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The History of Equinox - Amiga Demoscene Group
Equinox was a group in the Amiga scene, with an active period between the years 1987-1996
with numerous of talented members and releases during this time.
The Powerlords Years
We didn't use the name Equinox from the start, in the first years, from 1987-1990, we
called ourselves The Powerlords or sometimes The Powerlords Corporation, which consisted
of sections in Sweden, Norway and UK. During those years we released quite a few demos and
intros and started to get some recognition in the scene.
At the end of 1990, just after we had organized The Powerlords and Aurora Amiga Halloween
Conference in Motala, Sweden - The Powerlords were about to break up. Some members did
have some short adventures in other groups at this time, and the group started to
dissolve.
Equinox - A Fresh Start
In December 1990 the former organizers of TPL UK (Tripwire), Sweden (Rioter) and Norway (Ray) had a telephone conference and decided to keep the best members from The Powerlords as
well as recruiting some new talent from Scoopex and Tristar / Red Sector and change the
group name to Equinox, and from that day The Powerlords were reborn as Equinox.
We were a motivated team at this point and quickly started working on our first release to
announce that Equinox was born. A few weeks later, in January 1991,
Leviathan was released and things started to
move forward again.
Organization
The former TPL organizers kept their positions in Equinox; Ray in Norway, Tripwire in the
UK and Rioter in Sweden. A few months after Equinox had stepped into the scene the group
expanded with a Finnish section in April of 1990, organized by
Procyon and a Swiss section in June of 1990, organized by
Duke.
For a short period of time we also had a large French section, that got kicked already
after a few months because of lack of productivity.
Towards the end of 1993 due to people doing military service and other events Rioter took
the role as the overall organizer for all sections of Equinox using Total Overdose (World
Headquarter) as the repository for all members when working with upcoming releases.
The Productive Years
Equinox thrived for almost half a decade, releasing new products on a regular basis.
Demos, intros, musicdisks, diskmags, charts, packdisks, utilities and even a wild demo
towards the end. There were always quite a few productions in the pipeline, unfortunately
not all got released to the public and some that were released have been lost in time,
like Rioter's Electronical Disaster Trackloader demo and the Technical Input Wild Demo.
All in all, even though being spread over different countries, Equinox was a tight team
during these years with regular internal meetings, attending all the major copy parties
and demo conferences over the European continent, combined with regular phone conferences
with most of the involved group members.
A few milestones during these years that people from those days still remember were the
release of the European Top 20 chart and disk magazine, the Sonical Fantasia music disk
and the In A Dream demo.
In 1992 the Finnish section left to form Stellar.
In 1994 D-Luxe released the CD Physiology together with
Lizardking of Razor 1911.
Boards - Bulletin Board Systems
Until 1993, Equinox was a pure demo group, but then we started to grow at large in the
trading and BBS scene as well. Lots of traders and some of Sweden's biggest boards at the
time joined Equinox. Our primetime chart and diskmag, the European Top 20, reflected this
by having lots of board scene related categories and articles.
The Equinox World Headquarter, Total Overdose, was operated by Rioter on a multi node dial
in system.
Equinox had the following
AmiExpress boards during the years:
- Total Overdose (World HQ) - Sysop Rioter
- Zoomed Reality (European HQ) - Sysop Zool
- Rapid House (European HQ) - Sysop Rapid Angel
- Traders Paradise (Scandinavian HQ) - Sysop Macroman
- Repulse (Swedish HQ) - Sysop Silencer
- Ice Palace (Swedish HQ) - Sysop XStaz
- Techno City (Swedish HQ) - Sysop Terminator
- Traders Island (Swedish HQ) - Sysop V-Cut
- Psycho Terminal (US HQ) - Sysop Whiz
- No Limits (Canada HQ) - Sysop Diskomate
- Motown (Finnish HQ) - Sysop Dope
- Atlantica (Norwegian HQ) - Sysop Mr.Nico
- Wonderland (Norwegian HQ) - Sysop Black Angel
- A Different World (Swiss hq) - Sysop Fineline
The End
In 1994, many of Equinox members had came to the age where they were leaving school,
finding careers, and had little time or interest left for the scene. The group was slowly
dying. At the end it was mostly the Norwegian members keeping the group alive, led by Ray
and Vip. They released
Prejudice at the Gathering 1996 which ended up
being the final Equinox Production.
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