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Yip
Added on September 24th, 2004 (6938 views)
www.c64.com?type=3&id=146
Give us some information about yourself.
Petrik Salovaara, formerly known as Jori Olkkonen, age 35. Birth place: Helsinki, Finland and I currently live in Espoo (also Finland). Birth date: October 23, 1968. I'm currently working as a Software Developer and Project Manager in a company making software for managing employee resources (www.solotes.fi). Interests: computer games, rock and metal music, tennis/squash/badminton and raising my kid.
What handle(s) did you have and how did you come up with it/them?
Back in the good old days my handle was Yip. I have no idea how I came up with it! In the mid 1990's, my Quake-scene handle was Lemon, derived from a U2 song. My current handle on the IRC-scene is Trikki, derived from my new first name Petrik.
What group(s) were you in?
Pure-Byte.
What tasks did you have?
I was a musician, coder and swapper.
Between what years were you active?
From 1983 to 1990.
Tell us about those years and how you got into the scene in the first place.
Back in the beginning of the 80's, I lived with my mother in a small town called Hämeenlinna. She bought me a VIC20 for my 13th birthday, but soon after, I realised that the C64 was much better and begged and begged until I got one. I then started swapping games with a few pen-pals, one being Timppa from Pure-Byte. He lived in Helsinki some 100 kilometres away. One weekend my dad took me to visit him, which resulted in me joining Pure-Byte. Soon after I started to make music and code my own demos. My first release was called Fifth Dream About Happiness, which contains my own composition and some knight-rider lights in the middle of the screen.
How could a typical day in front of the computer look like?
Playing games, copying floppies, making music, coding demos... In fact, a typical day in front of the computer looks quite the same these days. No floppy disks though.
Did you invent any special techniques or tools to make things easier for you?
I coded my own music routine and editor called Mega Sound. It was published in the Finnish C64 magazine C=Lehti.
If you take a look at what you did back then, what are you most proud of?
That would have to be the music in Jukka Tapanimäki's game Netherworld. I coded a new music routine especially for that game. I believe it was the first C64 music routine in the whole world that was capable of playing four sampled sounds simultaneously. I made it because I wanted to introduce heavy metal sounds in C64 tunes. The song featured two sampled channels for distorted guitars, one channel for bass and one for drums. Later when the game was ported to the Amiga, some idiot ported my masterpiece and totally ruined the heavy metal ideology. Why, oh why didn't they ask me to do the job? Well, a few weeks after the game was released on the Amiga, I ported the song myself and released it on the scene.
Who were your scene heroes and why?
Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway and Jeroen Tel were of course the best composers. I also admired brilliant coders like Stavros Fasoulas, Jukka Tapanimäki and Mario Van Zeist.
What was the coolest thing someone invented on the C64?
No doubt, borderless scrolling introduced by 1001 Crew.
Did you go to copy-parties, meetings or tradeshows?
Yes. The most memorable trip was to London with Boys Without Brains. We always had fun at the Byterapers parties!
What was the scene all about in your opinion?
Hanging with friends, having fun, playing games, learning how to make use of a computer. I believe that many of us old-timers are now making a good living out of working in the computer industry. For me, it would not have been possible without the scene and the C64, it kind of bred me into the programming business.
What were the highlights?
Oooh, there were so many brilliant demos and cool events. It's really hard to pick just one.
Any cool stories to share with us?
As I told you earlier, I travelled to the PCW show in 1987 together with Boys Without Brains. I had a brand new music routine and editor with me that I'd been working on for several months. My plan was to show it to important persons and hope that they'd get interested (and in the end, hire me). The problem was that I hadn't made any backups of the diskette before I started my trip, so the floppy lying in my bag was the only copy. Brilliant thinking! Anyways, I put the box containing the disk in a plastic bag and went to the show. At some point I had to go to the toilet so I gave the bag to Mario Van Zeist. When I came back a few minutes later, Mario had lost the bag somehow. He was very sorry about what had happened, and when we got back to Mario's home in Holland, we coded a new music routine together. :)
Are you in contact with old C64 people today?
Nowadays I hang around with people from 777-team (http://777-team.org) and Cute Ry (www.cutery.fi/cutery/history.html). I have visited the Assembly party (www.assembly.org) several times where I usually hang around with old-timers like Grendel/Byterapers.
When did you get your C64 and do you still have it lying around somewhere?
I got my first one in 1983. I still have three C64's and two 1541's lying somewhere, but they're all broken. Maybe I'll fix a working set out of them some day.
Was the C64 really that special that we like to think it was?
Yes it was. Well, to me at least.
When can we expect to see a new C64 production from you? :)
No hope there.
Do you have a message to your old contacts and everyone else reading this?
I've always wanted to know what happened to Arthur van Jole/Boys Without Brains, so drop me a line if you're still alive. We spent some great time together in the late 80's, playing the guitar and sharing the same interests in heavy metal music.
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