Alternative Party, Gloria, Helsinki, 11-13.1.2002.

Both physical and virtual windows missing.

A hall full of bizarre computers and enthusiastic people. A band playing music with a Gameboy and a trumpet. A speech synthesizer from the early eighties announcing "Starbase one under attack!".

It's the Alternative Party, an event for nerds who love hardware which has more spirit than a regular dull office pc. Those that know the magic may show their skills in demo and music competitions. But guru level knowledge is not required to enter: despite all the machines it's above all a social event.

The party place
The venue was nice and big enough for a couple of hundred visitors.
Atari as a way of life
Atari Falcons powered the booth of these guys from the UK.
Magnavox Odyssey
Magnavox Odyssey, the ultimate gaming box from 1972.
Commodore CBM 8032 from the PET series
Commodore CBM 8032 had advanced features like a double 800 kB floppy drive.
No I Ain't
No I Ain't had the most brutal instruments.
CNCD used a Gameboy among other instruments
Tero's C64 set rocked and CNCD (in the picture) created a more ambient feeling.
Epävire behind the synthesizers
Epävire shared the first place with Nosfe & co. in the "here are a couple of synths, start playing" competition.
Didges are nice.
Bass Cadet played a didgeridoo.
The info screen
The guys from Redmond weren't entirely forgotten - this MSX was running Microsoft Basic.
Analogue graphics entries
The analogue graphics competition.
Overhead projector competition
The only entry for the overhead demo compo was from tAAt but they did it with style.
tAAt guys chatting with RJ Mical
One of the original Amiga designers RJ Mical was a much awaited guest.
An SGI Indigo from 1991
A dead battery and broken keyboard connector contributed to the "hack the SGI" challenge.
Credits of The Song and Dance Machine
This must have been a happy design team (the graphics board of the SGI).
A subset of the collection of Pelikonepeijoonit
Pelikonepeijoonit had the best collection of obscure stuff.
A ZX Spectrum clone from the former Czechoslovakia
Didaktik M came with cool software - too bad the Perestroika floppy was broken.
  Mattel Intellivision with the computer module
The info screen was frequently replaced by games - Mattel Intellivision attached here.
A Mattel game
These fancy graphics are from the Mattel enhanced with a special computer module.
 
Competition entries, results and more pictures are available at Timo Liuska's site. Check out this article (in Finnish) at Peliplaneetta too.
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Copyright Arto Teräs <ajt@iki.fi> 2002.
Redistribution of this document as a whole or any of the pictures individually is permitted in any medium provided this copyright notice is preserved.

Last update 18.01.2002.