[ Atariscne.org - News ] Last Graphics, not Least!
In previous years, some of the Polish Last Party compo releases turned out to reveal as hidden gems. As I remembered some great Atari XL/XE pictures from last year (have a look - they are awesome!), I was already curious how the compo would turn out this time. And in this year's edition we also got a number of creative and quite nostalgic artwork again, many of them including references to the world of Atari 8-Bit.
Let's have a look:
"Cicho, bo się nie wgramy" by Piesiu (1st place)
Ninja - check, Boulder dash - check, Bruce Lee - check, Frogger - check, little clown on the left - no idea! ;-)
I took the effort and tried to get a translation for this: "Be calm, or we won't get in". Any interpretation of the motive aside, this is obviously another masterpiece by Piesiu presenting a combination of motive, graphical skill and color richness way above the level of graphics that were common during the classic Atari XL/XE era. I would have been blown away back then by the "photo realism".
After having read parts of mOdmate's Graph2Font guide, I suppose the color change of the area around Bruce Lee's chin downwards may be for technical reasons allowing to use the more violet and later green palette from there? Wild guessing, but anyway, amazing!
"Last Museum" by Rocky (2nd place)
A trip to this museum, puts us Atarisceners into perspective. What a hilarious and - somewhat - realistic idea and what masterful execution. Much work went into this picture obviously, with those detailed characters using so few pixels, the lightning and many little details to spot. The image has a great graphic adventure vibe, too (but more like a 256 color VGA one!).
So, dear reader, who do you prefer to be? I think being an industrial human just sucks! ;-)
Anyway, as long as creative pictures like those are delivered in Atari compos, the scene's heartbeat feels just right to me!
Spy vs. Spy by Rocky (3rd place)
What an extremely colorful picture reminding us to this odd couple of agents. Honestly, I always loved the original Spy vs. Spy game due to it's great comic like graphics and adventure like feeling but just as honestly, never understood what I was doing gameplay wise! ;)
Anyway, about the many colors, I can only guess: On first view, this looks like straight from an Atari Falcon demo (Absence's Joint Venture comes to mind)! But right, we are about 24 bit away from this platform. I suppose that "interlaced" mode helps to manage to put all the colors on screen? Or maybe it's just an artistic tool, who knows.
New Year Disc by Kaz (4th place)
Very nice picture, supposedly done for PPS's new years disk. Can you spot the NYD letters? Original idea and the dithering of the parts looks really nice. Kaz has also published working steps from paper sketching to the full picture on youtube.
Frozen Creatures Surprised by the Arrival of Hot FLOP #69 Discmag by Kaz (5th place)
The title says it all. Now there is no excuse to not release issue #69 of the Czech Atari XL/XE FLOP diskmag. And with some smart mirroring, the picture can then be re-used to motivate the FLOP team for issue #96, too!
Imaginacja by marduk-pl (6th place)
Rightfully stated, "Last party, not least". Watching this, a lot of memories are crawling back from my foggy long-term memory: Bruce Lee, Alley Cat, Zorro, Pacman, HERO, possibly Pirates of the Barbary Coast and who knows, there are surely more things to discover? A nice homage to the golden past!
Well, the hidden-gem-theory worked out again. And as usual, Last Party brought some releases in other categories as well, such as small size intros, games, musics and more. Feel free to investigate further via Demozoo.
🔗 Last Party 2026 website
🔗 Last Party 2026 on Demozoo