In April 1999 the German magazine Amiga Fever looked back ten years, to when scene meetings in Venlo had been for insiders only. Now, it complained, a big party such as The Party in Denmark was open to anyone, and so full of kids who came only to play 3D shooters on the network that the real coders, artists and musicians were almost lost in the flood. Mekka & Symposium promised something else. For six Easters, from 1997 to 2002, it filled the Heidmarkhalle in Fallingbostel, a small town between Hamburg and Hanover, with Amiga, PC and Commodore 64 sceners, and its organisers went as far as banning Quake to keep it that way. A Danish reporter called the 1997 party the best-organised demo party ever.
Fast facts
- Held: every Easter from 1997 to 2002, from Good Friday to Easter Monday.
- Where: the Heidmarkhalle, Fallingbostel, Lower Saxony, Germany.
- Before it: two separate parties at Easter 1996, the PC party Mekka and the all-format Symposium, both at Burg Seevetal near Hamburg.
- Size: almost 1,000 visitors in 1998, according to Amiga Fever; about 1,200 in 2000, according to Amiga Advis.
- After it: Breakpoint (2003–2010) held the German Easter party next, then Revision from 2011.
Two parties in 1996
The name joins two parties. Mekka ’96, “organized by amable”, was a PC party, held from 29 to 31 March 1996 at Burg Seevetal in Hittfeld, south of Hamburg; Demozoo records about 300 visitors, and its results were signed by Ambient Move and Landru. Fatal Justice’s Blasphemy won the demo competition.
A week later, over Easter weekend from 5 to 8 April, the same venue hosted Symposium ’96. Its invitation explains that three German organising teams had joined forces for it: the people behind the 680XX-Convention of 1993, the Black Box Symposium of 1995 and the Fried Bits parties. They promised a party for “all the platforms which are important in the guild of the demomakers”, the Amiga, the PC, the C64, the Acorn Archimedes and the Atari ST and Falcon, for 35 marks at the door, and they were clear about what they did not want: “we don’t want to rent huge congress centres… we don’t want to make money.” Among the groups involved were Polka Brothers, Lego and Phantasm on the Amiga, Cubic Team on the PC, Avena and Absence on the Atari and Oxyron on the C64. Artwork’s The Gate won the Amiga demo competition.
In 1997 the two became one party, Mekka & Symposium, and moved to Fallingbostel.
The first Mekka & Symposium
Mekka & Symposium ’97 ran from 28 to 31 March 1997. Martin Halberg of the Danish magazine Amiga Advis wrote that many people had been badly disappointed by The Party in Denmark the previous December: it had grown big and commercial, and hundreds of non-sceners with their network games spoiled the atmosphere. Mekka & Symposium was different: “you quickly noticed that the organisers were active in the scene themselves”. It was, he thought, the first party that could boast of having no delays at all, because the organisers had recorded every entry on VHS tape in advance and only had to press play. The price was the picture and sound quality. His verdict: “without doubt the best-organised demo party ever”, with the demo scene at the top of the list of priorities.
The results file lists competitions for the Amiga, the PC and the C64, plus graphics, music, ANSI art, a 32K game competition and a fast intro competition. Artwork’s Megademo IV won the Amiga demo competition by six points, 258 to 252 for Arsenic’s Fear Factory. Deathstar’s Claudia won the PC demo competition and Smash Designs’ Project Pitchfork the C64 one. Sanction’s Omniscent won the PC 4K intro competition with 592 points, more than twice the runner-up.
Fallingbostel at Easter
The party kept its shape for five more years, each with its own motto: “we are family” in 1998, “MS2k-1” in 1999, “expect nothing” in 2000, “demo scene olympics” in 2001 and “defenders of the scene” in 2002.
Amiga Fever’s preview of the 1999 party gives the practical details. Entry cost 60 marks. The hall at An der Heidmarkhalle 1 had room for 1,200 visitors and their equipment, with a separate sleeping hall, and the competitions were shown on a 6-metre by 4-metre screen with a proper sound system. The magazine estimated that perhaps 40 per cent of visitors would bring a PC and the rest mostly Amigas, which made it “an absolute Amiga event”. There was a network with an internet connection, and voting could be done online. The 1999 party also held a competition for demos on the Sony PlayStation, won by Haujobb’s Orgonakkumulator.
In 2000 Amiga Advis sent its reporter Dreyer on one of two coaches from Copenhagen and Aalborg; nearly 80 Danes came, about 60 of them by coach. He put the crowd at about 1,200 sceners and found that, unlike The Party, The Gathering and Assembly, Symposium was attended mainly by people who made demos. One way the organisers kept the network-game players away was to ban Quake. Another was to offer a network that worked but was nothing special. The German Commodore 64 magazine GO64! reported the same party: a SID-Station synthesiser demonstration, a concert by the band Welle:Erdball, who played two pieces entirely on a Commodore SX-64, and prizes that included flight tickets. The Danish group Loonies won the Amiga demo competition with Cybercinematastic, and Crest and Oxyron’s Deus Ex Machina won the C64 demo competition with 362 points to 284 for Plush’s +H2K.
Not everyone thought the big parties were getting better. In September 1999 GO64! wrote that the bigger parties, The Party and Mekka & Symposium among them, were losing popularity because of rising entrance fees and commercialism, and that many sceners now preferred small meetings.
Winners
The organisers’ results name these winners of the main demo competitions.
| Year | Amiga | PC | C64 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Megademo IV, Artwork | Claudia, Deathstar | Project Pitchfork, Smash Designs |
| 1998 | Aphrodisiae, Haujobb | The Fulcrum, Matrix | Our Darkness, Keine Ahnung |
| 1999 | Mnemonics, Haujobb | Event Horizon, Smash Designs | 1st Demo III, Driss |
| 2000 | Cybercinematastic, Loonies | Sleepless, Smash Designs | Deus Ex Machina, Crest |
| 2001 | Perfect Circle, The Black Lotus | Le Petite Prince, Kolor | Royal Arte, Booze Design |
| 2002 | Little Nell, The Black Lotus | Adrenalin, Smash Designs | La Linea, Breeze |
In 2002, the last year, the PC demo competition had 41 entries, and farbrausch’s fr-020: In Control came third. Demozoo records about 1,400 visitors paying 40 euros each.
Breakpoint and Revision
The 2002 party was the last. At Easter 2003 a new party, Breakpoint, was held in Bingen am Rhein, and The Black Lotus won its Amiga demo competition with Magia. In November 2004 the German magazine Amiga Insider called it the Breakpoint demo party, “ehemals Mekka & Symposium” (formerly Mekka & Symposium), and the one place each Easter where Amiga productions still arrived in a flood. Breakpoint ran until 2010. The team that started Revision in Saarbrücken in 2011 included former organisers of Mekka & Symposium as well as of Breakpoint.
Sources
- Mekka ‘96, official results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): “organized by amable”, demo competition. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1996/mekka96/results.txt
- Demozoo, Mekka 1996 (web, secondary): dates, Burg Seevetal in Hittfeld, about 300 visitors, a PC-only party. https://demozoo.org/parties/824/
- Symposium ’96, invitation text (web, secondary copy): the three organising teams, platforms, dates, venue, entry fee, aims, groups involved. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1996/symposium96/info/sym96inv.zip
- Symposium ‘96, official results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): Amiga demo competition. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1996/symposium96/results.txt
- Mekka & Symposium ‘97, official results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): competitions, placings and points. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1997/mekka97/results.txt
- Martin Halberg, “Symposium-Mekka ’97 reportage”, Amiga Advis (Denmark) issue 4/97, p. 12: dates, place, the organisers, VHS recording, verdict.
- Mekka & Symposium 1998 to 2002, official results (web, secondary copies of the organisers’ files): mottos, demo competition winners, the 1999 PlayStation competition, the 2002 PC demo competition. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1998/mekkasymposium98/results.txt and the matching files for 1999 to 2002.
- Malte Mundt, “Scene Inside - MekkaSymposium”, Amiga Fever (Germany) issue 4, April 1999: Venlo and the network gamers; dates, venue, entry fee, capacity, screen, platforms, network, almost 1,000 visitors in 1998.
- GO64! (Germany), September 1999: the big parties losing popularity.
- Dreyer, Mekka/Symposium 2000 report, Amiga Advis (Denmark) issue 5/2000, p. 20: attendance, Danish visitors, the Quake ban, events, Loonies’ win.
- Wanja Gayk, “Mekka 2000 - expect nothing”, GO64! (Germany) issue 7/2000, p. 16: the SID-Station, Welle:Erdball, prizes.
- Demozoo, Mekka & Symposium 2002 (web, secondary): dates, about 1,400 visitors, 40-euro entry, the sixth and final edition. https://demozoo.org/parties/238/
- Breakpoint 2003, official results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): dates, Bingen, Amiga demo competition. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/2003/breakpoint03/results.txt
- Amiga Insider (Germany) issue 3, November 2004: “Breakpoint … (ehemals Mekka & Symposium)”.
- Revision 2011, “General information”, organisers’ website (web, secondary): organisers from Breakpoint and Mekka & Symposium. https://2011.revision-party.net/about/general.html