Thorsten Butschke reports from the Gigafun 96 demo convention held 
between the 2nd and 6th August in Strasburg...

Well that was fun, I managed a total of seven hours sleep over the four 
days so if I missed anything you'll understand the reason why. The Gigafun 
96 demo convention was organised by the Power Falcon Magazine and attended 
by between 50 - 100 Atarians with a smattering of Amiga and PC users.

<Hardware>
One of the most exciting rumours was a company called CENTEK plan to build 
an alternative to the Falcon! CENTEK currently make Falcon accelerator 
cards and estimate releasing this machine before the end of the year. The 
specifications are as follows:

* Processor: 68040 with 66 MHz or a 68060
* Bus speed: 33 MHz, 32 bit bus (4 times faster than a Falcon
* RAM expandable to 256Mb using 32 bit SIMMs
* New TOS replacement called Dolmen, written completely in assembler
* New DSP Ship 56301 running at 80MHz
* New SCSI port: Fast SCSI II, transfer rates up to 20Mb/second
* PCI 32 controller with 4 PCI slots
* PCI graphic and sound card
* Ethernet support
* PC keyboard


<Software>
<Snurf>
Two german guys ??who?? have written a great looking image manipulation 
program called Schlumpf (Snurf). The program is modular making it easily 
extensible. ??Module details please??

Of course every second group had made their own tracker. The best is from 
Laurent de Soras. All sound artists said, that this is the best tracker 
and even better than Digital Tracker. It is able to do the common thinks, 
and he is the only tracker, who could import the most of the common sound 
formats. (I'm not a sound artist, so I can't say anymore. The Tracker is 
Shareware and cost 30,- DM. I register it for Laurent in Germany.)

Other software seen included a new front end for POV, Son Studio, a rival 
for Audio Studio and a game called Alien Blast, similar to Alien Think.

<Games>
The demo of Crown of Creation 3D has been doing the rounds for a couple of 
years but it seems likely the game will finally be released this Autumn. 
It's similar to Wing Commander for the PC and looks set to be a hit with 
Falcon owners.

Strange War is a French game for all Atari machines with 8 huge levels of 
high quality sound and graphics to explore. Originally finished in late 
1995 Strange War has just been released as shareware.

There is a PD which includes a full version of Vroom Multiplayer, which 
runs on an Falcon. This Game was stolen from the company, and now it is PD 
in France. (Vroom is a fantastic formula one racing game)
Moon Games are also available as Freeware in common Mailboxes.
Moon Games is the following up to Moon Speeder. This time you could play
with two players on an splitted screen.

<A CD-ROM magazine!>
T.Buz, the creator of ultimate arena, is working on an new adventure game 
which will be released on CD and feature around 300Mb of graphics! He's 
also planning to release an Atari CD-ROM magazine, this will include 
Camcorder video footage taken at the Gigafun!

Nightfall is my own new strategy game. It's a Risk conversion with lots of 
extras. Up to eight players can play and includes some tasty MOD files.

I left the convention before the competition ??who won??. This was the 
first convention I have attended and I wish I had taken my computer??was 
this possible??. I made a lot of contacts and had at least a Giga of fun!