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Lan parties were basically the highlight of my highschool career. I learned how to set up and configure complex networks just so I could be ‘that guy’ that knew how to fix problems at lan parties. Sitting in someone’s garage all night with 12-16 sweaty, sleep deprived people playing Counterstrike or Unreal Tournament or Worms Armageddon was the absolute pinnacle of good times in a rural small town.
A bunch of people in the same room beating Serious Sam from start to finish while someone played an eclectic playlist of hiphop on the aux for over 24 hours. Those were the halcyon days.
Halcyon & on & on…
I never really experienced this, I was mostly a console gamer.
Curious what you do for work now? Related to IT or games in any way…?
I did computer repair for quite a few years after high school, then worked in IT at a game company, and currently work in the software testing industry, so… yes! Hah
With the current quality of MS products, every office drone works in the software testing industry.
Chad life.
Thank you for the reply! Amazing. I hope you’re still passionate about what you do!
We used to do 12-hour, all-night Empire Earth games!
Aww, man - I’d forgotten about Empire Earth, that game was absolutely the shit at the time. Wish it’d gotten more attention and credit.
Funny enough duct tape ceiling guy is playing on an LCD monitor.
Probably they were the best player and they gave them all the handicaps available. 😅
Can you imagine how bad his neck must hurt by the end of the night? They could have at least spared another loop to keep his forehead supported
He’s the only one with a flat screen: serves him right
Oh, give him a break it’s probably a dual scan passive. He’s playing Doom through a gray smeary mess. But you didn’t have to log a CRT to the basement… So there is that
Yo even homies headphones are a throwback.
You know he was using that with this on his trips to and from school every day.
Buying a router from Best Buy and returning it the day after the party. Memories.
That’s, like, $80 of duct tape in today’s money
Fortunately, wages have increased to match, right?
Narrator: They hadn’t.
Yeah but just think of how much GDP has grown!
Line go up so good.
Right?
So, I missed LAN parties, but me and my buddies used to all get together (normally at my house) and play console games and d&d, and I feel like it has pretty similar vibes.
Some seriously amazing times. The thing I remember most distinctly, though, is the smell. A dozen 12-15 year old boys who don’t yet understand the necessity of deodorant, all crammed into a bedroom, basically sitting on top of each other. The smell was loud. My room used to reek of it for 5 or 6 days, just in time for next Saturday to roll around and stink it up again. Lol.
Me and my pals were pretty good about hygiene, regularly showered when we all spent the weekend at our pal’s, but good God, when someone would forget a bowl of some food or other over the weekend, or it’d get shoved back behind a wall of empty soda cans and bulky monitors for the whole week? 🤢
I mean, I don’t think any of us were particularly bad about hygiene? It was more just sort of boy-stink. Lol. In fairness, it was coastal Virginia, summer time, in an un air conditioned room, with the only time the door got opened being when one of us had to pee. Lol. To be honest, I remember it almost fondly. Like, the stale smell of it when every one was gone was horrid, but the smell of the room, the hot TV and console, and all my buddies crammed together wasn’t bad when it was going on. Just during the week afterwards. Lol.
That said, I have some unique opinions on smells, so grain of salt and all lol
But also, yes, God, the moldy Chinese food-- yuck
The entirety of my career was founded on my ability to build stable network and systems to run Duke Nukem 3d at lan parties using 10base2 networks and Rendition Verite video cards with a side of 3dfx.
at lan parties using 10base2 networks and
“Anyone have another BNC terminator? Oh, also the IPX network number we’re using is 11111111.”
Rendition Verite video cards
Nobody could afford the Canopus, it was a room full of Sierra Screamin’ 3D cards at best
with a side of 3dfx.
A dedicated 3D card in addition to a good 2D card?! We’d dream, but didn’t have that kind of cash.
Full disclosure: I was in my mid 20’s and a factory worker in the later 90’s, so I had a little more cash to afford my hobby. It still hurt though.
I had one with a weird pass through cable. Mainly played EF2000 on it.
My last LAN Partay was in 2016, that one weekend where Overwatch wat F2P, and we wanted to play Dota but had a party of 6. It was fantastic
I was once so broke that I couldn’t afford a case for a computer I had.
So I brought my computer to a LAN in a trash bag and set it up on the host’s electric stove.
I feel like the static buildup common on trash bags might not be the best for rawdogged computer components 😂
I’m shocked (haha pun) that it still worked but it did.
Also the cord from the power supply to the outlet ran next to the sink.
I love this, and I’m so glad nothing went awry lol
We played Unreal Tournament mostly because it ran really well on Linux. Rarely had LAN parties but it worked fine over dial-up. Kinda wild. Miss those days. We did a lot of dumpster diving because people would just throw everything out when they left college.
We played the hell out of q3 starting with beta because it ran on Linux, macOS classic and windows, and my crew had all those. Riva tnt, g3 tower, amd k6-2, 10-base-T hub.
The TNT was a beast! I ran it on a k6-2 also. Unfortunately it crapped out and I replaced it with an MX400 which I still have (I have a problem). We all played with a myriad of platforms. One guy was on a friggin’ Alpha that he warmed his feet with under his desk (not sure if he actually played on that but it was a running joke). We also played Quake but for some reason we were obsessed with the silliness of UT. MMMMM MONSTER KILLL.
Bro did u even kali
Kali did not exist my son
First game that caused me to accidentally stay up until the sun rose (multiple times).
Providing my weekend LAN party with the Warcraft 3 beta was the highlight of my early nerd career
https://lanwar.com/ still going strong if you need a LAN party.
one of my great regrets (Of a great many, I’l concede) is that I never had the opportunity to attend a lan party in my younger days… In these days of the photo.
I have always looked at this picture with a mixture of jealousy and admiration.
I had some of those headphones like hat guy has. They were uncomfortable. Strange design.
Damn I miss LAN parties. Ultimately it was World of Warcraft that killed them in my social circles.
Weirdly, WoW was like a constant, ongoing lan party for us.
We would all lug our rigs over to one guys house and play, even if we were in separate raid groups
I had a pair too. They were roughly finished and would dig into your skin. Also didn’t sound very good. Cool idea though…
