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Open to gamers aswell, so not really a clean demoparty, but i was at The Gathering. Dat feeling waking up each morning to "Banana phone", with a fantastic view of the hall.

Also, the demo compo was fun.

i never been to TG or ASM or EUSKAL and i dont intend to.
A little sad i missed TP and M&S tho (those were before my demoscene-awareness).

also ~1000 but still huge for todays party-standards: breakpoint 2010 was a blast.

Tg 95: Had to travel for ours with a bus, where a "Pc vs Amiga war" took place. When we reached the hall, a lot of tables where missing, so a lot of volunteers had to carry them in. And in short, the hall where never close to be filled, but at least it was a separate sleeping hall available.

Highlights:
Dope/Complex, Wormhole/Complex, Deep/Cncd&Parallax and Babenoise/Spaceballs on the bigscreen where awesome!

I remember The Gathering 93, not the biggest party, 1400 visitors, but 95% demosceners so it was easy to talk to people and you felt right at home.

TG 93

I was a member of the group Centura back then, luckily i am not spotted in that video (bad hairdo), i see my groupmates there, hehe. We were sitting between Cryptoburners and Darklite. Cryptoburners were famous...Darklite...never heard of :)

Zplex: Nice video from TG93 (apart from the fucking neo-nazi). It's so inspiring to see all the people working on productions, and so many Amigas. I spotted this release: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=4861

My biggest party must have been TP95. Enjoyed it a lot, including the compos. However, the things I remember best were negative: Unfriendly team at the entry door, getting woken up by firemen "you are not allowed to sleep under your table, go to the sleeping area", then dragging myself to said sleeping area while half-sleeping, to find myself in the middle of an empty hall, where a loud rave party *without anyone actually being there* was held by the organizers. That was quite a trip. I think in the end my solution had been to sleep with my head on my keyboard instead, hoping that would be OK to firemen.

i was woken up by the rave party in the sleeping area :-)

Raveparty in the sleepinghall at TP5 was surely the worst idea ever. I was so tired after a long day that included driving 8 hours from Germany, but couldn't get my sleep even with wax in the ears as the beats were so load that they transmitted through the skull. I ended up sitting around, presumably looking like a zombie until the concert ended. I also saw a guy with lots of hard disks in his hand and thought that must have been a rich guy. Later on I heard that quite a few HDs were stolen, so maybe it was him? Who knows.

I think my ultimate big party experience was at The Party 1994. I had been there in '92 and '93, but 94 marked a special year. It was the first year after I discovered Protracker and decided to try to see, if I could find people to swap samples with at The Party '94. I know all of the music entries (at least the top 10) that were played. More than 100 entered that single competition. Imagine the jury, that had to preselect. Must have been an overwhelming task! Also, TP'97 and 2000 were nice, although the latter, only for the jawdropping fr08 in the intro compo. At that point, the party had already been taken over more or less.

TP94 was also the year of Nexus 7, Psychedelic, Twisted and The Prey.

Yes - compos were hysterically high quality that year!

THE party 4 had that raytraced scrolltext.. In nexus 7.. O boy ... AOA vs lord Helmet ;)

TG98 - my first party outside of North America, and first time in Europe. I wrote a full report, but it was never published anywhere.. probably sitting on an old HD. Still in college, they paid for half my airfare to be on the compo crew, along with groupmate Snowman/Hornet. We made the call to expend the PC demo deadline, which resulted in something like 30 entries (only 15 were shown). Probably the only one people remember was TE-2RB, which was entered by yet another American (Diablo). At least couple TPOLM guys showed up, at least, along with some other non-Norwegians like Darkness/Imphobia and Sparcus. I also met Gloom there. :) I remember walking up into the stands and seeing a sea of computers for the first time. I got little sleep, with loud drunk guys in one room the first night, finding spaces in the compo area other nights, and being awoken to loud music at 9 am. The only time I left the hall was to walk to a store or hang outside. Various travel problems too, like missing a flight connection, losing luggage, and finding a ride back to the airport. So, it was an experience, but maybe not the fondest.

ASM02 went smoother for me -- I stayed with Howler and Miss Saigon before and after (when they were still married), and toured Helsinki a little. I also hung out at Fthr's place while he worked on MindCandy artwork. :) I was impressed how well it was run, and again got to meet a few people like Skaven and Smash. I was on the demo compo jury again, so at least I got to see Variform before most others did. :) The oldskool/demoscene space wasn't great that year, but there was always stuff going on elsewhere, and that big booze rock. :) And I got upgraded to first class from London to Boston, so that was cool.

asm94 was a lot of fun. Next year it was a lot bigger but it was still fun..