Revision 2025 Report

So last year at GEMTOS I was told by the French Atari sceners I should attend Revision and as such I decided to do so. 

505 asked me if I wanted to write a report for Atariscne.org and of course I said YES.
Please note that all my comments and views are my personal ones.

My very first Revision, in the meanwhile I knew that Prodatron (SymbOS CPC) was already arriving on Thursday so I also left on Thursday.

Wearing my ABBUC "Tour-Kutte", an initiative of our ABBUC president after I mentioned that we didn’t have sweaters and I was planning to go to several events.

All Atari related events mentioned on a sweater, that deserves a thumb up when you are ready to leave Belgium at 05:00 in the morning. (mandatory eye-bags)

So after a 8 hour trip with trains and busses instead of a 5 hour trip, I arrived at Saarbrucken. Then off to my Airbnb which was luckily situated at Saarbrücken Burbach, a 7 minute walk to E-Werk. Met up with Prodatron and we hung out in a Irish Pub in the evening.

On to Friday the 1st day of Revision, around 11:00 AM I went to meet up with Prodatron again who had assigned seats for the French Amstrad CPC sceners. 

We then hung outside drinking beer and waiting for the official opening of the doors at 12:00 well more 12:30. I immediately saw two familiar faces, both working in the organization:

Merlin, who I’ve met at Fujiama

and Franky of Royal Belgian Beer Squadron, who I’ve met at ShadowParty 2024.

This is what the hall looked like on Friday:

And immediately I met some more familiar faces from ShadowParty 2024 in France.

Callisto of ShadowParty

whose husband also brought some nice Pinball machines to E-werk

Callisto with to the right her son Marek

A bit fuzzy in this previous picture but I found them on the Photowall of Revision. 
Dr.Snuggles and his wife and L-Sync (chiptune artist)

In the meanwhile the French Amstrad CPC scene arrived and installed themselves next to me...

I myself since I was travelling with a backpack only brought 2 laptops with me:
A Macbook Pro M1 and a Motorola 68K laptop … 

Later in the evening it was time for the official opening ceremony.
This first started with remembering all the people we have lost since the previous Revision. A lot of familiar crews, 3 people stood out to me since I have met and/or known them.

• RIP m0dmate
• RIP Shadow272
• RIP PapyCPC

Then it continued with the Meteoriks awards, a nice selection of productions, one belonging to SMFX.

We then had the Shader Showdown Qualifications presented by psenough with 2 familiar faces competing Peregrine and Marex. I also finally got the chance to speak with psenough and thank him for his demoscene reports on Youtube, he really appreciated the feedback.

I seem to have missed the Belgium Beer seminar but since I am half Belgian that won’t be held against me I hope.

First DJ set of the evening was DJ Jefke and I was starting to get suspicious, playing ACID music, and the more I stood there dancing I was thinking this is basically my youth years in Belgium. And then he dropped Average Rob’s “On met la Patate”.

Frankie (RBBS) looked at me and we both shocked several Germans by shouting out the lyrics and acting like … Belgians, YES WE LOVE BONZAI RECORDS.

By this time I was convinced DJ Jefke was a fellow Belgian.

After his set we were treated to another killer DJ duo DAN/Lemon + h0ffman. Absolutely love their musical style and taste.

Around 2:30-03:00 I decided to call it a night and went to go to sleep.

On to Saturday the 2nd day of Revision

First interesting event for me was around 12:00, the Tracked Music compo.
Some outstanding tracks for me personally.

• I Dream with a Machine Compo-Spec by SampleMind
• Notes! by JosSs
• Hyperburner by zabutom / Razor 1911^Up Rough#
•  Zauberwald - by Slash_AtD / RPSG
• Samsara by W.O.T.W.
• E1M777 by MASTER BOOT RECORD & Dubmood / Razor 1911
• Daemon Dismemberment by Mibri / Atlantis ^ MultiStyle Labs ^ Proxima
• And for giggles, a Gabber tune called Get The Duck Out by BUS ERROR Collective / Teletype Corporation

I then discovered Club Mate which I had never drunk before, it is an acquired taste. It was quite sunny on Saturday opposed to the darker rainy cold Thursday and Friday.

So we hung around outside and some of the French CPC guys had to represent their Normandy heritage.

Du pain du vin et du … Camembert ? YUMMY.

Some other highlights, I met a fellow Apple PowerPC/m68K enthusiast and we talked about programming Assembler on these machines.

Also met a lady who was trying to install A/UX on a classic Macintosh via a SCSI CD-ROM.

She told me on Sunday she had gotten it installed after 1 day.

Around dinner time, I stumbled upon this person with an interesting t-shirt. Havoc of the Outline demo party, on the left to me. Nice chatting some Netherlands with you. Hope to make it to Outline.

At a certain moment at the bar, I even got into a conversation with a Zuid-Afrikaan since Dutch and Afrikaans sound alike.

Interesting side-note, the GEMTOS 2024 t-shirt I’m wearing.

Whilst standing outside smoking I was approached by an Englishman asking me for a lighter. He then pointed out, that it was funny I had that font (the GEMTOS word) on a t-shirt with an Atari logo.

It was DAN/Lemon, who created the font for his Anarchy logo in the Madness demo on AMIGAAAA.

I told him I would let Manu, the organizer of GEMTOS know that we were using an Amiga font on an Atari event t-shirt LOL

In the midst I catched a glimpse of Los Pat Moritas, a nice DJ set mixing classic chiptunes/songs with a merengue/salsa vibe.

Havoc (Outline) was serving aperos, cheese, boterhamworst etc on a platter around the stage/bar with these nice little flags/toothpicks in them.

Sorry I ate it, only kept the flag as a souvenir.

I then had dinner and due to the timetable running behind I missed
the start of the Ansi/Ascii/Petscii compo.

Some familiar names and nice entries from ne7, jun3, spiny, necro, ND, Aki.

Then it was time for the Oldschool Music compo.

• Fret by Modest^RMDA (ZX Spectrum)
• Three Five by Chavez (Amiga)
• Private Investigator 4Me! by Cyril Payet / Doclands (Arkostracker Atari ST)
• Had to submit something (so might as well be this thing) by dubmood / Razor 1911^D-bug (Atari Ste)
• Null Sector by nooly (Atari 2600)

After this came the Photos, 3D graphics, Animation/Video compos.

Then it was time for another concert.

MasterBootRecord (MBR) played a really nice concert, remixing classic tunes into metal songs or metal songs about FTP. I never knew FTP could sound so aggressive LOL.

Followed by a nice Gameboy chiptune artist arottenbit, can’t really describe his style.

Then we had the next compos

Amiga Intro

• retro32 by moods plateau, a nice BBStro for the Amiga Retro32 BBS, shout out to TTE.
• 68k Inside 2025 by Dekadence, nuff said  

PC 4K Intro

• Vitrage by Altiga
• RASTERIZE by Theron
• Mycosphere Rising by NuSan#
• Hexer by LJ

256 Byte Intro

• Mana Fortress by Whaaag
• Enchanted by Desire & Darklite#
• Party.DLL by Desire & Haujobb

Oldskool Demo

• More Impossible by Lex, a nice call for making more demos
• FettenBass by MC Affenschnitzel, Gospodarek und Dr. Evil, a nice remix of a familiar song
• 3DMANIAKS2 by iMPACT, a nice CPC+ demo by french group IMPACT
• Lost World by Desire, finally an Atari 8-bit demo, nice one Desire
• The Trip by Fairlight, a nice theme and story in this demo
• Vaporous by TTE, a nice NeoGeo demo by likes of h0ffman amongst others

After this I stuck around for the 2 concerts

• lug00ber b2b messy and
• Visage / Lethargy b2b Vincenzo

But decided to call it a night at 03:00 AM.

And so we come to my final day at Revision, Sunday

The place was a lot busier, a lot of people arrived Saturday afternoon/evening I guess.

I met a few fellow Atarians and we decided to take some pictures on the Revision Photowall. It really was a pleasure meeting Gunstick (Atari Underground Chiptune Resistance) and thank Lotek for all his archiving efforts throughout the years (Fujiology/SDNH/FadingTwilight)

top left to right: JAC, SvOlli, Samurai, Lotek
bottom left to right: LaSTiC (Rebel shirt), Ramses (Deadline), Gunstick

when then found Havoc and his friend Dubmood and decided to take another picture

Also took the time to take some picture of the CPC machines...

Prodatron’s SymbOS 6128 with A LOT of expansion modules

A demonstration machine provided by Elliot/BND.

Memory Full – a CPC demoscene history book by Hicks/VANITY

64NOPS – a relative New CPC magazine focused on coding,etc …

A picture of fellow CPC and Atari Germans...

left to right: Prodatron, JAC!, Octoate

And off course I had to take a group picture with all the Amstrad CPC sceners which I’ve gotten to know since Benediction Coding Party/Fujiama and Revision itself.

top to bottom – left to right:
(the big guy in the back MADRAM, Sim1/SCOOPEX, Hicks/VANITY, Krusty/BND, Beb, Offset, Targhan (only half on the right), Zik, Toms, Prodatron/SYMBOS,Elliot/BND, Golem13, PulkoMandy, Apollo, LaSTiC, Cracky, Octoate)

My thanks to  Hicks/VANITY, Targhan/ArkosTracker, Elliot/BND for all the help, bugfixes even personalized beta releases and tips, I cannot express how much this means to me.

Sometimes face to face is more efficient/productive than the internet. Guess that’s why we are lucky to still have these events to be able to meet IRL.

Then there were some more compos:

• Executable Music
• Streaming Music
• Modern Graphics
• Fast Music: I GOT CRAZY from the 6 or 7 Blitter BAM BAM,COPPER,COPPER BAMBAM remixes,aaargh.
• 4K Executable Graphics
• Oldskool Graphics
• WILD

Some really nice entries here, go check them out on Demozoo.

Top of my head a Garmin Sportswatch (RBBS), lft doing his thing, an Altair AMSTRAD thing by somebody from TRSi, an 5-bit sample playback on the KC/85, Oscilloscope demos, Vectrex demos, for me personally aside from the Oldskool compos this was really my favorite thing to witness.

• Fantasy Console
• Animated GIF
• Paintover
• Game
• Oldskool 4K Intro (I MISSED IT GODDAMMIT WHILST GOING on a smoke break)

4deKades by Creative People for Cpc, yep created and released by the guys sitting next to me. A dedication to 40 Years Amstrad CPC.

4k-Wavy by By Oxygene, yes Oxygene of Atari ST fame made a Amiga 4K intro.

We then had a nice concert around 22:00 (not 20:00 like the timetable stated LOL) by Lynn Drumm playing some nice jungle and drum'n bass tracks.

Prodatron was busy with troubleshooting something on an CPC. I found a bowtie, gave it to him and he thus performed his SYMBOS install ceremony with style.

Around that time it was almost 23:30 and since I had to get up at 05:00 AM to get on a bus back to Belgium, I missed the following compos:

• PC 8K Intro
• PC 64K Intro
• Amiga Demo
• PC Demo

Monday morning at 06:00 AM I started my bus rides back to Belgium, tired, head buzzing but fulfilled.

If I would have to summarize Revision, it is a very open-hearted demoscene event. I saw such a diverse amount of people just hanging around, being themselves, enjoying their time there be it dancing, coding, drinking, enjoying the visuals.

It is a multi platform event so if you get tired of Amiga/PC/C64/pico-80 demos you will have to struggle but looking at it from an machine-independent demo-scener side it is a masterpiece.

If I had to invite a non retro/demoscener friend to an event, this would be it. The sound, the visuals, the location, the atmosphere.

And I tip of my hat to the organisers, WOW, it is a work of beauty, passion and labor, one can tell.