Floppy 2004 ? ?The Smell Of Data? 27–29. February 2004 

Written by: Carl Gustaf Liebe

The Place

First time for this scener to be at the Floppy party (and the second party, after last year?s tremendous LCP in Link?ping, Sweden) in Helsingborg, Sweden. The Floppy party took place in a somewhat similar place like LCP, in some kind of studio (The Tip Top Club) for artists on their way to something great. The party was situated in the main room with some grand loudspeakers and a white screen for the projector. Tables were aligned with C64?s only and the bar and the control center was situated in the back. Some strange door with bars (like in an old American police movie you would find that this door leads to the prisoners? department) lead to a secret place where only the arrangers were admitted to go. I wonder what was so special down there in that hallway? 

After some confusion on how to get there, I finally met up with the Germans in Graham?s (Oxyron) red audi by Helsingor station (Hooray for boobies!!!). The Germans were of course Graham/Oxyron, Slator/Onslaught, Ninja/The Dreams and Doc Bacardi/The Dreams. After a crazy boat ride to the other side of the water we drove around for a bit, until we finally found a Floppy sign – a 5.25 black disk with the words ?Floppy 2004? painted on them (nice sign, people, but can you make a little bigger next time?). 

Entering the main room that sweet sid sound would fill your ears right away ? not the sound from emulators ? but from real C64?s mind me. Good old demos were projected on the big screen, and after having dropped my gear, this was the place I immediately went to ? the control center with Jucke?s C64. To browse his disks was a dream ? he had all the good old demos from the golden times of the rise of the scene. Seeing ?So-Phisticated 3? and the still amazing Black Mail demos were cool. Jucke even had Pri?s original compo entry player w. the tune for the Aars party 1992. All cool and the experience was all good with a cool Flensburger Pilsner in the other hand, stuff brought by Graham to the place. 

Meeting up with the cool people from LCP 2003 was indeed an experience too. Some new folks (old folks) were there too that I hadn?t seen before. 

The Surroundings

It was absolutely no problem getting to anything as the place was in the middle of the town. Good food: pizza, kebabs, thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese ? you name it. 711 for sodas, Systembolaget for anything else than sodas (still expensive though, and the opening hours do suck ?. Sorry!!!!). Toilet facilities at the place were good, but where the h*** was the soap in the bathroom? If you needed to sleep you would just go under the table like in the good old days, or find some random place like I did, in some obscure locale a bit a bit away from the main room, just at the end of the main hall. Some strange dude had taken a dump in that room where I slept (really!) ? how would anyone want to do that? Or could it have been a dog some time ago? I don?t know, but I feel pity for that guy who slept in it the first night. His sleeping bag was a mess. Strange thing was, you couldn?t smell it, so it must have been old shit. Enough about that. Macx / Onslaught even took an entrance fee for entering the place to see the shit, when the word went around. I really hope someone would clean the mess up before Floppy 2005. Enough shit talk, the place was cool and Helsingborg is a nice town. If you need to withdraw some cash from your visa, by the way, the ?Bankomat? is located in the Scanlines building (the big building). 

Compos

No special events were arranged in compo-context, like wild compos or non-c64 compos, this time it was pure C64 compos. The compos were 

C64 demo compo
C64 graphics como
C64 music compo

As always it is hard to sit through compo (but not as hard as on LCP), actually it went a bit smoother. Nice demos from some good old groups like Triad and Fairlight ,? hey Fairlighters I noticed the raster bars from your classy intro from your demo, but where was the Druid tune??? ;-(

Prices were sponsored by Doc Bacardi and Mermaid. No money prices ;-(

Deadline for the compos were moved from 22.00 HRS to some hours later ? why did we have to wait so long, and suffer for so long until the main event? But anyway Mermaid and Ninja were able to finish a nice demo because of that, so hats off for that !!

Conclusion

Floppy was smaller than LCP, but that is Floppy and the cool thing about it. The good thing is that there were (almost) no emulated C64?s but pure C64?s? the good old demos were fun to watch again. Nice surroundings, the locales were a bit crowded because of the small room, so the air was a bit unhealthy, but what can you do about smokers (?).. hand them a beer and tell them it?s ok (?). Helsingborg is cool place and a good place for Floppy. See ya next (maybe, if I don?t feel too old for this). 

Signed

Yaemon/dmd

Party photos

You can download the releases here.
Check all party photos here and here and here. Credits for photos should go to Mermaid, Wrath Designs, and MACX