Helsinki. Assembly has together with The Party and The Gathering become institutions in the scene, well-reputated for long-awaited releases and attendors from all over the world. The Party has so far been generally held as the biggest, best organized and multinational of these three, but after the recent Assembly 95, that fact is definitely something to reconsider. The Party is neither the biggest or the best organized party anymore. Assembly is. Queue? No queue! When arriving to the Conference Centre early Friday morning, the party had already been going on for one day. This didn't mean that I was the last one to arrive - there were long queues of freaks waiting to pay their 200 marks. But where The Party IV just had a counter and an inofficial motto saying "Big man reaches counter first", Assembly had civilized queues that disappeared before you had stopped laughing at all those stupid haircuts and silly clothes worn by fellow queuers. Food? Good food! Behind the counters, and the essential 300-pound safety-guards, a hacker's heaven opened up. There were a shop with hacker supplies (such as cola) to the left and Pizza Hut to the right. Going up with the elevator, stairs or escalators to the second floor, you could enjoy a hamburger-menu at Carrols (McDonalds- wannabie). Another cafeteria was placed in the party hall. So, no need to starve for those who had money. Worth mentioning is also that the people behind the counters all had smiles on their faces, as if they actually enjoyed watching the kids running around. Happy? Indeed! Smiles, right. The Party IV was a dull place with arrogant and hostile organizers and attendors, but Assembly really had that party-feeling that makes an experienced party-traveller want to come back. Smiling organizers (actually trying to help!) and smiling freaks. Alcohol (well kept outside!) if desired. Shiny happy people, to put it shortly. Full party hall? Bet on it! The party hall consisted of stands, which you could reach by stairs from outside and later on turned out to be a perfect place to view the competitions, and an area for the tables. The first impression was quite a disappointment - somehow the hall felt small. "Is this all there is? Where are the other halls?". One could estimate the amount of people to 7-800, but this estimation turned out to be wrong. Dead wrong. The 3500 voting disks were sold early on Friday, and when the competitions started later on, both the stands (with room for more than 1500 people) and the floor were jampacked with people eager to see the contributions. Even The Party IV looked like a local lamer-party in comparison. Let's compete! Like expected of a Finnish party, there were a lot of stunning contributions in the numerous competitions. Nooon's PC-demo "Stars", Parallax' Amiga-demo "Zif" and Jaco's dolphin-animation really "kicked my butt", like one of the anonymous freaks stated, clearly amazed. Like always before big parties, rumours had been spread about the coming competitions, but Pygmy Projects, held as the favourite in the Amiga demo-competition, did not really make it despite their excellent demo. Parallax' stunning winner made people look around and ask if the famous Mr.Intel really was inside our outside. Despite this, the Amiga-competitions did look rather pale. Only 11 contributions in the demo-compo, and only 3 or 4 good 40Kb-intros among the 15 chosen was an undeniable fact that cast a shadow over the beloved computer's future. Go ahead and watch Parallax' demo on a A1200 - it wouldn't be a lie to state that the computer definitely lacks the essential power to stand the tests of time. Amiga 1200 is not dead, but it is definitely having trouble to breath. The different qualification-juries made an astonishing job in selecting the right contributions, though it did look strange that all the competing members of the music jury managed to have their song played in the finals. The fact that Louie's excellent picture, with clear winning-potential, was not qualified in the graphics-compo also cast a shadow over the competitions. This is the third time this happens to Louie - let's all hope that The Party V will be the definite break-through that he obviously deserves. All in all, though, it must be said that the competitions were handled remarkably well. They were all showed on time, and everyone seemed to be happy about the selected contributions. PC or Amiga? Last year's Assembly was probably the definite break-through for the PC-scene. Hardly anyone had brought their Amigas, but a lot of people were playing Doom on PC. This trend was even stronger this year - the handful Amigas were either left alone playing some old modules, or turned off. Compared to The Party IV, Assembly is definitely less scene-party and more game-geek-gathering. Making cash? Considering the amount of attendors, the sponsoring and the high entrance fee, one could easily think that the main-organizers would take the first flight to Bahamas on Monday morning, but this is not correct. The party had 7 figures in bills, and it was still unclear whether it would break even or not on late Sunday afternoon.