The party took place in Cournon d'Auvergne, near the city of Clermont-Ferrand in the french "Massif Central". This year, we were 470 people in a huge room (one of the biggest of the area around Clermont Ferrand). There was a majority of PC, but a lot of Amiga and Atari also came. Some tables were full of Atari computers (St, Falcon, Centurbo, Towers, ...) ! There was also a Commodore 64 (mine !... to be accurate, it was one of a friend of mine) wich showed to PC users that a simple 6502 at 1 Mhz could do almost better than their Pentium II ! (Some PC users were really astonished).

There was a giant screen with two Barco projectors. Why two ? Polarised glasses were given at the entrance, and a 3D animation film was projected (3 days before to be shown at the famous Imagina show, if my memory does not betray me). There was also some 3D pictures. Other classic stuff were projected: Demos, synthetized images, video clips, ...

There was a demo compo, wild compo, 4 channel music compo, multichannels music compo, techno music all the time (... sometimes a bit BORING !). A ORIC demo was presented for the wild compo ! (It was not so bad !).

I did not see Atari demos, but I know that there was not a lot. PC and Amiga demos were numerous and sometimes really good (quality, originality sometimes, and a lot of HUMOUR !). Wild demos were also very funny, with home made films (Strange martians wearing a big Microsoft Windows box attack the Earth !).

And to make things better, the organization was really good (no problems with electricity, food, ...). I did not know parties in others european countries, but I know some french parties, and among all of them, Volcanic party is surely the best. [ The Saturne Party (near Paris) is also a good party, but the last edition (October 1997) was really spoiled because of huge electricity problems].

Well, that is all I can say about this great party !

David.