active in that time, but moving back? NO THANKS!
