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Phenomena - The history !
Well, Zike! wants me to tell you the true story of Phenomena. Don't blame me, it wasn't my idea, I didn't even want to do it! But, if you want to waste five minutes of your life reading this...go ahead, make my day!
Phenomena is one of Sweden's oldest groups, and as far as I know the oldest still active (well, at least we're supposed to be!) Amiga group. It all started back in 1987 (I think). Some months before the famous Arvika party, the group was founded by two people. They called themselves Avalon and Silmarillion. At that time they had other names. Before the Arvika party Phenomena released one small demo and at the party they released another one, which was quite similar to the first one. It was called "Flight of dreams". The demo didn't win the competition (Round Circle did!), but the party turned out great anyway, some weeks before the party Tyger joined Phenomena and a bit later Sire and Crome joined. During this first period Phenomena released three demos and some cracks, but since they were spread by mail no one knew if the cracks were fast or not. Due to inactivity Phenomena finally broke up. Tyger, Simarilion and Avalon joined Ipec Elite and the rest teamed up with Vortex 42. This was the first period of Phenomena.
Some time later in 1989 Phenomena was rebuilt with the old members and some more from Vortex (Antiaction (Who later joined DefJam -Ed) and terminator). It didn't take long until Twins and Firefox joined. By that time I, Dream Warrior, Mr. Gurk and Big A were in a group called Triangle (the Swedish one -it had NOTHING to do with the Danish C64 group). Triangle was in fact a cooperation between three groups: Crack Force Five, Jet Speed and The Gang. Triangle started to fall apart. We were too many members, nobody had any control and suddenly our best coder Megaman (Andreas Tadic, who nowadays produce games for Team 17) left for Phenomena. I knew Tyger in Phenomena, so I talked to him and soon I joined. I also dragged Mr. Gurk, Big A, Spirit and Cluttas with me and Triangle could be considered as dead.
We now had a very competent group with good coders and some crackers. We started to search for hot games to crack. In the beginning we didn't have much luck, but we worked on it. Thanks to constant phonecalls from Mr.Gurk we at one point almost got Conqueror and Zike! to join. They never did, but we got really good friends. (Yep! -Ed) Meanwhile we released some demos like for example "Flight of Dreams II", a follow up to the demo released at the Arvika party. The sequel was released in 1989 and was the first demo after that we had joined up. We began the work on our first megademo. Some parts of the megademo was put into a demos competition and won our first number one prize (If I'm not mistaken the prize was a diskbox -Ed).
The later to come megademo (released in May 1989) included one of the first filled vector routines. It was very slow, and didn't work on kickstart 1.3 (the rest of the demo did!). I believe the megademo was a big success, it was even shown in a Swedish television show called "Bit för bit".
I, Mr. Gurk and one other friend decided to arrange a little party in Arboga. Arboga is a very small town, only 10000 people, 15 Swedish miles (one mile equals 10 kilometers -Ed) from Stockholm. It came as many as 250 people! Of course we had a demos competition, it was won by Celebrandil (My room was the name of the demo -Ed) who was not yet a Phenomena member (but a FairLighter -Ed). Time went on and we released quite a lot of demos. The members who were interested in cracking games left Phenomena and started Miracle. Phenomena was now only a demo group and has since that day only released (as far as I know) legal products. (Many from Photon a very productive member)
Time passed and we decided to compete in another competition. We put together three demos in one part (much like the standard C64 demos). We called it 3-playfields, Snowy and Unicycle (also known as "Enis Ekiz" -Ed). We didn't win, and that was a big disappointment since our demos were really the only good one at that party. We have always tried to have good contact in the group, that is why we have only got SWEDISH members. A good mean of keeping the group together has been our internal meetings. We have had them in Eskilstuna, Stockholm, but most commonly in Arboga. At these meetings we just came together and talked and hopefully someone did some coding. At one of our internal meetings Twins started to code one of their music disks, which later became "Music Dream I" and "Music Dream II" (bad imagination ?).
Time went by and we got more new members, this time it was Uno, His brother and Azatoth. Uno painted very much and was so productive that we didn't have enough productions to use his graphics. Azatoth proved to be one of the best by winning the demo competition at Anarchy's party in Motala (Sweden). The demo was called "Vectormania". The next release was at a big party in Denmark (the week before new years eve in 1990/1?). The demo was called "Animotion" and was coded by Celebrandil. Celebrandil had been in FairLight until the demo was ready. Then he changed groups and released it for Phenomena. And as it was a demo by Celebrandil, he naturally won the competition!
Azatoth now began coding on the famous "Enigma". It was too released at a party. A smart move that gave him a second place and some nice money! After this there have been other good releases like Joyride and some amazing "Crystal Symphonies". In my opinion, the best Amiga music so far.
This was a short, and incomplete, history of Phenomena. If you want to know more, or if you'd like to get in contact with us, mail Zike! and he will forward the message. We have released MANY demos and utilities that I haven't mentioned -two games, Noicepacker, and a great musicprogram for the Amiga!