JagFest UK 2003 continued...

From a retail perspective, JagFest blurred the lines between a scene convention and computer show as we know it. JagFest started as, and still very much has its roots in the former. Although the American editions have enjoyed strong retail presence thanks to domestic developers and ardent supporters such as Songbird, we Brits have never had a convention scene (or even scene convention) of note, and are more used to the traditional buyer/seller division, market stall style. In short, there was enormous opportunity for spending even more enormous sums of money at JagFest UK, even the MyAtari stand was selling official Atari retail promotion material, not to mention smart Atari pocket calculators. Obviously 16/32 provided the bulk of wallet temptation, and I regret only budgeting £150 for the entire weekend including expenses. I couldn't even afford one rotary controller after those deductions.

Come opening time, the visitors poured in thick and fast. Local lad Thund3r (James Perrow) was borrowing my tools to open up his Jaguar within minutes:

I'd had my Jag for a while which I had borrowed off a friend and he said he tried various power supplies for it, but when I asked Stone about it on MSN why it didn't work he said it was fried, so I went to JagFest with the Jag and gave it to Stone, he wanted to show me what had blown inside it. I then bought a second hand NTSC Jag from Nick for £15 so I could play! I also took part in the Worms tournament with Ryan but sadly he won and I got a cart copy of Checkered Flag from Stone, and Ryan won a brand new Lynx. Stone and I also tried Doom deathmatch for a short while but it kept crashing so we gave up in the end.

Matthew Preston was running various emulations on his desktop PC, such as XL/XE, and 2600 (Yar's Revenge getting an inordinate amount of play time). He also demonstrated Atari's new Enter the Matrix PC game.

On Matthew's iPaq the emulation goodness continued, with Atari 800 and also Atari ST games. I remember in 1987 Atari advertised the 520ST with 20 free games bundled and the screen-shot on the machine itself was of International Karate. Those graphics were astounding to your average 10-11 year old kid. They weren't photo-realistic but had sufficiently more colours than the 8-bit systems to take on that stylized, cartoon-like arcade game quality of the era. Now everything is aiming for more and more realism, we've lost that charm.

Another local chap, Stephen Morton, brought his two nephews along. They played on the MyAtari stand and achieved some very impressive scores on Tempest 2000 (only to be blown apart by the formidable Frenchman Pocket later in the day!) and tried out Enter the Matrix. Stephen is one of the Retrovision gang and it's worth pointing out that Mark Rayson, as well as Jeff Minter and the legion of followers normally to be seen at RV, didn't make it to JagFest, regrettably. To be honest, there was at times hardly space to move even without the Retrovision crowd, so in the nicest possible way perhaps it was good we didn't have any more company, though I'm sure Jeff would have been well chuffed to see so many Jaguars running Tempest 2000. Next time, hopefully, maybe in a bigger venue.

Tea and sandwiches arrived for lunch courtesy of the hotel caterers, who placed them by the front of the 16/32 stand - great marketing strategy there, Nick! Our French visitors, Pocket, Odie One and Xirius came just in time for the food. Ham salad and some breeze blocks of cheese in bread were on offer, with fried onions and sundries (or bits for customizing the sandwiches?). I fancied a proper lunch, and after some false starts where plenty of people said they'd join me for a lunch out in the town centre, nobody actually came with me, until Ben Hills turned up, sporting a fresh haircut. He knew MyAtari was armed to the teeth with cameras!

After a long, delayed journey, a wholesome lunch was what Ben needed. We headed out of the front door, just as a red car parked up and its driver waved at us, so we just waved back. It took a few moments for me to realize it was a very late Thomas Wellicome, with a tan and much longer hair than I remember at Retrovision. "Who was that French geezer?!" I had remarked to Ben...

The three of us voted unanimously in favour of taking the car into the town centre to find some food, despite Thomas rightly moaning about having just driven five hours to get to JagFest! After sweeping aside half a ton of fragments of pottery and other ancient artefacts (what else would you expect to find inside an archaelogist's car?) Ben and I were able to squeeze onto the scorching hot passenger seats. In retrospect we needn't have driven, as the place we parked was well within walking distance. Strolling along beautiful Rochester High Street, taking in the views, we didn't recognize a single shop name (no McDonald's here...). Every passing café and bar looked more interesting than the last, until we realized this wasn't getting us any food. Back we went into a quiet Italian restaurant. It later transpired that the night before, 17 Friday JagFesters crashed into the same restaurant just before closing time, causing quite a stir!

Pizza and coffee would be nice, as would a car without a parking fine, Thomas realizing that he hadn't bought a ticket. Off he shot to sort that out while I notified Matthew back at the hotel to set up one more table and the TFT display for Thomas' Milan when we got back.

One pizza featured spinach - when it arrived, it looked like a garden was growing on top, a huge bunch of raw leaves literally just dumped on after baking, all loose. Our acceptance of freshly ground black pepper was delivered by a grinder the size of a personal rocket launcher, while the grated Parmesan wafted gracefully from a funky battery-powered contraption.

Once back from lunch the real action started. Thomas set up his Milan, and some of us discovered we were to be playing in tournaments, or had missed rounds due to being out at lunch. To be fair to the organizers there was a programme of events, I can only say there was too much excitement in the air for anyone to pay too close attention. Maybe a leaflet-sized programme for each visitor would have helped. I got continually slaughtered in Stone's Worms tournament, much to the amusement of spectators! It certainly looks a fun game once you master the controls, which TXG did, and bought the game and played it to destruction. Unfortunately, network problems plagued the Air Cars tournament.

Meanwhile in the bar room Matthew Bacon carried on developing the Ataritoday and MyAtari web sites, answering so many questions from onlookers that he lost his voice after the event!

Mr Pink of Reservoir Gods finally turned up mid-afternoon, how fitting that there was a lively little GodPey tournament on James Haslam's Falcon.

Around 17:00 I was becoming more and more conscious that Thomas was only attending for the Saturday, I had promised to upgrade his Milan while he was there. Out came the soldering iron and I opened up the Milan's case while that heated up.

30 minutes later and with the help of some super glue borrowed from the hotel because I'd forgotten to bring my preferred adhesive, Evo Stik, Thomas could proudly show off a blinding beacon of cool blue light emanating from the front of his wonder machine. I stopped short of modifying the matching black keyboard because these are often trickier and I thought Thomas was leaving very soon (wrong again).

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MyAtari magazine - Feature #2, July 2003