An international Atari-Party in the UK, that's not scene business as usual. The last big Atari Coding Convention probably was The Great British International ST Party (TGBISTP) back in 1992. That's 33 years ago! More recently however the UK Atari "crowd" has organised some cosy gatherings, such as Tathack 2020 or Psycho Hack 2024.
Buxton Bytes is the next round of those rather private installations, but escalated quickly as more and more scene friends declared sudden interest, so that the location was fully booked rather immediately. Seems as it was about time to fill this blind spot of having an Atari party in UK.
Can it be more UK than that?
The event was arranged by D-Bug and PHF, with Buxton-area based Tom being the main organizer. It took place from 14th to 17th of March 2025 in an unorthodox time span between Friday to Monday. This turned out as a major factor in terms of relaxation, as after a theoretical peak on Saturday, the whole Sunday was left to recover, talk and enjoy - with even another half Monday to have the usual „leaving procedure“ as a mix of cleaning, packing and coffee chats.
People were expected from UK, Greece and Germany. For us two, NO and 505, travel went rather smoothly. After arrival at Manchester airport we teamed up with tIn and Ggn.
She was slightly wrong. Starball was released 31 years ago. But still a warm welcome at Manchester airport.
Ggn luckily had the courage for taking us with him on a joint rental car ride to Buxton area. Despite all confusion on our side, he handled the left-hand traffic stoically with an amazingly well-working „don‘t worry“ mantra.
On our way on English roads through beautiful landscapes
It was certainly Greek black magic: the sheep suddenly moved aside when Ggn whispered „don‘t worry“.
Buxton castle
The event location was a lovely stone-built land house which also turned out to be a very comfortable multi-dorm holiday cottage, with nothing left to miss. The spot was located right in the green hobbit hills few miles away from Buxton. This area, the so called "Peak district" is a beautiful rocky and green mountain range close to the National Park. In fact the pitoresque scenery made me rub my German eyes a couple of times. I know it's not a very inadequate comparison, but it felt like in the middle of a Kerry Gold butter advert at times, just with sheep, and in England, but still.
The main room and kitchen was located downstairs, the bedrooms were spread in different corners of the house
The Fellowship
Tom welcomed us warmly at the party place and step by step more fellow sceners arrived: Exocet with his orange STE, Tat and gwEm, Tronic, who made his trip from the southern part of the country, Grazey, Adam Gilmore with his camper car and last but absolutely not least Modula with his bunch of ST hardware.
The visitors just arrived
Getting started
After arrival the setting up of tables and computers started. Both the kitchen room and the main room had the potential for putting up computer equipment, but in the end the main room was chosen, probably for practical reasons.
The Falcon standard desktop icons, outshining everything else at any party place
The first 72 hours of the Party
With the party flow it's always difficult to summarize the activities in a structured form. In the hindsight its often more like a long dream. So let me just see, what I remember. Firstly, the usual starting activities took place, as chatting, setting up and grocery shopping in the nearby town, Buxton.
The view outside the windows was steadily competing with the Atari screens. But after a period of acclimatization visitors adopted and Atari computing was possible again.
Busy Atarians ...
... enjoying the party!
PHF was so kind to get a huge bunch of frozen Pizza. This efficiently solved all food challenges for the first evening, to be enjoyed together at the party place.
Grazey, our hunter
A huge part of the hungry dozen
Without being chronologically correct, let me highlight a few memorable snippets from the party happenings:
The legendary Adam Gilmore being called "legendary Adam Gilmore" (TLAG) more often than not. More importantly he was seen inspecting XiAs maxYMizer guide and composing a new track right away at the kitchen table. This turned out as a really wonderfully composed and inspiring tune with very refreshing breaks! The track was showcased later in the evening inside a lovely co-production featuring Exocet's animation and Toms code, a major part of that done at the party. I am sure this can be found for download elsewhere at some point.
TLAG deep in maxYMiser land
Just as pleasant was Adams contribution as BBQ grillmaster, serving load of sausages, chicken pieces and burger paddies for the others, who directly threw their share of gwEm's Atari sauce on top of it and we had a meal!
The wide range of Atari BBQ sauces arrived just in time with DPD directly at the location. In fact the delivery process was a thriller right until the party began.
Around these welcome breaks of regaining energy, scene work was conducted for various productions, a good part of it to be used for the evenings showcase. In fact there were remarkably extensive, almost spiritual episodes of concentrated joint scene work going in the main room, with pixelling, composing and coding, but not talking. A personal highlight: a phase deep in the creative zone, when focused attendees joined in gwEm‘s high volume tracker composing efforts by unconsciously whistling the melody of the track, he has been working on 🎶
Coffee or tea?
Focused sceners ambience, a wonderful joint experience
The passing-by-sweetshop ...
... and-snack-buffet
Later on, gwEm also started working on a new maxYMiser version. If you didn't know: gwEm's software development studio is oriented horizontally on a couch. However, the tracker was later tested on Grazey's real hardware and finally released right at the party. This new version implements a number few long-wished deluxe features and bug fixes.
A coders moment
What else? tIn/Newline presented some interesting ideas and showed us a preview of his new approach on how to watch thousands of Atari ST executables in a comfortable browsing experience, right on the ST. I think we probably will hear about this project again.
Demoscene Academia discussing complicated things in front of a colorful conference poster.
At one point in the afternoon there was the Atariscne.org launch, with a little presentation of the website and the idea behind it. In this context also the announce-Cracktro by DHS was shown.
Atariscne.org - just launched!
Modula brought his nice looking, new Atari console, which was really interesting to try. Beside Atari Arcade classics, more recent games like Yoomp! (Atari XL/XE) and even Jaguar games are available and work really well.
The new Atari console is working really well.
All in all we counted 8 oldschool Atari 16/32 machines in place which is quite a ratio for 12 visitors. Besides classic 520 STFM and STE machines there was Grazey's Mega STe and Falcon 030. Some argued, the available Falcon with its 32 Bits shall count twice. However, the presence of the real hardware for sure added a lot to the general atmosphere.
Taking it easy was easy
Saturday afternoon was the time to visit Buxton, a very classy old English spa town with beautiful stone buildings and parks. After some sightseeing and shopping, a large group of the visitors ended up in an authentically crowded pub for a few drinks and some classic English food. It was awesome to experience, obviously the famous pub culture still exists, even if COVID has left its marks in many areas.
Looking like The Lost Boys, but they found their way to the pub
Cheers!
A TT-Hardisk-case-sized portion of Fish and Chips anyone?
After this massive food load we crawled back to the cars, went for shopping or back to the party place. At this point we have to give an honorable mention to Grazey and gwEm who dared to cycle down the gravel paths from the party place's mountain area with two folding bikes. Legend has it, that they were a bit less lively afterwards.
He's coming!
Counting cycles whenever they can
Buxton party folks being busy coding and composing
Happy people
YM-Rockerz testing the fence
„Fantasy Cracktro Showcases“
Back to the location the shared-flat feeling continued. Obvious climax of each night was, when "the crowd" gathered on the sofas near the big TV screen and enjoyed the productions sent in for the „fantasy cracktro“ showcase. So, what is this about? The organizers of Buxton Bytes decided to go for a less typical concept: an Atari demoscene party without competitions, voting and all that, but offering a cosy surrounding for showing productions of a imaginary "fantasy cracktro" category, allowing or let‘s say rather stimulating the production of basically everything that comes to mind.
The nightly showcasing - interestingly, I found myself several times reaching out for my imaginary vote sheet, a well-trained reflex by years of demo-partying
The idea is to avoid a sometimes stressful, sometimes unfair and sometimes humiliating competition scenario, as such observed during traditional demo party happenings or by personal experience. Why not become more free of traditional demoscene rule sets and expectations? Why not be more punk and allow everything and foremost, why not just appreciate and enjoy the output together as comrades instead of judging each other in fictive categories? Ironically, the „category“ of cracktros with its raw, cheeky and illegal character seemed to come handy to experiment with these ideas.
So, the classic and also rather easily achievable release form of a cracktro has its charm and obviously was a very motivating factor. Cracktros are rather simple to make and have a long tradition, and partly even may have an emotional aspect for those who grew up with them.
In consequence, an unstoppable landslide of cracktros started moving towards Buxton and rumours about a large number of submissions were circulating quickly. And I can confirm, that knowing that there are load of things to look forward to in the evening added a lot to the event :-)
Also Overlanders made their return with a beautiful fantasy cracktro dedicated to our dearly missed friend mOdmate
In fact, it was a very dynamic show distributed on the three evenings. Additional or updated fantasy cracktros arrived daily, if not hourly. So I think the organizers were also unexpectedly busy with that to some degree. All in all over 45 contributions were sent in and made the evenings such a fun time. Thanks a lot to all the contributors for that! It was a great show!
Grazey and Ggn was so kind to stream the sessions as an additional feature, so even more people and contributors could join the showcasing sessions.
Less is more - apart from streaming matters, this was the complete compo crews setup - actually it was mostly Ggn handling the STE with Gotek, a zeST with a lovely remote control plus display signal converters for the large TV set. A beamer, kindly organized by Modula, was not even necessary in the end. On top - Grazeys joystick. Various Adapters and Cables were supplied by several UK party visitors.
The releases should be available for download for further inspection elsewhere, but let me say, that there were all kind of remarkable, funny, average, artistic, stupid, vibrant, crazy, classic, simple and high tech intros, along with some real surprises, such as the sudden return of old ST scene veterans or even appearences from other platforms (Desire!). It was a very colorful mix definitely worth checking out.
Let me add, that the idea of showcases instead of competitions is not totally new. It is similar to what the Portugese Party organisers around ps introduced for their Inercia Party series. So apparently these kind of thoughts on the scene are a thing elsewhere, too. Both approaches may have their cons and pros, let‘s see how they find their place in future events for the good of the scene.
King's breakfast
The next morning, it was a very welcoming experience to be woken up by the smell of cooked bacon from the kitchen downstairs. After a quick shower we comfortably joined the awesome traditional English breakfast experience. gwEm was doing this for all the visitors on both days, Saturday and Sunday, in an extensive cooking session, about 1.5 hours each. Hats off and thanks so much for this extravaganza!
gwEm preparing English breakfast with toast, beans, sausages, mushrooms, eggs, bacon
Adam Gilmore brought another UK speciality from his local butchery: "Black Pudding", a sort of blood sausage to be cooked in a pan. It was served during the breakfast in English and Scottish flavours.
Astonishingly, this is not called Manchester Schwarzwurst but „Black Pudding“
English Breakfast - in full action!
Getting on top of the scene
As the national park is just few steps away and weather was with us most of the time, it was natural to enjoy the beautiful scenery a bit more with a little afternoon hike.
Unfortunately, I first missed the hill climbing group leaving. But as a more or less experienced ST gamer it was easy to spot the Lemmings up there and catch up.
As one may guess, the character of the hilly landscape is quite different from what we are used to in Germany. We saw huge meadows separated by typical stone walls, solitaire broad leaved trees and bushes and only few smaller forest stands. The landscape is speckled with rocks and a lichens overlay. And of course you have sheep in many places.
Tronic admiring the fullscreen voxels
The Buxton hikers - looks like a confident new democrew to me!
The wild and weather shaped English trees with their tangling arms may eventually explain the spiky tree model shown in Sonolumineszenz.
Although the hills are very beautiful and also feature a green surface, they couldn't fully compete with the ST Desktop in the end, so we returned to the party place, where the evening took its course.
Evening panorama view
What is going on, when you are hearing middle aged Englishmen swearing and cheering passionately in high frequency in the middle of the night? They play Kickoff-2, of course! This was big fun for both the players and spectators.
According to unreliable sources, Thomas Tuchel was looking through the windows at night, in search for good players.
The endpart
With this final sports event, Sunday was over. The next morning, some visitors had to leave early. The rest enjoyed a final sausage inferno by Adam Gilmore with even more Atari sauce. The hours until noon were spent talking, resting, computing and ultimately packing and cleaning.
The legendary Adam Gilmore got hold of Dubmood-sponsored vinyl
Tom, gwEm and NO doing things
After the party closed, we had the chance for a final trip to Buxton where Tom kindly guided us through the wonderful park and old town of Buxton, while we were chewing a classic backery item named Cornish pasty, a tasty sort of mince pie. We ended up having a very fine cardamon-orange flavoured coffee in a local coffee house, before we headed back to Manchester Airport. Thanks for the time and the ride, too, Tom!
What to say - the party was one of its own and the memories are still circulating. There was this trusty shared-flat-feeling on site, a rather personal experience, typical more for small-sized events. I am sure, one can speak for every participant and say, that this was a great piece of lifetime spent together! :-)
Thanks so much everyone!
(Photos were generously provided by the various Buxton Byters)
A bittersweet farewell with this Atari ST scener's shock moment at Manchester Airport: While I expected TLB to have marked their home territory it's obviously TBL dominating the spot.
Comments
I've been thinking a lot about why it might be that this "cracktro challenge" has brought people together so successfully. I'm sure there are many factors, but it has led me to reflect on the importance of providing different kinds of environments/contexts for being creative in the scene. Yes - there is always an important space for "big" parties, and compos, and constraints, and these do in some circumstances drive creativity and push individuals to great and boundary pushing releases. But the unintended consequences of that is that an entry bar is set so high, and inevitably the focus begins to fall on the hugest, most impressive releases, which can't help but put off people who have less time, space or feel they have less skills. I've done some big compo releases in previous years and I feel this myself.
It's also a mindset thing - so many people have mentioned how starting on a release can often feel really intimidating, even if they've done amazing things in the past. It's like stopping going to the gym and then feeling scared to start again ;)
What this showcase reminded me is that there is such incredible talent in and around the scene, but many many people may experience barriers to participation unless meaningful alternatives to the normal big compo set-ups are provided. Seeing some of the beautiful releases by people like HMD, Overlanders, Megabusters and Vectronix was a wonderful thing.
And finally, as someone quite new to the scene (I really only came onboard during the COVID years), this is the first time I've had the joy of having a sense of a creative community (in that, lots of people were all working on stuff around the same time, and invested in it somehow). Maybe that's how it was back in the day?- some of you old-timers can tell me that ;)
Love to all.
Cal
Glad you enjoyed Buxton and the Peak District.
I smiled at Grazey doing the Aldi checkout speed run experience! I'm guessing that the booze behind him was coming back to the party too.
Tom: so much interesting thinking in your words These fear and barriers are certainly there and considering the endangered niche we are in, we definitely profit from different entry levels for contributions to the scene.
Let me add that I think we have a rich situation with different kind of parties around. SV as sort of Atari Festival, Outline or 68Kinside as classic cosy oldschool parties, smaller intimate parties like SH or BB and more.
CiH: what happened to the bottles? I fear I somehow lost memory. But what I remember in a fuzzy way is the nightly question "Is this a good idea?" and a commonly agreed answer "ah, ok, a little one" in the kitchen area late Saturday night ;)
All: Thank you all for the feedback and please, just in case something comes to your mind that you consider worth sharing with other Atarisceners, think about writing up and share it with us here in an article. Even if its only a few words.
yes. Basically it was like that.. beeing on the party and working on the compo entry with you group mates. party coding, party pixeling and music creation. And yes at least, this kind of cliche thing can also found these days still on parties. Doing a Cracktro from scratch is something that is easy doable on one weekend starting from friday to sunday.
(I am already dreaming of a megademo loader/menu construction kit where you just "plugin" executables!)
Somehow this makes me dream that we can reactivate the Good Old Doors megademo project!
Very good job with this nice little party guys and this wonderful "Fantasy Cracktro Challenge" idea. I laughed many times. I had my eyes severely hurt by many colors cracktro (hi Zerkman). I yelled for you to reach the PONG game. I cried when the stream was freezing. Lots of emotions with many releases. Just loved that
As a non-active-demoscener , just an observer, this Fantasy Cracktro Challenge teleported me back to what drew me to the Atari ST back in the days although I never had one in my youth.
The number of quality releases this initiative sparked, wow !
Thank you to everyone involved.
I agree there's something liberating about working on smaller prods – not necessarily cracktros, but single-screen releases. They're much easier to commit to because you don't feel you need to deliver a daunting amount of assets. Getting to a good level of polish is also a lot more manageable when you don't need to take into account multiple screens. They can also be mostly worked on at the party place, which means more interaction with your partners in crime and a faster iteration process. I think that format also allows for a lot more experimentation and it gives a venue for styles or concepts that couldn't really extend to a full demo. So more of this please!
The cracktro challenge was a great idea, so nice to see it motivated so many people, resulting in so many good productions. Congratulations everyone!
The cracktro challenge was a great idea which made it accessible for all which made it great fun.
So many great people in a great venue with some great weather to boot!
Thanks for the invite, looking forward to next year!