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                        Czech & Slovak Scene Report
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Maybe you remember Moondog's article in UCM # 13 where he described you, western
ppl :), how lives Atari in our small countries. First of all I want to write one
thing: CZECH AND SLOVAK REPUBLIC AREN'T THE SAME STATE!
There's no doubt about  your geographical  knowledges, but  when man reads about
czech, slovenian even polish group Satantronic it looks kinda crappy :)
So, what's the current  situation in cz/sk Atari world? Uhm, I'm afraid not very
positive.

Commerce sphere
---------------
Totally dead. Since the official  Atari end, our (I mean czech and slovak ofcoz)
one and only Atari  distributor/service JRC ended  with Atari selling/repairing,
too. If you want to repair  your damaged Atari, there are  some (2-3) people who
don't give up already, but they're working people so you can get your Atari back
after a year. If you  want some  hardware (reductions, ram cards, ...) it's only
up to you, where and how  you get it (usually  via polish/german  contacts or if
you're a lucky boy, you'll find a hardware store with needed connectors)

Scene sphere
------------
Hehe, scene. From Moondog's  article  you  can get the feeling that we're small,
but we are... :) But remember that was  an overview during  last 6-7 years! Look
at german or UK scene and compare the number of releases. But in the fact, there
were some demogroups (Headache Project, Czex, single coders like Sedma) and mags
(Narsil, Albion, Crack). Now it's all lost in space... :-(

Here I give you some names (active people in present or in the last 1-2 years):

Petr Stehlik/Joy of Orthodox [CZ]

He's author of some cool games for monochrom (very very funny but only for cz/sk
people), hardware accelerator FT/20 and some utilities like PARCP or Clocky. Now
he's working on ARAnyM project and maybe some Linux/MiNT things.

Ctirad Fertr/Phanatic [CZ]

He's the author of an  improved  Nemesis clone, hardware freak and specialist on
Falcon architecture. I  bought his last  Falcon, now he's  working on ARAnyM and
that's the only Atari related thing he's doing :-(

Krivanek Brother's/ATACK [CZ]

They're the authors of aFTP and aMAIL, but I haven't heard about them since last
aMAIL release. Maybe do some things on ARAnyM, too...

Stanislav Opichal & Jan Krupka/Jay Soft [CZ]

Again wellknown people in the past, now again only ARAnyM contributors.
S. Opichal was an administrator  of our Atari-related mailing list, now it works
without administration/censure.

Jiri Sladovnik & Co./Faen [CZ]

After Narsil's end (check another article) I really don't know what they will do
now :) Certainly I know  they don't  give up becoz Jiri is a very fanatic Atari-
gamer and he  owns probably  the biggest Atari-games-collection on the world (no
joke, I visited him some years ago - a FULL room of games! :) Aahh... I remember
one person yet, -JS-, a man who has drawn the gfx/animations for Narsil and some
games. He's, uhm, pseudo active :) Simply all of his gfx are done on PC and than
converted/retouched in  Cyberpaint  under SainT/Pacifist/Steem. But his pics are
very  nice... you  can  look  yourself -> http://www.mujweb.cz/www/minigalerie (I
hope this link works, but it should be)

Jiri Bernasek/Bewesoft [CZ]

8 bit freak, author of various  hardware/software  stuff, his newest  things are
multiplayer games  for 2-8 Ataris. You  can find him on Atariada or Unconvential
Party every year.

Zdenek Burian/FLOP [CZ]

Flop is a diskmag  for 8bit Ataris, it's released on every Atariada, last number
is 45.

Raster [CZ]

Not that Raster  from Confusions :-) It's  probably  the ONLY :-((( Atari-scene-
oriented coder in the Czech Rep. Very talented musician and coder, he always won
Forever intro competition :-) Very, very active! (editors note: Raster is active
on 8bit machines only!)

Satantronic [SK]

It's not such a fake  group  as you  could think :-) I'll  try to describe their
member-status (or check their homepage):

Xi (xe/f030) - organiser  of  the Atari  section of Forever 2e3 Party, author of
wellknown Te.MOD demo, Magic World & Jurassic Park games, some  utilities and he
coded  an intro  contribution to  every-year  Forever party (8bit) as  well as a
Falcon 2 kB intro called Bluefire, he's the first man who owned a  CT2 turbocard
in Slovakia (but with CT60 he wont be the first :-) He's very talented coder and
hardware-freak, but his work takes a lot of time and motivation for coding :(
Dodo (xe) - I'm not   afraid  to  write  he could  be the best coder for Atari
(and not only Atari), his  precision in  learning things  is incredible. He & Xi
are authors of 1 MB SIMM expansion, IDE interface, 4x OS switch for 8bit, really
professional stuff. Dodo coded some 1kB intros, too.
Jookie (st) - if he would  spend more  time with  computers instead  in pubs, he
could be a very good coder :) But he's working on Ethernet card for ROM port and
cheap alternative of PC mouse adapter.
Elam (xe/f030?) - new member, mainly musician, but I saw some gfx from him, too.
Nir Dary (xe/?) - the newest member from Israel (!!!), mainly hardware freak and
collector of Atari things.
Lufa & GMX (xe) - inactive  members, Lufa was the co-author of Jurassic Park and
Te.MOD, GMX was (and still is) a very good musician... but now or PC :-(

Coolgirls [SK]

Totally  unexpected I got  in a mail  the beta  version of  their intro/demo for
Falcon. In  the time, when  you're reading  this, you'll probably  know what I'm
talking about, Moondog or someone will do the review certainly :)
But I'm shocked, really... girls !!! :-)

And some ppl like me, ppl who like demos and try to learn something... But don't
get me wrong, I'm talking about max 5-7 ppl!

Parties
-------

There are two main parties in our countries:

Atariada [CZ - since 1996] - more  an "Atari session" than  a real  scene party.
Simply you arrive, talk to ppl, buy some things, look what's new etc.

Forever 2e3 [SK - since 2000] - real, true, cool :)  scene party  for  (and only
for) 8 bit machines. Cool atmosphere, no  commerce, cool people, cool coders - I
really like it and we can thank Xi for taking part in it.

Except  these  parties we  can find  in CZ other  sessions  like "Atari Hody" or
"Platariada", but it's on the Atariada-base, no scene parties.

Atari Conference
----------------
Hehe, are  you are wondering what it is? :-) That's  the mailing list what I was
writing about, I really  don't know  why it's called a 'conference' :-) It's the
main (and probably only) possibility  to stay in  contact with other atarians in
sk/cz (since our government/telecommunications are bunch of loosers, we only can
dream about xDSL & online inet acces to home :-( ) except any party ofcoz.
But, as you can expect, sometimes it's full of deppression and negative feelings
about Atari, could you  believe that  people  like Petr Stehlik or  Jay Soft can
flame Atari, scene, new hardware etc? I can't.


So that it is... as you can  see, we're going smaller and smaller, but one thing
I can promise you: me and Xi will be here forever :-) We're true Atari fanatics,
we invest  tons :) of money to Atari hardware, Atari parties ... no  chance that
we'll give up !!! (hi to Tat/Avena ;)

                                                                           MiKRO

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mk20432@decef.elf.stuba.sk         XE/XL/MegaSTE/Falcon          mikro.atari.org
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