SEAL-O-RAMA! 2000 according to Gary Storm...

We didn`t know whether our first show would be a success or not. As far as
we were concerned if we could get around 150 people coming through the door
it would be a great start. If we didn`t get any more than a hundred it would
probably be our first and last show :)

As it was we had nearly 100 Amigans rush the gig in just half an hour after
opening. At the end of the day it transpired that around 190 people
attended, which is fantastic for our first effort. Of course this is in no
small part in thanks to the brilliant support of Czech Amiga News,
Amiga.org, Amiga Active magazine and various other efforts to get the show
known.

SEAL members and exhibitors arrived at our venue in Basildon at 10am to set
up everything for the 12 noon opening. Setting up was pretty painless, even
though there were lots of Amiga`s (and a couple of pc`s - cough) being
used for various things. About our only problem was that the parking area
was being invaded by the cars of a junior soccer team`s parents (who had a
match on that day which we didn`t know about), but after we brandished our
baseball bats they disappeared for some reason. Strange.

Robert Williams (SEAL God and editor of Clubbed magazine) had printed loads
of posters for the exhibitors, and also some for us to stick on the
road-signs to show where we were. Mandyleigh (my fiance`
http://www.mandyleigh.co.uk), Dave (not my fiance`) and myself went and
illegally plastered the signs up with some gaffer tape. We even had a police
car drive by us as we were doing it, but they didn`t stop to beat us up,
which is a shame.

Once the doors were open to the general public, a deluge of Amigans filed
into the venue for £1 each, and were handed a raffle ticket each for the
multitude of prizes that were on offer to be drawn at 4pm.

There was enough to see, even though Mick Tinker and the mythical beast of a
BoXeR couldn`t make it, as well as iFusion PPC (which I was hanging out for,
although I am assured it should reach us fairly soon).

Blittersoft had a sexy looking Mediator PCI running with a Virge gfx card,
which looked great on a motionless screen. Unfortunately there wasn`t any
app or game running at the time I was there to see how it performed under
working conditions, but it`s very exciting. The excellent Payback game was
on a seperate AGA Amiga. Payback looks and plays brilliantly, and it`s not
even finished yet. You definitely have to buy this game if you liked GTA in
any way. Later in the show Bart, the programmer of "Fubar" showed up to
demonstrate his Cannon-Fodder/Command & Conquer-esque game, which looks very
promising.

Eyetech (www.eyetech.co.uk) had what I think was the most interesting table,
thanks to the stcok they brought eith them and the d`Amiga system that was
running.

Analogic (www.analogic.com) didn`t bring anything to demo, but had a few
bargains, including 17" Compaq V70 monitors for £120. I grabbed myself one
of those baby`s. Yum.

Forematt Home Computing brought along quite a bit of good software, old and
new, games and serious stuff. John
and his lovely wife kept on smiling the whole day, which makes me wonder
what drugs they were on, and where I could get some :)

Mark Hinton and Russell from Amiga Active magazine weren`t looking so
impressed on their stand when I was wandering around... or maybe it`s `cos I
was there, and joking about Mark`s gay Amiga following :).
Amiga Active had an absolutely outstanding huge poster behind them as you`d
expect, and alot of their excellent magazines on show. Unfortunately Andrew
Korn didn`t make it. I was doing a bit of Amiga Active magazine promoting,
and most of the people I spoke to were already subscribers. One guy even
said he didn`t want to subscribe because he ordered it through his local
small newsagent and wanted to support them even though it cost him extra. If
you haven`t experienced the delights of the best commercial Amiga magazine
in the world yet (ok, the only commercial Amiga magazine in the world), then
get your ass to www.amigactive.com and subscribe. You have no excuse not to,
as it`s brilliant and is delivered all over the world.

Crystal Interactive premiered and sold "Bubble Heroes", which is a game very
similar to `Bust A Move 2" on the Playstation. Anyone who`s played that
knows how addictive and fun it is, and "Bubble Heroes" is a fantastic Amiga
rendition, and well worth buying. Andrew also gave a popular demonstration
of some other game who`s name escapes me at the moment (sorry), as I didn`t
get a chance to see it.

Unfortunately I didn`t get to see the Gasteiner (www.gasteiner.com) stand,
but it`s nice to have had them at the show and in an Amiga environment
again, even though they didn`t have any `Grand TV-Amazing`s`. If anyone
knows where I can grab another one of these great little boxes again....
mailto:storm@seal-amiga.co.uk .

Ideas2Reality (www.ideas2reality.co.uk) had brought along a working QNX
system, which looked very very interesting. Bernard and his accomplice were
very nice to chat to, and very interested in the response (which was pretty
positive). They didn`t really bring much to sell, just a couple of pc
keyboards and mice really, but they came to gauge reaction to the QNX rtos
and I think they were pleased.

Kickstart were doing a great business of selling registrations to MooVid for
PPC and non-PPC Amiga`s for the author. MooVid is a great .avi and .mov
video player, and I`ve always wanted it for my PPC. It`s a real pity that
the Frogger author didn`t trust Kickstart enough to let them sell his
program at the show as well, as it`s much less of a pain in the arse to buy
shareware through Kickstart than trying to get get foreign money posted off
to God knows where. So c`mon all you shareware authors... let Kickstart do
the biz for you.

SEAL ourselves were there promoting our excellent magazine - Clubbed (issue
5 out now - www.seal-amiga.co.uk), and we sold another 20 subscriptions, and
loads more single issues. Wherever you are in the world, get this magazine.
If you wanna write for it, just contact robert@seal-amiga.co.uk.

ASA and the extremely brash Michael Carillo were there as well, and Mike did
a great job of helping us out throughout the day. His loud voice came in
useful with announcements (as we had three separate halls), and during the
prize-giving at 4pm.

To get a few of the prizes, you had to win some of the games:
Wipeout 2097 was running throughout the afternoon, with people trying to
better the best current time on a certain track. The winner got a copy of
Wipeout 2097, kindly donated by that great guy Paul LeSurf of Blittersoft. I
used to be great at this game on the Playstation, but everyone was beaten in
the end by some kid who`d played it once or twice on a friends PSX. Brat :)
.
Heretic II was played on two PPC`s opposite each other, networked in a
deathmatch. I got through to the quarter-finals but was trounced. I blame
the lack of a mouse-mat myself :) The prize was Heretic II of course,
donated by Hyperion themselves.
Finally there was a SEAL-O-RAMA! 2000 Sensible Soccer tournament, where I
was knocked out after an own-goal in extra time (a shot deflected from a
defender) and a couple of other goals just to make sure. The orange
soccer-topped dude that beat me did quite well, but the final was between
Paul Qureshi and Glenn. It wasn`t Paul`s day, as Glenn beat him here, and
he`d also lost his long standing best time on Wipeout 2097 to that talented
bratlet :) . Glenn is actually a SEAL member who had organised the Sensi
comp, but in no way was it rigged (or I`d have won) :). Glenn had the grand
prize of an Amiga 1200 Magic Pack from Amiga and a 3.2 gig 2.5" hd from
Analogic to go into it.
All three of these games are just fantastic, so if you have any interest or
equipment to be able to play them.... do it. Get them.


After many tickets were drawn only to find that the winner was no longer
there (it was probably YOU), other prizes to be handed out at 4pm were:
- a 6-month subscription to Amiga Active. This had been won by one dude, who
because he was already a subscriber, kindly donated the prize back to be
re-drawn. Excellent dude. He should get an AA t-shirt.
- os3.5 from Ideas2Reality.
- various great game and utility cd`s from Forematt Home computing.
- Another Amiga 1200 Magic Pack.
- Port Plus Junior, 20% of an EZ-Tower and other things from Eyetech.
- and various other things which I can`t remember atm, but should be seen
soon on the SEAL website when the pictures go up.
Thanks again to all the exhibitors for donating the prizes. Brill.

All in all the day was fantastic. Most SEAL members did a sterling job
throughout the day. Cheers especially to the hard working ladies who sweated
it out in the kitchen - Sharon & Mandyleigh. The kitchen was seriously a
sauna. Of other note from what I saw were Roy, Jeff, Glenn, Robert, Mick,
Dave and the dude with the combat pants who was tied to the door. Well done
to those and all the ppl I didn`t see or have forgotten. The only negative
point of the show was that some exhibitors didn`t sell as much as they hoped
for. Unfortunately that`s beyond our control, as we had a great number of
people through the door.

Thanks to all of you who came, and all of you who made it worth coming to :)

Catcha again for SEAL-O-RAMA! 2001.

Cheers,

Gary