Who else remembers lugging around their entire PC for lan parties?

[Squarehard]

I remember back in the 90s I used to always have to lug my entire PC around to my friend's house, and vice versa, since there really weren't affordable laptops back then that could actually handle gaming well.

I remember having to always carefully plan how I was going to bundle everything up correctly so I can just bring it all inside in one go. Stacking the keyboard, mouse, and other wires on top of my heavy clunker of a desktop as I carefully walk in through the doorway. And then powerstrips and extension cables all over the place, making sure each person have enough for their set-up.

I mean, it was fun, but in retrospect, it was also a tiring disaster thinking about what I had to do back then for a lan experience.

 

[Dest]

What do you mean remember I still do

 

[Wolfapo]

Always had those either at my place or a friends place. PC and tables in several rooms and the hallway.
Parents were not always happy, but it was a rare occurrence and usually during holidays.

Most annoying thing to carry were the CRTs though. 17-19 inch CRT was a nightmare...

 

[Squarehard]

Always had those either at my place or a friends place. PC and tables in several rooms and the hallway.
Parents were not always happy, but it was a rare occurrence and usually during holidays.

Most annoying thing to carry were the CRTs though. 17-19 inch CRT was a nightmare...

Click to shrink...

Omg, totally forgot CRT monitors, lol.

Man, those things sucked to carry around...

What do you mean remember I still do

Click to shrink...

;D

 

[GamingRobioto]

Not with PC but we used to do it with our 360s and Halo 3. Lugging around the early "flat" (they weren't flat) screens with enormous bezels.

 

[Bradford]

I still do. It is one of my favorite things.

 

[Anno]

Oh god, the amount of time we spent at my one friends house every weekend playing Everquest circa 2000/2001. The only good thing was his dad was a CS professor or something and so for some reason had a bunch of nice monitors in their basement already so I didn't have to haul that thing around, too. Some of my best memories.

I remember one time we started gaming Friday night and when we woke up Saturday there was probably a foot of snow and still coming down so we had no reason to do anything but game all the way through the Monday snow day.

 

[Shurp]

You haven't lived if you haven't had the joy of something failing and having to reinstall your operating system while at a lan party.

 

[Android Sophia]

LAN parties in my tiny room were extremely common in my teenage years. Me and a friend would have our computers together and play Counter-Strike or World of Warcraft. We'd also do Xboxes (and later 360s) and do Halo 2/3 together over Xbox Live.

 

[Sesha]

Not me, since I've only ever owned laptops and an iMac, lol.

 

[Deleted member 8468]

Not only LAN parties but I'd also drag my PC down to the local cyber cafe since most of my friends didn't have their own PC, but they all played counterstrike.

Crazy how different my late teens would have been if I had gigabit instead of 56k.

 

[kurahador]

Yeah, me. Playing War3 mode Dota was the shit.

 

[ASEdouard]

I remember back in the 90s I used to always have to lug my entire PC around to my friend's house, and vice versa, since there really weren't affordable laptops back then that could actually handle gaming well.

I remember having to always carefully plan how I was going to bundle everything up correctly so I can just bring it all inside in one go. Stacking the keyboard, mouse, and other wires on top of my heavy clunker of a desktop as I carefully walk in through the doorway. And then powerstrips and extension cables all over the place, making sure each person have enough for their set-up.

I mean, it was fun, but in retrospect, it was also a tiring disaster thinking about what I had to do back then for a lan experience.

Click to shrink...

Oh yes. And then playing Urban Terror, Warcraft 2 or freaking command & conquer for hours on end. A hassle I would not in a million years go through today at 37, but as a teen it was a ton of fun!

 

[Akira86]

i remember helping friends lug their obscenely huge full server towers up and down steps so we could play some Soldier of Fortune 2 overnight in a leaky basement across town.

 

[SabinFigaro]

Oh boy do I ever.

I lugged around a 21 inch CRT, which is insane to think about now.

I remember the days of early Counter-Strike (pre-version 1.6) and Unreal Tournament until the wee hours of the morning. At one gathering, someone was passing out burned copies of the original Max Payne, or Windows XP when it was first released. Dumb kids with little money and way too much free time.

 

[existentialcounselor]

I still do every few months. It's wonderful. A couple nights/days of gaming, drinks and food with my best friends.

 

[Squarehard]

Oh boy do I ever.

I lugged around a 21 inch CRT, which is insane to think about now.

I remember the days of early Counter-Strike (pre-version 1.6) and Unreal Tournament until the wee hours of the morning. At one gathering, someone was passing out burned copies of the original Max Payne, or Windows XP when it was first released. Dumb kids with little money and way too much free time.

Click to shrink...

I remember whenever I carried my CRT around, I always had to leverage my back a little, since it was so front heavy, and when I walked into my friend's home I had to be careful not to trip on the door frame.

Good times...

 

[Wink784]

Hell yeah. And sleeping on the carpet. Those sure were the days.

 

[wallmeat]

I didn't start going to LAN parties until about the mid 00s when I finally built my first gaming PC, so I at least missed out on lugging around CRTs. Otherwise I did go to a couple before that just to hang out and I'd get on and play some games when one of my friends needed a break. I think the biggest one my friend group ever ran was a weekend long gauntlet from Friday afternoon into early Sunday evening. We practically ran in shifts and there was around 16 of us there at max. It was awesome. It helped that at least a couple of the group were in IT and were able to set up a nice wired setup for us. A lot of times we would just do smaller ones with 4 or 5 of us and those smaller nights were great too.

Lots of Starcraft, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, Diablo. Lots of terrible eating decisions. I miss having that kind of time and energy.

Now a few of us have taken to doing the local game jam that the developer community in my city puts on a couple times a year. Thankfully I just take my laptop for that, though when life gets back to normal* and they resume, I may just bring the whole rig. It's not quite the same but the overall spirit is there.

 

[Xbox Live Mike]

Pc's a few times and a lot of Xbox lan parties for Halo. I remember back in the day you could buy a strap for your tower to hold the power cord and have handles to make it easy to carry.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

I read the title as "Who else remembers hugging"... Damn, I must be reading too many coronavirus news articles

 

[Kittens McMittens]

All my friends used to have a ISA ethernet cards that used 10base-T coax cable. We'd go round to each others houses on the weekend and stay up all night playing stuff.

 

[Love Machine]

Those were the days.

I remember we had one LAN party under a huge tent in a friend's garden. Another in a half-finished extension, surrounded by bare concrete and blue tarpaulin over the soon-to-be windows.

Nothing stopped these nerds!

 

[Adamska]

Eh, I did that like once or twice. It was a lot of effort, but also a lot of fun. Prefer keeping things online though. Also, consoles always seemed to be more practical for LAN parties, but only a few games supported such function.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I haven't been in a LAN party in almost 20 years, but they are some of my finest gaming memories.
I remember it started almost casually among friends I was already hanging out with. It was a large group of 15-20 people and we mostly got together by constantly going for clubs every Friday night. One day turns out at least 4 of us were into Counter-Strike. After some vague chatting about the topic a guy and his girlfriend in our group proposed to have a gaming Saturday night at her home.

It became a habit of us and for several months we had on average one of these gaming nights every two weeks or so, usually involving 6-to-10 people.

 

[Rune Walsh]

One of my favorite gaming sessions was playing Neverwinter Nights with six other guys in my friend's basement. We're just hanging around this bar while my friend gets the quest for us and all of a sudden the entire bar is attacking. It turns out my other friend went into someone's room and failed a stealth check to steal. The NPC then attacks him and sets off a dominoe effect where we end up murdering 20+ villagers. Good times.

 

[Mbolibombo]

For sure. It really was a blast.. miss it.

All the Quake ctf on E4M3 with my friends atmy friends place willAlways stay dear to me.

My first big LAN was in 1998 I Believe, over 50 People which was huge.. and then came Dreamhack and so on which obviously was even bigger.

 

[SuiQuan]

OP, you just had to go there and make me nostalgic and tearful today, didn't ya...
Yes, I miss everything "in-person" in general. Online is cool and all, but it doesn't compare. Miss them "Computer Clubs" that we had here too.

 

[.exe]

My parents wouldn't have allowed me to drag around the household PC back then, but I definitely did bring my small TV and console over to friends' places for gaming sleepovers. Very fun. We'd have like four or five TVs set up in a single room, cables everywhere, lots of snacks. Good times.

 

[sir_crocodile]

one of my friends had FOUR computers so we didn't' need to. just went round his place to play Starcraft or Unreal lol

 

[Sargerus]

I remember me and my friends having to use a construction cart in order to carry my friend's huge CRT monitor where the LAN party was gonna happen.

 

[UltraMagnanimous]

Obligatory:

 

[SuikerBrood]

Yes. Yes, I do.

Luckily one of my best friends lived next door. So it was a short walk with my monitor and PC.

We played a shit ton of Age of Empires, Battlefield 1942, Warcraft 3 and GTA during these LAN parties. Was a lot of fun.

 

[Deleted member 13328]

I slipped a disc in my spine when I tried to move my CRT-screen while sitting down, I just came home from the first Dreamhack and moved the screen over to the car seat closest to the door and my back died haha.

But man, I really miss the weekend LAN parties with my friends.

 

[Why would you do that?]

I'm much too young to have been around in the heyday of lan parties. But I did build my current PC in a tiny mini-ITX case specifically so I could bring it to friends' places on the train, which has led to a couple impromptu sessions of Left 4 Dead.

 

[Deleted member 4262]

My friends and I did this often in the 2000s. I also went to my city's biggest LAN event many times, with about 600-800 people attending every year. Shit was wild.

PS: If you're Norwegian, you can see one of our biggest current TV personalities in the last pic.

 

[darhf]

Moving CRTs was a PITA, but what I most remember was that 1/3 of the LAN Party time was about setting up the network.

 

[mclem]

The most absurd bit of lugging I've done - not actually for a LAN party, although it was at the time when I would do so - is taking my PC home from University at Christmas.

In a suitcase.

On a train.

 

[JesseDeya]

My steel rig was so heavy I installed a bathroom towel rack on the top as a handle!

The 17" Sony Trinitron might be the reason I now have lower back issues :)

Not only did I lug all that, but as we raced F1 / Rally / GPL / NASCAR / V8s I also lugged my steering wheel, pedals and office chair with me.

Moving CRTs was a PITA, but what I most remember was that 1/3 of the LAN Party time was about setting up the network.

Click to shrink...

And another third was sharing "video" files.

 

[Sargerus]

Moving CRTs was a PITA, but what I most remember was that 1/3 of the LAN Party time was about setting up the network.

Click to shrink...

And install the games on those who didn't had it.

 

[Rygar 8Bit]

Miss lugging around my CRT while it digs into my arm. Haven't taken my comp anywhere in the past 15 years. Would be a lot harder now with having a 75" tv for a monitor.

 

[Iztok]

I don't know anyone who games on a laptop, gaming or otherwise.
We still do LAN parties and we all have proper machines.

 

[Paertan]

19 inch CRT monitor. Ugh. It is so easy these days.

 

[supkid]

Used to cart my Amiga 500 and monitor around the city by bus as a teenager. That was a real struggle.

 

[Deleted member 10234]

Yeah it was crazy, can't believe it's been almost six months.

Spoiler

Living that mini-ITX life, I can just throw my PC and all the accessories apart from the monitor in a backpack

 

[Barrel Cannon]

I've never done it. The closest I've come is bringing an Xbox/360+tv+router for a console lan party

 

[sweetmini]

Sure, big tower case.
I also had a 21 inches monitor (that weighed a metric ton) , but a "portable" 17 inches was what i carried around at Lan Parties or Demo events.

 

[mhayes86]

I never actually did it. Prior to my family getting broadband, there was no way in hell they would have let me take the only computer we had to a friends house. Dial-up it was!

By the time I did any sort of LAN party, I had a laptop and the person's house we played at had WiFi and broadband. The few friends I have that play video games are all console. When Dark Souls remastered was released, I had a couple friends over with TVs and we played co-op together which was a lot of fun.

 

[Zukuu]

For a 2 1/2 half weeekend, you'd always need at least 1 day to set everything up and configure windows and whatnot so it actually works.

I remember a LAN where all we did was playing Magic since nothing worked.

 

[klauskpm]

Nope. Couldn't even afford to have a PC capable of gaming for quite some time, imagine playing online games with others, or carrying it on the street.

That said, I played a lot with my friends in lan houses. It was the best.