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The Story of Confusing Solution, Super Swap Sweden and Horizon

Confusing Solution

Super Swap Sweden

Horizon

Member List

Stories

Pride of Horizon

Shame of Horizon

c64


Confusing Solution

Bagder (then used the nick D$85), Kjer and Zagor founded 'Confusing Solution' in 1987 and released 4 demos using that name.

At the Triad/Fairlight party in Huddinge xmas 1987 we got into the "scene" for real for the first time and we got to know the dudes in Thundercats.





Super Swap Sweden

When attending a miniparty arranged by the Thundercats in March 1988 we got an offer to join the group called Super Swap Sweden (SSS) (from its leader, Natas) which we did without too much discussions. We created and released 7 demos under that name.





Horizon

During the summer 1988 we joined forced with our good friends the Thundercats and formed Horizon. We had a lot of members then. Even an Amiga-section. Later that same year, after the party in Enköping, the most active guys of the group 'kicked out' a large amount of the members that didn't didn't do demo stuff (programming/design/music) or was too inactive. After that "cleanup" we were some 6 guys left (Bagder, Zagor, Kjer, Mastermind, Sir Gawain and Gaston) and 64-only. NOTE that the guys that since then called themselves Horizon on Amiga were guys kicked out from our group, but remained using our name (without our knowledge).

At the party in Alvesta in November 1988 we found out the real programming skills of the guys in in "Microsystems Digitial Technology", and later that year during a miniparty at our place in Huddinge we convinced them to join us (Boogaloo, Exilon and Rush). We won that competition in Alvesta '88, though the guys from MDT have always claimed (and still does) that the votes for Fairlight in the competition should get on their count since Viper/FLT did a lot of promotion for their demo and thus the MDTers claim people voted for FLT believing it was FLT's demo (and FLT + MDT > HZ though HZ > MDT).

Sir Gawain and Gaston started to lose interest and faded away slowly from the activities of the group after that party.

In 1990 we asked our good friends Pernod and Judge (members of Fairlight at the time) if they wanted to join us since we thought they were both cool and splendid demo-makers and that Horizon as a pure demo-group (which Fairlight certainly wasn't) would improve with them. They didn't hesitate much and joined. As Pernod has put it: "This was a part of HZ strategy: if you can't beat them, let them join us!!!" (Do note that Horizon was never beaten by Fairlight in any demo competion!) :-)

Although not entirely wrong, we would never even had thought of asking anyone to join us if they weren't cool and relaxed people that matched and shared the same view of life and demo business as we did. We did it all for fun and for pleasure. Another important paragraph in the un-told law of Horizon was to only have members that were true friends and GOOD demo-makers.

In mid-1992, Pernod and Boogaloo went to Sams”, Denmark to win our last demo competition, and so we did, mostly thanks to the genius Exilon (he was always before his time, for example he made a full-screen X- and Y- D011-scroller in 1988. He also made a demo part with seven sprites in the sideborders, with chars on the screen, in the same demo of course). Exilon and Boogaloo made a part with real-time filled 3d graphics on the 64 and that was why we won.



Member List

(This does not include people that came from Thundercats and SSS that were kicked out or left a few months after Horizon was formed.)
We did release products together. No releases were specificly made for or by certain members, but all were encouraged and asked to participate. Therefore, we don't have any logged information regarding who did code or make parts in specific demos.

Bagder
Coder and lousy designer. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Left the C64- business around 91-92. Works as a software engineer.
Boogaloo
Coder, musician. Joined Horizon around christmas 1988, hasn't quit the C64 business yet. Works as a software engineer. Known as a sample and hardware (like his 256K creation) freak!
Exilon
Coder. Joined Horizon around christmas 1988, hasn't quit the C64 business yet! Brilliant coder with no sense at all for music or graphics. Known to lack the knowledge of what is reggae and what is disco music!
Gaston
Coder. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Stopped coding around 88-89, never officially quit or got kicked.
Judge
Coder. Joined Horizon 1990 when asked, came from Fairlight then. Known for having lots of brilliant half-done routines that never made it to a demo!
Kjer
Coder. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Left the C64-business sometimes during 1992. His designing abilities are so terribly bad he could scare anyone off by showing us his colour/logo/font selections! Works as a software engineer.
Natas
Organizer, swapper. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Left after a few months (some time after the Enk”ping party autumn 1988). Known for his weird real name and his beard!
Mastermind
Coder. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Has he ever quit C64ing? ;) Known to never save his programs until they are complete. Made him suffer really hard from power problems at parties and similar!
Pernod
Coder and designer. Joined Horizon 1990 when asked, came from Fairlight then. Known for weird samples and demo names... also a funny accent! Prime snake fighter together with Mastermind! ;)
Rush
Coder. Joined Horizon around christmas 1988. Slowly faded away after the 'Dolly Party' demo in 1989. Never officially quit or got kicked.
Sir Gawain
Coder. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Stopped coding around 88-89, never officially quit or got kicked.
Zagor
Coder and musician. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Left the C64- business around 91-92. Works as a software engineer.



Stories

During spring 1988 when Kjer was sitting and coding on the Agile/Rebels party and Zagor, unaware of the fact that the demo part was Kjer's - thinking that he and Bagder were sitting and watching demos, aproached and said "You should make a demo part like that!"... (The demo part was a big picture flying around on the screen and in all borders.)

During an intensive hacker meeting, Boogaloo and Bagder sat working with their music routine, and thought they just discovered that their sound effects were dependent on the raster timing. Since the player routine and the editing routine were different, this made the sounds different and quite struck by this sad discovery they made some very depressed sounds why Exilon turns around and says "can't you just edit and new redicolous drum - or whatever it is?"...
The party we attended to in Trondheim, Norway, (198?) where we sat in shorts only in the big and crowded party room and still we were sweating rivers.
All those funny mails we received from fans, admirers and swappers. All in all we must have received thousands of them. Many were serious and well meaning, but a lot were also really REALLY lame and written in ways that made us laugh hysterically.

Very memorable is the "Hacker Mon" we made. A "regular swedish" to "hacker swedish" automatic translater. Enter the plain swedish sentense and you got the translated one back. Other programs in the series was "Lyrix Mon" an auto- matic song lyrics text writer. Insanely crazy. Danish Mon made the machine speak the english phrase entered in (semi-) danish. I don't think this ever got the popularity among our danish friends that we thought it would! =)
Snake fighting. Mastermind introduced the concept to the group and Boogaloo spread the usage among us. Whips by rubbersnakes are painful, and many are those who found that out. Some was captured on video, some not. Many were the games and different sports at parties that involved the snakes.
The Nintento caps. Boogaloo worked at a Toy Store in Gothenbourg for a while and after that we all wore Nintendo caps all the time.

The Horizon dress (white, sweatshirt and jogging style pants with '>nick< of Horizon' prints on). Kjer and Boogaloo had a little glitch in the communication and 'Mr Boogaloo' was printed on one dress even though B claims he specifically asked for the Mr to be removed. K claims the exact opposite! ;)




Pride of Horizon

Horizon being in the top of the charts for years, with a large number of individual programmers being in the top of the coder charts. The cool, friendly and relaxed atmosphere we had in the group. We were a bunch of friends having very fun together.
I'm also proud of the fact that we organized the biggest parties of the computer scene of that time, several times we made the largest party ever.




Shame of Horizon

That I never pushed us far enough to complete the games we made. It would have enabled us to gain some money from the C64 programming.


Story written by: Daniel Stenberg a.k.a. Bagder of Horizon