DECAY - THAT WAS THEN... by Wiz of Oz/Decay The following is basically just my views of how things have changed over the past 5 years in regards to my group Decay and the scene in general. I'll ignore the 4 or so years before 1990 as they're probably a bit boring and nothing of notable interest really happened then! 1990 Decay started back in 1990 when myself and the original members decided to leave our current group ("Freedom Force" which at that time was in co-operation with "Amiga Industries") because there was nothing happening and we weren't gaining any benefits from this group. We almost joined with some guys down south (Vic, Aus.) to create a new group, but we didn't (I can't remember the details properly, but there was a bit of a disagreement or something) and so Decay was born. These were the days when all swapping was done by mail and if you got something that was about 7 - 14 days old it was VERY hot stuff. Our first creation was actually made for us by Piranha (formerly of The Predators). This was our entry at the Mystix Summer Conference '90 held in Brisbane (which we won). I can't remember much about this party, just that it was fairly small, and was held in a metal shed thing that got quite warm! Later 1990 Next came the Hinch demo. Pretty simple demo which had captured animations of Hinch moving with the music. Nothing spectacular here, but it did manage to get onto Tonight Live with Steve Vizard here in OZ, and was also used to show what things "pirates" get up to on the National News. Later 1990 AGAIN. :) Our follow up demo was the Vizard demo. In the hope that we could get this one onto TV as well. It didn't get on, but was quite popular, and we got some free Tonight Live stickers out of Vizard (oh yay....). 1991 This was one of the best times we had. This was the year of the Mystix Easter party held in Canberra. The biggest scene get together so far in Oz, there were around 80 people in attendance with some well known scene members. This is where the Decay Simpsons demo was entered into the demo competition (and won). I'm trying to remember what the other place getters were, I think 2nd was (can't remember their name!) with their gross Simpsons satire, and 3rd was (might not be correct here) Mystix's Glitch demo.. Or it could have been the nice demo by Caddy/Defjam. The most memorable bits of this party? Rob (can't remember your alias!) of Mystix spewing on our power cables!!, The Simpsons demo actually NOT BEING RELEASED at the party!, and the Stripper who cleaned my glasses on her fur!.. Hehe, was a great weekend. Our Simpsons demo then went on to appearing in HEAPS of Euro mags in the then in vogue "Demo" sections. Heaps of rave reviews all over the place, lots of shops selling Amigas with the Simpsons demo running. It was the height of our popularity! Oh, if I remember rightly it also hit number 3 in the one parter demo section of the Eurocharts. 1991 - onwards! But there was a downside. What do we do next, people expected AMAZING things from us, and well, I couldn't be bothered myself! This is when we got pretty darn lazy.. Other people were happy to do HUGE animations for us (the nice Coyote demo, and the Get Frogged demo) and all we had to do was the code and the music (I had it easy, I suggested things and did credit pages :) ) These were probably the last proper Decay releases to be seen (they also hit the Euro mag scene, along with a crappy intro called Wormtro.. It seems the editors of these mags were expecting a lot from us as well). Since then a few other things happened. A sequel to the Coyote demo was made ("Revenge 2: Doris Day") but as it stands is still not released. Ask enough and we might pull it out of the closet and get it out. We also held a graphics competition in '93 under our home BBS name.. The Enconn BBS GFX comp.. It's now 1995, it's still not out. I decided to stop producing my diskmag Blip-Verts. I'd lost interested and it was taking too long to produce. By this time the scene is almost 100% BBS dominated.. Everything is fast. Something new is around the world and back again in a few hours. Friendship in the scene is not such a huge factor anymore. It wasn't fun any more. So the time between 1992 and 1994 was pretty much a lull year. We did nothing of interest, things got pretty normal in the scene, I got a job selling computers (PC's) and started making some money. Then the big Commodore bankruptcy debarcle happened. I got sick of waiting for something to happen so joined many people by buying a PC. I kept my Amiga in the hope that something might happen and it might get strong again.... I stopped waiting in January '95. I sold my complete Amiga system and am now fully PC (and hating Windows). It really is a bit sad to see how things have gone. Here in Australia there is very little left of the original Amiga scene which, though never huge, was a friendly place if anything. There are a few diehard Sceners out there, (I raise my hat to you guys, you're more patient then I) keeping this stuff alive. So is Decay dead? Well, officially no.. But we're not really active either. Who knows what might happen, but don't hold your breath! Out of the final members of Decay, only one of us is still on the Amiga, the rest of us are PCing. I'd like to think of Decay as never dieing. More of "fading into the memories of the true diehard Amiga scene members" So are any of you original Amiga Scene Dwellers out there still?? If so, I'd like to hear from a lot of you. If you can, Email me on the address down the bottom. "...This is now..." Cyuz, Wiz of Oz/Decay Justin Trevena - wiz@twister.apana.org.au Fido - 3:623/666