TW #103 — Interview with Mikmak (Behemoth)
Behemoth's "first contribution to Trax-Weekly as a staffer": an IRC interview with mikmak, author of the MikMod and MikIT module players — chosen because "most people know only him by name, but not too many know about him beyond MikMod or MikIT" (and because "the alternative that Psibelius gave me wasn't too exciting"). Behemoth promises something "scene-related and interesting" every week.
Key claims#
- Jean-Paul Mikkers, Tegelen, the Netherlands; 25, "turning 26 in september" 1997; former group HardCode '95; "not in any group at the moment".
- Projects: "perfect MikIT so it plays most popular mod formats"; "a lot of people are waiting for me to release a DOS library of mikit so they can use it in their musicdisks".
- History: first programs in BASIC on an Atari 800XL; Amiga 68000 assembly from "1989 I guess" — "That's how I became obsessed with modplaying"; first Amiga release "a cute demo with animations of animals burping to the mod music"; first PC production a BBS intro,
shroom.exe, "with plasma bars hopping on the music (which I wrote)". His C style comes from the author of GifLib (printed "Geshon Elber"); "my old mikmod code looks terrible compared to the newer mikit". - Trackers: "at this very moment i'm using screamtracker III (I'm doing s3m replaying research).. but normally I use Impulse Tracker nowadays" (scream-tracker-3, impulse-tracker). Is tracked music better than two years ago? "BETTER! ... 2 words: impulse tracker :)".
- Forecast for 1999: "most people will have forgotten about DOS.. windows all the way. People will be releasing mp3 (mp4?) music instead of mods. Everyone will need a pentium 600 to run the latest windows based demos.. Necros will return to the scene (just guessing)". Coders are in "a transient period where coders are getting used to the idea of NOT coding hardware directly"; with DirectX or OpenGL and "voodoo chipsets" they "could make some REALLY stunning demos... yes in windows... terrible isn't it".
- Against banning non-sceners from #trax and #coders "unless they become annoying" — "you might be banning the next famous composer / coder".
- Favourite demo: the Spaceballs Amiga demo "that plays 'condom corruption.mod' and shows people dancing to the music" — original "in a time everyone was doing 3d flatshaded demos"; no recent demo had "really STUNNED" him. Likes 1980s synth music and Depeche Mode; "too old to be making modplayers... doing it anyway".
Practical takeaways#
- A player author used ST3 itself as the reference for S3M replay in 1997 (s3m-format).
- A player author's verdict that IT raised the music, not just the tools (impulse-tracker).
- The DOS-to-Windows and module-to-MP3 shift was predicted from inside the scene in mid-1997 (tracker-scene-history).
Notable quotes#
- "banning people isn't good because you might be banning the next famous composer / coder" — Mikmak.
Relevance#
The only interview in the archive with a module-player author; documents MikMod / MikIT and the 1997 forecasts; Behemoth's debut as staff writer (traxweekly).
Pages touched#
mikmak, impulse-tracker, scream-tracker-3, s3m-format, it-format, tracker-scene-history, psibelius, traxweekly.