Lan Three – Death in the Forest… 1997
I finally got out of the hotel and moved into an apartment building. I’d made friends at work, so of course, it was time for a Lan party.
This was a great time for hardware. My company was switching over to Windows 95, and was ditching tons of old stuff. I was making a decent salary and had no expenses, so I could spend freely on the parts I couldn’t scrounge. There were lots of demos floating around, and the games that were out were free with licensing on Lan games. (Contrast that with today… almost every game requires a unique CD key, even for Lan gaming!)
So I had about six machines set up on a table in the dining room. Duke Nukem was my favorite, but Jedi Knight was on there as well. I remember spending a lot of time getting the sound in DN3D working. (Does anyone remember Soundblaster environment variables??!!)
After about two weeks of setup and worrying about getting everything perfect, I was finally ready. I invited about 10-20 people, went out and bought drinks and chips and all that party crap, and…
Two people showed up.
Have any of you had a Lan party with two people? Much less… two people who came not really to play, but to party?
Needless to say, it was lame. I don’t think we even played anything that night.
Surprisingly though, all was not lost. The Lan did live on at lunch time. For a while, four or five of us would drive out to my place over lunch and get a good 45 minutes of Quake II deathmatch in. Things were finally starting to catch on!
Finally Online
Regardless of what happened on the Lan, I had a phone line for the first time in seven months, so I spent quite a bit online with my buddy Jjam playing Command and Conquer: Red Alert. I had made this groovy map that was quartered by bodies of water from the center left to center right, and center top to center bottom. On each quarter were giant fields of gems. We would start at opposite corners, build our bases and chat. Jjam wasn’t very much of a gamer, so I always ended up taking the other two quarters, building up a massive force, then just pounded his stuff. I think we both just wanted something to do. Good times.
Featured Games:
Duke Nukem 3D
Quake II
Command and Conquer: Red Alert
Jedi Knight
Descent 2
