Interlude

What kind of color do you get if you squeeze out a red tomato with a bitter sweet lemon? Well, the tast of orange juice is kind of obvious, isn't it? Who doesnt remember the orange color between every post in this forum. For quite a long time, the homepage promise a come back. Browallia was curious about the scene striations or other marks left in the tracks after floating orange juice and asked the founders Yes and Chan.

Origin

Short presentation?



Picture of Yes (left) and Chan (right) at Takeover 2000.
For this event, we had not only the same shirt but also the same car ... and orange of course
Tips : Notice the numberplates. We were true geek

Orange Juice (the Demoscene information portal) was, in the 90s, a portal of information on the demoscene including a repository of past demoparties with their results, a directory of sceners, a news feed, a forum, an FTP, a banners exchange, some charts and a oneliner. The team consisted of Chandra, Dr Yes and Aevoc.



Last version of Orange Juice. The website was a true masterpiece of web coding in 2000.

Chan (aka Chandra) : I’m Charles Sauthier, 40 years old. The first computer I started coding with was a CPC 6128, but I really started programming with IBM Basic on the first computer of the home, an IBM PS/1. The first demos I saw were on my cousin’s Amiga 600, I immediately fell in love with these artefacts ! I still own our IBM PS/1, with its Sound Blaster Pro, but don’t know if it works. I keep watching demos on Youtube regularly (my favorite ones are the 4k and 64k intros), but don’t have the time to go to demoparties.

Yes (aka Doctor Yes) : My name is Christophe Le Sage, I am 46 years old. I started working in computer science in 1980 with a ZX-81 I was very interested in the Demoscene in the mid-80s, I started with an ATARI 1040 STF and then with an AMIGA 500. I have two kids, but I try to find keep up with the Demoscene (I'm still going to demoparts). I have two AMIGAs that are still working (A500 and A1200)

The nickname Chandra is a reference to a character of “2001 : A space odyssey”, but since it’s also a fairly common indian female first name it was a little confusing / misleading, so Chandra decided a few years later to shorten it to Chan

Same for Yes. Christophe's first nickname was CLSAMIGA in 1986. When he decided to buy a PC, he decided to change it. As a true James Bond fan, he wanted to change to Dr No, but it was already take. on the demo scene. The 'Dr Yes' version was more positive but a few years later, his friends decided that 'Yes' would be shorter and better 😉

Do you remember the motivation and first thoughts around the community?

At the time there was only scene.org, which was basically an FTP repository. It was therefore necessary to have an information portal about the demoscene. We did not have any special talent to make demos apart from collecting and organizing. We thought that the community needed a space to gather together and share their ideas, other than the demoparties, which only took place from occasionally and could be very far for some geographically.

So we served the demoscene with what we could do best : a web portal and demoparties.

Story

Can you describe the milestones and special events from birth to today?

- OJ was born in 1996 from the hands of Chandra and Bisounours (Care Bear in French) (the name comes from him) in the shape of french PCBoard pages hosted on the French BBS Fury (sysop Tonic / Tiny Toons). At the end of 1996, Chandra and Yes met at the Saturn Party 4 in Chelles, France. It was love at first sight and triggered an immediate desire to work together, which happened in 2000, as we worked for the same company.



First version of Orange Juice in 1996. Blue 😊



News feed of the first public version in beginning of 97

- In 1997, Yes was in .rIBBON!. He decided to organize a demoparty with his friends Kenet, Poï and Moaï (the famous Lucky and Tigrou Parties) near Paris in France sponsorised by a digital french chanel called C :

Same year, OJ migrated, still in french, on the web host Mygale (http://www.mygale.org/05/orange/, "design" by Chandra) then in 1998 on Citeweb (http://ojuice.citeweb.net), a web hosting server created by Gizmo & Tonic / Tiny Toons, and Chandra.

https://web.archive.org/web/20050421042904/http://old.ojuice.net:80/

- Yes and Chan organized the LTP2 with all the .rIBBON! members in 1998.

http://www.slengpung.com/v3/parties.php?id=4&order=name

- 1999, first demo under the OJ label. A true friendship production to promote Orange Juice website with all our friends (Titan, Made, Lluvia, Falken, Boz, Asavaris, Nytrik, Traven and Ecstasy)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17k8kO4uCVs

We then organized the famous LTP3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64AAsKA4_R0)
We had our first musical theme from Traven (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z6rJ8iY-Bs) and the smashing Open Ceremony Anim from Xbarr and Traven (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0x4yfzsvAA).

http://www.slengpung.com/v3/parties.php?id=120&order=name

At that time OJuice had more than 900 handles and 400 groups registered, and 300 visits every day.

- In 2000, the LTP 4. Same year OJ became self-hosted on www.ojuice.net and translated to english (site in C# with the famous orange "pixel" design made by Marblemad), and Yes created the Nectarine Radio (www.scenemusic.net)

http://www.slengpung.com/v3/parties.php?id=119&order=name

And then life confronted us with the harsh reality. Yes went to live in Lyon while Chan stayed in Paris. Our jobs and our personal lives took more and more time. After several hardware crashes, we reluctantly decided to shut down Orange Juice, but by providing the database to a group that was meant to keep it alive. It has been done successfully with Nectarine (Arabic has completely taken over, thanks buddy!). Unfortunately, there was no follow-up for Orange Juice.
Yes tried to relaunch it several years later but the project didn't succeed.

Any anecdote from time around Orange Juice to share?

While Chan was mainly coding Orange Juice, and Yes mainly organizing, we saw each other at night and weekends at a company's premise. We ended up working there a few years together (Chan is still working there ). Aevoc, the third OJ guy, worked at this company a few years too, and is still a close friend.

The C# web engine (made by Tonic and Chan) which was running Orange Juice in 2000 is still in use in 2018 on some large and well known French websites, but is deprecated, not shaped for the modern way of collaborative and agile coding, and headed towards dying eventually. Ojuice was used to beta test it.

When Bisounours was asked “why the name Orange Juice ?”, he answered “because it sounds better than Apple Juice”.

5) Do you see any trends in communities today compared with Orange Juice?
Either in the demoscene or in other passion-based environments, there is always this need for sharing, exchanging and finding unique points of entry to connect people. We were a little basic social network without having the mobile side that we may have missed at this time. We actually find some of our concepts and some of our ideas in communities today but we were not the only ones to promote them in the 1990s. Scene.org, Slengpung and Pouet.net have lasted, Orange Juice is dead, that's life. As long as the Demoscene exists, we’re okay with it

Future

What do you think is the legacy after Orange Juice?

We are not sure that there is a legacy, but it’s been more than 10 years that Orange Juice no longer exists and people are still talking about it. If we have helped the demoscene in our own way and encouraged others to continue to create and grow as it is now, then this is the most beautiful achievement.

Any last words?

We have met a lot of people during all these years and we stayed in touch with many talented ones. Now some sceners have marked our lives, and whether they are always with us or not, our last words will be to them. Thanks a lot and love to (random order) Kenet, Poï², Lluvia, Z, Ecstasy, Ntsc, Norecess, Willbe, Traven, Xbarr, Moby, Ncs, Skal, Frigo, Geek, Djam aka Moonove, Nytrik, Med, Gandalf, Titan, Tenshu, Guille, Reflex, Oxbab, Axel, BitArts, Romeo Knight, XXX, Statix, Clawz, Audiomonster, Arab, Made, Aevoc, Tonic, Gizmo, Miko, Bisounours, PS, Rez, Profil, Lightshow, Mars, Boub, U2, Arakis (Defcon 3?), Roudoudou, Patapom, Rahow, Tuo and Vodka (we miss you), all Brainstorm members and all Volcanic, Wired, Evoke, Mekka Symposium, Breakpoint, Revision, Main, Saturne, The Place To Be, 3S, VIP, Buenzli and Takeover organizers !
 
Screenshot of first Orange Juice Website



Groups page



Parties page



Handles page