
A Lament for the LAN Party - yrochat
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/06/09/lan-party-starcraft-nineties/
======
ModernMech
LAN parties were an interesting normative force at my high school. You always
hear about the tension between jocks and geeks. But jocks like playing video
games as much as geeks, who had the technical know-how to get networked games
going. So the jocks at my high school were really interested in being friends
with us nerds. We finally had something in common! Our LAN parties were this
strange alternate universe where the captain of the football team hung out
with the science fair nerds. We even had cheer leaders come to our LAN
parties.

I graduated before the internet really obviated the need for LANs. From
younger friends, I heard that when the Xbox 360/PS3 came out, LAN parties
slowed down, and jocks ceased interactions with nerds. But there was that
brief period in the early 2000s where we existed in harmony.

~~~
beggi
Call me crazy but as I understand it from kids today it's pretty cool to be a
"nerd" today

~~~
DanielBMarkham
The word "nerd" is so overused that a supermodel who likes Dickens considers
herself a nerd.

It's really not the word it used to be.

~~~
harlanlewis
Ye olde definition implies physically attractive people can't be nerds, and
unattractive people can't _not_ be nerds.

That's only useful for making an us vs them label. It's a good thing that
anyone can nerd out on Dickens.

I've heard before that it's a question of degree (“prove just how much you
like Dickens!”), which is kind of an uncool way to discourage intellectual
curiosity. Not everyone was forged in the pale glow of monitors in their
parents' basement, some have to work at it later.

~~~
iamdave
_Ye olde definition implies physically attractive people can 't be nerds, and
unattractive people can't not be nerds._

An alternate interpretation is that 'nerd culture' has become an ugly
perverted commodity of its former self to the point where the requisite "hot
girl" is put in front of eyeballs with no authenticity and offers semi-
humorous-because-she-doesn't-quite-get-it-but-still-tries-her-best one liners
while simultaneously manifesting this new proto manic pixie dream nerd girl
persona-having no real purpose or reason for being there other than to rope in
the casual viewer looking for something, anything, __anything __but another
TCP /IP joke.

Physically attractive people can be nerds. Nerds can be physically attractive.
But let's not fool ourselves on those tropes that still exist and get trotted
out there making everyone look like damn fools: The hot girl who tries to be
nerdy with a front as transparent as saran-wrap, and the incapable, slightly
awkward-looking but you can't figure out why nerdy guys who pine after her
because she totally understood how heavy the ending to Empire Strikes Back was
_and enjoyed it_.

I call "The Big Bang Theory" to the stand.

------
holografix
Oh the LAN party... Me and my mates in Rio, around '99, would carry our PC
towers, monitors, and backpacks of cables, keyboards and tech paraphernalia to
our one of our apartments in Ipanema and set up wherever we could. There'd be
maybe 4-6 of us.

We'd spend maybe 4 hours trying to get all pcs "visible" to other pcs on the
Windows network. At first we used coaxial cables and T plugs with a terminator
at the last computer, what a nightmare. Then eventually I think someone
brought a switcher and we used the regular rj-45s.

We still talk about epic Starcraft battles, insane coop quake run throughs and
the day Diablo II came out and we played 12 straight!

Usually at the end, in the early Saturday or Sunday morning we'd go get a
cheap breakfast go home to get changed and meet back up at the beach to
debrief last night's shenanigans.

~~~
ulrikrasmussen
This reminds me so much of my own youth, except for the beach debriefing :).
Especially the 4 hours trying to get all computers to "see" each other brings
back memories. I remember a particularly puzzling problem where my computer
and a friend's computer were unable to communicate directly, but could
otherwise talk to everyone else. After half a weekend, we found out that the
on-board network devices on our motherboards (which were identical brand and
model, ordered from the same place) had been manufactured with identical MAC
addresses. After all the black magic that we had applied to the problem,
without luck, throughout the LAN, it gave a great sense of joy and relief to
fix the problem by simply spoofing the MAC and changing one digit :). We had
an epic 8 hour long Age of Empires session afterwards ...

~~~
holografix
I can't imagine how you guys eventually found that out! We usually resorted to
abandoning Windows Network and just hoping we could ping everyone and "see"
each other's servers hosted on a computer. Often computer A and B could see C
but couldn't see each other. Never ending mess of installing/removing tcp/ip
and the other LAN protocols and fudging around with ip addresses etc!! Took
forever but when it worked and that first game started rolling everyone was up

~~~
ulrikrasmussen
I was very fascinated by networks and network protocols back then, so often at
LANs I would play around with a tool called "netXray" which could capture
network packets (basically a proprietary equivalent of Wireshark).

I could spend a lot of time trying to decipher the data that games would send
on the network, and I also tried to mess with my friends by replaying modified
UDP packets (rarely had an effect, though). As far as I remember, I found the
MAC address issue while playing around with netXray :).

------
Gustomaximus
Board games are the LAN party now, at least for my social circle. I still
meetup with the now 15 years older LAN gaming crowd. And I understand board
games have been around forever but now we live on screens I think they have a
more special place than 15+ years back. Plus the mechanics/quality of games
coming out these days is at another level. If you think of board games as
Monopoly/Risk, I would strongly suggest checking out what is available these
days.

I still miss LAN parties though...

~~~
mgirdley
With most of the eurogames, I wonder why a computer isn't doing all the busy
work they seem to require.

~~~
navbaker
Check out games like the tabletop version of X-Com. They've integrated a
smartphone app into the gameplay extremely well.

------
NeutronBoy
Probably about 4 times per year on a long weekend, my mates and I still get
together in someone's warehouse or garage and have a 3 day LAN. There's
normally between 15-20 people, and we play a mix of CS:Source, Warcraft 3
custom maps, AoE, Dota 2, and whatever else the fashion is at the time. A
recent one has been Spintires, which is a blast with 4 people!

That said, the amount of sleep and the quality of the food we eat has
definitely improved in the last 15 years or so - no more fast food for all
meals.

~~~
NeutronBoy
Also, the advent of broadband and routers now mean networking is literally
plug and play, not spending 2-3 hours trying to either set up a DHCP server,
or assign static IPs and trying to figure out why it's not working, only to
find out that someone mistyped it.

~~~
atonse
I remember buying a networking kit at Best Buy in the late 90s and then with 3
of my friends spending hours just trying to get the computers to ping each
other.

There was also always someone who would have to reformat and reinstall
Windows.

~~~
other_herbert
I laughed hard at this... The one poor guy who had family computer and
required a large amount of work to be playable....

------
lotharbot
LAN parties are still a thing among tight-knit gaming communities where the
personal relationships are strong.

For example, I still play Descent [0] competitively, along with perhaps a few
hundred others off-and-on. There's a group of about 20 of us who have become
really close friends in the last few years, and we try to have a big LAN party
every summer. We've also had quite a few small get-togethers where a handful
of people will fly or drive out for a weekend. Last month, a friend drove out
from a couple states away, and joined my wife and I at my grandparent's old
cabin, at 9200 feet in elevation, with no running water but with electricity,
and we played a bunch of matches.

In the past, I've been to Descent LANs at such unusual locations as a hog farm
and a Dominican monastery. My wife and I also took our laptops on our
honeymoon and played Starcraft: Brood War in a tiny trailer next to a lake in
northern Idaho.

I'm also a part of a small Christian gamers group [1], and there are regular
discussions about who would be able to get together in various parts of the
country this summer.

People are willing to travel to meet friends. Lugging along a computer isn't
all that unusual.

[0] [http://descentchampions.org/](http://descentchampions.org/) is the
competitive site

[1] [http://www.solidrockgamers.com/](http://www.solidrockgamers.com/)

~~~
eric_h
Wow. Descent? I haven't even thought about that game in a decade and a half. I
feel like the hardware required to play that game doesn't really require
lugging, these days.

~~~
lotharbot
Most people run a newer .exe in higher resolution and a high framerate. You
can run it moderately well with reduced settings on a Raspberry Pi, and we
have people bring mini-PC's to LANs. A big CPU tower is no longer necessary.

What almost everybody lugs is their preferred controller (gaming keyboard,
mouse, joystick, etc.) and a good monitor.

------
jon-wood
It makes me sad that everyone is acting like they're no longer a thing. If you
can get a few friends together then it's still great fun, possibly more so
than it used to be.

There's a big organised LAN party here that runs three-four times a year, with
space about 80 people in a big school hall, and then some friends of mine get
together now and again at each other's homes. With modern kit you can just
turn up, plug in, and be playing.

Our most recent LAN party was a friend's stag night, a full weekend of gaming,
drinking, and general craziness. Also the first one we've done and explicitly
left space to use the TV which was great fun later on once everyone was over
Counterstrike.

~~~
Nullabillity
Yup.

My high school (graduated last year, but I doubt it's changed since) would
host a LAN party 1-2 times per year, pulling probably 2/3 of the school.

My little brother still arranges ~10-man LAN-parties, and has now managed to
get the municipality to arrange smaller LAN parties weekly.

And of course, the huge ones, like Dreamhack and The Gathering are still well
and alive.

------
barbs
For anyone that likes this sort of thing, I found a few videos of old LAN
parties from 1998-2001:

[https://youtu.be/ch__Ah2iCtQ](https://youtu.be/ch__Ah2iCtQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X43soJt7jI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X43soJt7jI)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ6bzgl6vKA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ6bzgl6vKA)

Also, this is much more recent but really captures the whole LAN party spirit.
It's a basically bunch of guys playing sudden-death Minecraft.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUNF3_hO_no](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUNF3_hO_no)

There are some other LAN games on their channel that are fun as well.

~~~
jetsnoc
I'm loving the 10Base2 in video #3 :) Those were some great times.

------
bpchaps
Shameless plug.

Can't speak too much for it just yet (working through sponsorships, etc), but
some friends and I are setting up a 160p LAN in Chicago later this year. It's
particularly neat since we're not the only ones to have similar goals. LANs
are coming back ;).

We also do ~monthly LANs out in Wauconda (Chicago suburbs) area if anybody's
interested.

Here's just some preliminary stuff we've been working on. The switch we have
is the same as LHC's: [http://imgur.com/a/BICDK](http://imgur.com/a/BICDK)

~~~
ra1n85
That's awesome.

What's your approach to internet connectivity and wifi? How much power are you
budgeting for?

~~~
bpchaps
I can't speak much for the power setup since I'm on the
networking/infrastructure side, but it's pretty hefty and accounted for with
tons of wiggle room. The switch alone is a decent chunk of the power. Back
when we were setting it up in winter, it was able to heat a full house while
sitting idle :).

For bandwidth, I'll be setting up an http cache server this weekend so that
steam downloads (at least) can be retrieved locally as often as possible. The
internet we have is 100Mb/s, which I personally think is more than plenty if
managed correctly. We'd like the network and its capabilities to pretty much
be as open as possible with a noticeable disclaimer that traffic can easily be
intercepted and that Bad Stuff won't be tolerated. Ideally, we'd want the
network to be as old school LAN-y as possible, which means that we
unfortunately have to make some security compromises. We're going to place
heavy restrictions on southbound traffic coming in, but northbound is going to
be pretty limited. That said, we haven't set it up entirely yet, so we'll
probably change a lot as we go.

We haven't really talked about wifi that much, but I've heard more and more
that ubiquiti routers are incredible for the price. We'll probably buy two or
three decent ones.

~~~
wtallis
Ubiquiti APs are nice if you want to use PoE or if you need a pre-packaged
solution to manage a large number of them. They won't offer better wireless
performance than cheaper consumer routers running OpenWRT/LEDE that use the
same radios.

Ubiquiti's _routers_ are overrated.

~~~
leonroy
> Ubiquiti's routers are overrated.

Why say that?

I'm a pfSense fanboi but was planning on recommending Ubiquiti kit for those
not happy about spending the money to get pfSense capable hardware.

~~~
wtallis
Ubiquiti's wired-only routers tend to be more expensive than a consumer
wireless router with the same or better processor that can also be an access
point. The EdgeRouter products are highly reliant on relatively inflexible
packet processing hardware offloads that make it impossible to do things like
use QoS/AQM techniques that are more modern than the CPU design, so their
impressive specs won't necessarily translate to competitive real-world
performance. (Not that it would matter when you use a BSD-derived router OS
that hasn't been keeping up with those advancements.)

------
uudecode
Other opinions welcome. Here's mine:

LAN parties were implementations "instant messaging", "VOIP","video
conferencing" and maybe some other things I'm omitting. Before these things
even had a "market".

Gamers solved all these challenges when the web was still a blatently crude
hack and the internet was dog slow by today's standards.

Then they successfully and reliably pierced NAT to play games over the
internet. Even when the internet was painfully slow. Before Napster, before
Bittorrent, before Kazaa/Skype, etc.

Others outside of gaming seemed to be struggling with coming up with solutions
for these basic but obviously valuable "services". There is a wasteland of
failed/abandoned "VOIP" projects from the 90's that still boggles my mind.

Except for some well-funded research labs, gamers did it first. LAN over
internet. (Ethernet frames in UDP packets.) It might be ugly to some people,
but it does work.

Now, I will let you all tell me how my opinion is misinformed.

~~~
drivers99
Oh yeah, I remember buying a license for kali.net (which apparently the
service and website are both still up) to play Warcraft II. It allowed IPX
protocol gaming over the Internet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_%28software%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_%28software%29)

~~~
lotharbot
My wife and I played games together on Kali before we ever met in person (we
didn't meet on Kali, but on a message board for Descent.)

If you ever played Descent on Kali, there's a facebook group full of your old
friends:
[https://www.facebook.com/groups/kalikahn/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/kalikahn/)

------
erikb
Hm, what nobody seems to have mentioned yet: We've all grown up. In that time
I used to play 6 hours every week day and maybe 12 hours every weekend day.
Now I'm happy if I can make it to 5 hours a whole week combined. If you would
organize a LAN party with all my old friends from back then and all the games,
I would still need to look in my calendar if I can make it there.

Not just times have changed. We have changed as well.

~~~
jon-wood
I'm 32, with a kid, as are most of the guys I LAN party with. We still manage
to make it happen, although admittedly with quite a lot more notice than we
used to need.

------
feld
I also seem to recall having a LAN party New Years Eve...

Those were the days. We would spend all night doing the LAN party and all day
either hunting or paying paintball.

Andy, I'll never forget your first LAN party: showed up with 7GB porn on your
8GB hard drive and refused to delete any to make space for the games because
you only had 33.6k dialup.

------
djrogers
For us it was and ever shall be Age of Empires. Wololo!

~~~
ModernMech
My LAN career started with StarCraft and ended with Wolfenstein: Enemy
Territory. Anyone play that?

~~~
cptskippy
W:ET was a ridiculous amount of fun.

~~~
thallian
I love ET! Have you heard of ET: Legacy? It's a modern implementation of the
client and server and works great ( had a server running on FreeBSD).

[https://www.etlegacy.com/](https://www.etlegacy.com/)

~~~
icebraining
What's the population like? I fired up the original a couple of years ago, and
most servers were either dead or filled with bots.

~~~
thallian
Sadly that's the main problem in my opinion. As far as I know there are still
some rare events which can bring players back but it has been stagnating for
years now.

------
userbinator
The LAN party is still well and alive in the demoscene, in the form of
demoparties which are basically LAN parties plus computer art. Some of them
have become _extremely_ large:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Assembly2004-areena01.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Assembly2004-areena01.jpg)

[http://www.ozone3d.net/public/jegx/201308/asm2013.jpg](http://www.ozone3d.net/public/jegx/201308/asm2013.jpg)

~~~
Tiksi
Oh man, the room full of CRTs brings back so many memories of nights spent
playing chicken with a heart attack from the cocktail of energy drinks we
consumed in the glow and buzz of CRTs on every surface in the room that could
actually support them.

Do you happen to have any more resources about the demoscene community? It's
something I've wanted to get into ever since I had my mind blown by a no-cd
crack that somehow added a 9 minute high res intro video to a 25k launcher
exe.

I guess I'm feeling pretty nostalgic today.

------
mpeg
Growing up, my way to make money for the summer was playing RTS games
competitively at LAN parties and regional/national tournaments - way before
e-sports were a thing outside of South Korea.

I met people from the internet at big LAN parties, I got introduced to the
demoscene, wargames / CTFs and a whole lot of other things that shaped my
career; I even ended up dating girls from that world.

Is there anything equivalent to the old internet cafe for kids these days? Or
(active) IRC channels, for the matter.

~~~
seanp2k2
Yes. Come to Defcon and/or QuakeCon in the US. There are others around the
world, but I'm assuming you're in the US. It all still exists and young people
are still into it. The tech scene is just huge now so this stuff is kinda
considered niche / underground, but it's still definitely a thing.

------
rubiquity
I'm so glad to have been a part of this (short) era. Video games and junk food
from sunset to sunrise with a bunch of people connected by CAT5 cables! While
technology makes things easier and more convenient, sometimes the effort and
lack of accessibility leaves better memories.

------
khedoros
In middle school, I helped organize a weekly "computer club" that met after
hours in a school computer lab. It quickly degenerated into a giant Starcraft
lan party every week, and became much more popular as a result.

In early high school, I played a lot of Tribes 1 (with some mod that I don't
remember the name of) and Aliens vs Predator.

In later high school, CS 1.6 and Deus Ex multiplayer, still with Starcraft
mixed in.

In college, it was "flavor of the month". We had a crazy file-sharing network,
so the common in-dorm games switched around all the time. Warcraft 3,
Counterstrike, Halflife 2-based mods, various open source FPSes, tons of Halo
2+3, and locally-hosted WoW servers are what stick in my mind.

------
noonespecial
I loved lan parties. I hated moving my 17" CTX crt monitor to them. It was as
deep as it was wide and must have weighed damn near 40 pounds.

The future ain't all bad.

~~~
ajmurmann
I had a 19" CRT which was terrifying to transport. Later I met a friend in
college with a insane 21" CRT. Transporting that thing was like a proper move.

~~~
jon-wood
I had a big 21" CRT that would go to LAN parties with me. It took me and a
friend to move it, and it once broke the table it was put down on with its
weight.

Amazing monitor though.

------
peckrob
When I was a senior in high school, Cisco offered their NetAcademy program to
a few high schools around the nation. It was a pretty sweet deal: for a
relatively small price, you could earn your CCNA as an optional elective. You
had to get approval to take the class; basically, the 10 of us were the most
technically minded and computer literate students in the school.

So, of course within a few weeks many of us were staying after school to use
the top-of-the-line (circa 1999) computer equipment to play games. :) Half
Life and the various mods (particular Action Half Life [0]) were favorites.
Even the teacher eventually got in on the fun.

"You shot me! If you shoot me again I'll fail you!"

A lot of times a few folks would come over to my house in the evenings because
we had a blazing fast (again, circa 1999) 128k ISDN line in the house,
supposedly to do "homework" but really gaming, surfing the web, playing MUDs.
Sometimes we'd kick on a movie like Army of Darkness while gaming.

Such great memories and an awesome time to be alive. I still keep up with a
few folks from back then but I'd love to know what happened to everyone else.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Half-
Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Half-Life)

~~~
arca_vorago
Same timeframe, my highschool in Arizona was one of the first netacademy
programs. Your stories sound just like my stories, isdn included. Something
about that time just had this fresh, wild frontier feeling to it when it came
to computers. I miss it often.

I credit so much to the head of the computer dept, and industry guy who left
the industry and was teaching us kids, but kept his industry contacts. I
consider him my mentor, because he taught me the power of curiosity and
tinkering.

One of my favorite stories when I first started netacademy, we would do
capture the flags in a big circle of routers and wires, and one day in the
middle he walked over and switched physical connections and said "the rules
today didnt say anything about physical security" and walked away. 16 year old
mind blown.

Did you do VICA competitions too?

------
ProfChronos
I really got emotional when I first read the article. LAN parties were that
epic moment when you felt you were part of something new, we were initiating
the new socialization process we are all now accustomed to. Nerds kind of
disappeared in my mind

------
cstuder
Oh how I hated to set up the network: We've usually gathered around saturday
morning, everybody hauling up their gear and waving their parents goodbye. The
oldes guy in our group had removed all network cards from the PCs at his
office and we spend the next six hours installing the network, hooking up BNC
cables, trying to get the IPX to work, executing all kind of arcane rituals in
order to get the games to work.

Later on network cards got cheaper so we had our cards pre-installed. Still
the expensive 3com cards didn't mix well with the cheapest Planet ones. (We
had to keep the cheap cards on one side of the BNC part and the the others on
the other side...)

Ethernet was a godsend.

A couple of years later Laptops made spontaneous LAN parties possible. I
wouldn't wanna go back.

------
fencepost
This was even before LAN parties became a thing, but I still remember playing
'hunt' (IIRC) on pre-Solaris Sun 3/50 workstations in the math department
computer lab.

Nothing quite like those slime bombs.

Found a bit more on this impossible to search for game:
[http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/255131/the-internet-s-
forgott...](http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/255131/the-internet-s-forgotten-
games/7?backTo=255131)

And:
[http://www.acquerra.com.au/personal/bird/hunt/](http://www.acquerra.com.au/personal/bird/hunt/)

------
maffydub
I sometimes wonder whether hackathons are in some way an evolution of the LAN
party (or the demo party).

It does depend a lot on the hackathon - many these days are very business-
oriented. :(

...but there are still some where people show up just to experiment with
technology - to prototype something quickly and understand whether a technical
idea has potential and where the dragons are.

(These are definitely my favourite hackathons. If anyone knows of any like
this around London, let me know. I'm hopeful that
[http://www.hackthesenses.com/](http://www.hackthesenses.com/) might be one!)

------
pwny
Like the author's group of friends, mine has stopped throwing LAN parties. I
think our last ones were around early WoW time.

However, large LAN parties are far from being dead. There's Dreamhack and the
like, and my alma mater runs a huge 2000+ players LAN event every year
([https://lanets.ca/](https://lanets.ca/)). It seems like it's become more of
a grand event, as opposed to the couple times a year gathering with a handful
of friends.

As a guy in his late 20s, it's really interesting to see how gaming has
evolved and democratized itself during the past couple decades.

------
lathiat
Seems the spirit here is more smaller events, but we still run a 720-864
person event every 3 months here in Perth, Western Australia

www.rflan.org

~~~
ido
That's a peculiarly specific range...

------
cptskippy
We still get together to play a variety of games from AOE2 to CS to BFBC2. The
last time we got together we had way too much fun with Blockstorm which is
like Minecraft meets Quake.

I remember Doom, Decent, and Aces of the Pacific were popular too.

~~~
imrehg
Duke Nukem 3D and Starcraft, great times :)

~~~
cptskippy
The first time I played StarCraft was on a Friday afternoon at my new job. It
was an insurance company that had all their PCs on a 10/100 network and the
owner and head of IT coaxed people into playing so they could have a frag
fest. I still hate that game.

------
BrandiATMuhkuh
My old highschool colleagues and I still meet once a year for a LAN party.
Still playing the same old games like Quake, UT and Enemy territory. Last year
I flew extra from New Zealand to Austria. And it was worth it.

------
Bromskloss
> The LAN party, where you and six mates cram yourself into a dining room for
> a weekend, hook up your PCs with a complex series of switches, routers and
> CAT9 cables, somehow became quite the thing.

What is a CAT9 cable?

~~~
tracker1
No idea, I remember playing around with 10-base-t coax a few times...

~~~
LukeShu
To clarify vt240's reply: If you were playing with coax, that would have been
10base-2. 10base-T is twisted pair Cat3 cable that used the same 8P8C
connectors we use today.

~~~
vt240
Sorry. Just to mention it is going to give me nightmares about big AUI media
converters sticking out, loose, not fitting right, falling off, ahahhaa.
Novell Netware. Tree. Booting from floppy disks. ISA Cards!

~~~
teddyh
[http://genecatlow.keenspot.com/d/20000721.html](http://genecatlow.keenspot.com/d/20000721.html)

------
6stringmerc
True story circa late 1990s:

As a high school student in a religious affiliated private college prep
environment, the Senior/Junior class members could be a part of a nearly "free
study" computer course, contingent on acting as the school's basic IT
resource. I was among a team of about 6 total, and we were very close knit.
There was a 'brother' who ran the computer lab, about 30 networked PCs, and
along a back wall, we had our array of about 7 machines on a separate network.

So what did we do with our unchecked, unmonitored machines?

Installed Duke Nukem 3D, natch!

When the Brother eventually noticed we were playing against each other instead
of, you know, doing work related stuff, he came over and the discussion went
as follows:

"Hey I don't think you guys are supposed to be playing games."

"It's okay Brother J, we wrote this one."

"Oh! Wow, that's pretty good. Okay then."

Not sure who it was who threw that Hail Mary but it landed and we couldn't
believe it.

...and that, ladies and gentlemen, is but a sliver of my life that would
eventually be dominated by Half-Life until finally putting down the mouse for
a guitar pick once and for all.

------
PakG1
The most epic multiplayer Starcraft game I ever played was still on the Blood
Bath map. We mined out everything, and when my battlecruisers tried to attack
my friend's base, he stole them using his dark archon's mind control. Total
battle of attrition.

Thomas, kudos to you for being able to play 2 different Starcraft games at the
same time on battle.net and win!

~~~
wingerlang
Blood Bath was an awesome map.

------
lordnacho
Some of my best memories are LAN parties. I've spent many times more time
playing online with strangers, but it's so not the same.

\- In my early days at a major chip manufacturer, they used to allow people to
use the demo hardware. We'd come in on a Saturday and play Age of Empires for
the entire day, on state-of-the-art machines. It's still a major talking point
among that group of friends.

\- The alternative history provided by Civilization games is more vivid than
actual history. I still talk about the strategy of building a discrete city on
Svalbard (looking forward to nukes), which my Europe-dominating friend
discovered to his chagrin. Him and the other guy I was playing with were my
best men.

\- Another group of friends was cemented when someone's parents were out for a
week, leaving the whole house to a dozen or so guys. Counterstrike and AoE
seemed to balance out who got to win. Which is good, because I was getting
murdered a bit too often by the younger kids.

------
hypertexthero
My first LAN gaming experience was during the last 30 minutes of a double-
period computer class on Fridays in São Paulo when our teacher let us play
Doom in the school's computer lab. This was in 1994 or 1995. I also used those
machines to send my first email to a girl I had a crush on who lived on
another continent.

I also remember many evenings playing [Space War][1] on an IBM machine with a
friend and waking up at 6am to play [Sopwith][2] before heading to school when
sleeping over another friend's place.

[1]:
[http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2006/06/spacewar/](http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2006/06/spacewar/)
[2]: [http://www.sopwith.org/](http://www.sopwith.org/)

------
aabajian
Okay, anybody connect two Windows 95 PCs together via serial port to play
Warcraft II? That was 10 year old me!

~~~
paulryanrogers
Serial was a bit tricky to get synced as I recall.

------
rsayers
Oh the memories. My first "lan" party was in my parents garage right after
Quake 1 came out. We had two computers connected with a null modem adapter,
since neither of us could afford network cards. Everyone took turns playing
1v1 games.

My best friend and I got our first apartment when we were still in High
School, which ended up turning into an almost 24/7 lan party. Friends would
find space for their PC's and leave them there for weeks, dropping by to play
games when they had the time. One weekend we had so many people, there were
two PCs setup on the kitchen counter. Internet access? A socks proxy letting
everyone share our 33.6 dialup connection.

------
abakker
Just going to pitch in Diablo 1&2 and Myth: the Fallen Lords and Myth 2:
Soulblighter.

So many hours.

~~~
nikdaheratik
Mmm... Myth aka revenge of the pyromaniac dwarf sappers!

------
ronjouch
These days I like the sub-LAN, a.k.a. calling 1→3 friends to enjoy Steam couch
party games supporting 2→4 xbox controllers. Here's my selection, sorted from
most to least approachable to non-gamers and marking with * my personal long-
time gamer favorites:

* Gang Beasts, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/285900/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/285900/)

* Nidhogg, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/94400/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/94400/)

* Hidden in Plain Sight, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/303590/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/303590/)

* Mario Kart Wii, non-Steam, played on www.dolphin-emu.org

\- Sportsfriends,
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/277850/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/277850/)

\- B.U.T.T.O.N.,
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/92400/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/92400/)

\- Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes,
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/341800/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/341800/)

\- Kalimba,
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/324140/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/324140/)

\- Mount Your Friends,
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/296470/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/296470/)

\- Starwhal,
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/263020/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/263020/)

* Lethal League, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/261180/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/261180/)

* Clusterpuck 99, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/337960/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/337960/)

\- Broforce,
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/274190/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/274190/)

\- Crawl,
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/293780/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/293780/)

* TowerFall Ascension, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/251470/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/251470/)

\- Monaco,
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/113020/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/113020/)

\- Blur,
[http://store.steampowered.com/video/42640/5707](http://store.steampowered.com/video/42640/5707)

\- Distance,
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/233610/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/233610/)

\- Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed,
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/212480/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/212480/)

* A Fistful of Gun, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/229810/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/229810/)

\- Jamestown,
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/94200/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/94200/)

\- Sky Force Anniversary,
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/355050/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/355050/)

~~~
clydethefrog
Same here. I feel couch co-op is really having a small revival the last years.

You should try Duck Game!

~~~
ronjouch
Duck Game is good! Buuuut although funnier, not as gameplay-rich as TowerFall
IMHO :)

------
Thriptic
Oh man this takes me back. I remember lugging steel case builds and CRTs
around to many 2-3 day cs 1.6 LAN parties in high school. So many cases of
bawls were consumed; so much time was spent sitting in #findscrim

------
lmm
The author mentions software piracy but I think other varieties were often a
driving force. Nowadays with good legitimate digital music/video/software
services there's much less need for that.

In-person gaming is still something special, but I don't blame people for not
going to all the logistical effort when you can just sit down at home in the
evening with zero pre-planning and get most of the same experience online.

------
33W
I had a resurgence of the LAN party while in Iraq (07/08): the internet access
was sufficiently slow, so we played C&C Generals quite a bit.

~~~
shash7
CnC generals was the best! Those chinese mammoth tanks were pretty OP though.

------
_hackerzero_
I remember lan parties fondly. In the late 90's I worked as a computer lab
technician. After closing all the lab techs would get together to play games.
The most fun was playing DOOM with a 3 screen setup (Left,Center,Right) with 3
PCs per person. A sort of poor man's VR.

Those days are long gone but so very fondly remembered.

------
k__
We still do LAN parties once in a while.

Much easier today with laptops, haha.

But yeah, I remember the times back then, when we had to carry our PCs around
town.

Always the guy with the 21" CRT that weighted a ton.

I was a cool guy when getting one of the first 17" TFTs :D

We also organised bigger events. Once a party for 500 people, with
competitions and whatnot.

Yeah but now I don't do this big stuff anyore...

------
paulryanrogers
Setup was always such a time consuming pain. Just tonight I tried to co-op a
retro game which still went bad despite two (modern) source ports and hours of
tweaking.

Steam can help--for a price.

Back in the day the first LANs I attended also took hours of preparation in
the school AV lab. Still, being in person was interesting.

Consoles with split screen make it so much easier.

------
syats
Wow, this thread is full of terms and experiences I had long forgotten:
IPX/SPX, null model, T plugs and their terminators, trying to make computers
"see each other", hauling around CRT monitors (oh, how I envied the guy with
the 21" Triniton!) and backpacks full of cables!

Nice times :)

------
adamredwoods
I used to play Warcraft II in LAN parties during college.

But now I play Euro board games... JUST AS GOOD! Agricola anyone?

------
petarb
This brings back so many good memeories. Back to middle school when we had
monthly LANS playing Counter-Strike and DOTA. Then to fill in the time between
LAN parties we'd frequently go the LAN center next to our school.

------
draw_down
Ugh, those things were always so gross. I don't understand why liking
computers is so correlated with, well.... hygiene issues.

------
znpy
Awesome timing: I am hosting a LAN party in two weeks, and I'd really love to
hear as many tips and suggestion as you HNers can give me.

Thanks in advance!

~~~
luckystarr
Depends on the size. IMHO parties ~10-20 people are the best. If you go
bigger, it gets more complicated and anonymous. Didn't like those very much.

For a run-of-the-mill LAN you don't need much. Make sure there's

* enough chairs

* enough tables

* enough drinks, food

* enough power outlets (know where the fuse is)

* possibility to shade the windows

* somewhere to sit and chat without necessarily gaming

* possible sleeping quarters?

------
AnimalMuppet
Anybody remember Snipes on the old Novell LANs?

~~~
camperman
Yes! The first company foolish enough to employ me as a junior dev would have
Snipes games on Friday afternoons between anyone who wasn't fielding a
customer support call.

Sometimes I would be on the phone to someone while navigating around the maze
trying to bounce a few stars round the corners at people - and then have to
explain what the screams were in the background.

------
honkhonkpants
Ah, back when gaming was fun :-) Best gaming I ever had was back at university
where we rented out a floor of the student union, setup 8 bitchin' PCs in each
of two separate rooms, wired it all together with a huge projector in the
central room, and invited players from all over the state for a 16-team
bracket playoff of Quake 1 CTF. That was a hell of a good weekend.

------
partisan
NetTrek in the high school computer lab was way too much fun.

