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

[Atolm]

I only went to a LAN party once as a teenager. It was too much of a hassle to carry the PC and the CRT monitor. I had to pester my mother to carry everything. Nowadays I'd probably carry a SFF PC and one of those 12-13 inches detachable 1080p screens. And I'd still play CS 1.6, Q3, Diablo 2 and StarCraft most probably.

Besides, as I said, I was just a dumb teenager. All I did was downloading anime and games from other people. I remember I got a leaked copy of Halo 2 weeks before release, I had no Xbox at the time but I downloaded, burned it and send it over post to a friend who lives on the other side of the country, back when download speeds over DSL were 256kbps.

There, I just admitted to a crime!!!

My circle of friends and I usually went often to internet cafes though.

 

[Bricktop]

Me and my friends used to do this in the beginning but it just because a huge PITA so we turned our den into a gaming room and set up 6 permanent PC's so we wouldn't have to deal it. Man, those were good times.

 

[Rotkehle]

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...

Still minumum once a year. But I have a NZXT H1 and a Razer Blade notebook now. the weight isnt comparable to the 90s/00s. I had a chunky Chieftec Big Tower and a 19" CRT. Its still Crazy how much stuff we managed to get into a single car. Good times.

 

[Deleted member 18021]

I lugged my TV and GCN to a friend's house for this setup in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Four Swords Adventures a few times:

 

[Hamster Plugin]

Still doing those, my university has had lan party events for a long time now (although I've graduated, there's plenty of former students too). So yeah, I remember almost 4 months ago. Less than a week later we got covid-19 restrictions - really got that event done at the last possible weekend.

And because Finland seems to be handling covid-19 pretty well, I might get into the next one in October or November.

 

[DrKelpo]

Oh yes, I do... A lot of very nice memories :)

 

[newmoneytrash]

i don't, but i do remember carrying my whole tv and playstation down the street to my friends house so we could each play final fantasy vii in the same room

 

[5pectre]

yeah, it wasn't fun lugging around with that 100lbs monitor...

 

[SigSig]

I lugged my TV and GCN to a friend's house for this setup in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Four Swords Adventures a few times:

Click to shrink...

that's dedication

 

[sugar bear]

I remember one LAN party where I was super envious of a guy who had a Voodoo 2 card in a first-gen CRT iMac, playing Myth, Quake 3 and UT.

 

[Brivs]

Totally! My first "LAN party" involved my friends' older brother hauling his PC in the back of a truck from their house in the bush to my home in our (very small) town, so we could play Doom II deathmatch. Those events were like early D&D; most of the time seemed to be spent transporting, setting up, and troubleshooting, rather than playing.

 

[existentialcounselor]

Oh god - I almost forgot about lugging around those ridiculously massive CRTs. Amazing to think we just use to have two small tvs, back to back, with two Xboxs hooked up to a router doing 4v4 matches in Halo in my parents' basement. Played til the sun rose. Great times for sure.

 

[gl0w]

Man... it brings so many memories

 

[Mugy]

I remember me and a few friends rented the entirety of an internet LAN party room (you know, one of those pay-per-minute places, very common in latam) for an entire night just to play Half-life Deathmatch, Counter Strike 1.6, Sven Co-Op, Quake 3 Arena, and those weird online only games like Gunbound, Rakion, GunZ, and etc. It was an absolute crazy experience

I miss local multiplayer games :(

 

[Ravelle]

I had a gaming laptop I used, Which I still use but not for games.

It's from 2011 and has trouble running anything nowadays

 

[Joe White]

We still have weekend LAN parties 4 times a year (max 2 this year). Luckily I don't have to drag my desktop to those, as I've gaming laptop for those sessions.

 

[Riesenfass]

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.

Click to shrink...

Oh god, that reminds me of that - tried to block it from my memory. I didn't use a suitcase or ride a train, but being a CS student in the early 2000s, I would regularly lug my desktop and CRT monitor home for large breaks. It was awful lol.

 

[Gelf]

My only experience of LAN gaming was when someone at school installed Quake on all the computers in the so called "silent" study room that the teachers rarely inspected. Never had the joy of lugging my own system around.

 

[Midas]

LAN parties are fucking awesome. I miss Remedy. Best part wasn't playing games but just the whole thing and the scene part of it, demos and stuff.

 

[plagiarize]

I built a PC in a Shuttle case, that was a shade too powerful for the thermals that tiny case supported and I had to regularly open it up and clean it and relube the fans, but it was great for LAN parties. It was great when I emigrated to the states too, cause I brought it as my carry on and didn't have to get it shipped with all my other stuff on a boat.

 

[exodus]

I still do 3 times a year with friends. We started with 4 people in 2003. We have 10-12 regulars now, 17 years later.

We'll typically do Friday - Sunday, or sometimes Friday - Monday if it's a long weekend. Everyone brings a meal contribution. A few people split on beers for the group. Saturday evening is always steak & salad.

We play a lot of SC2, Overwatch, CS GO, though Valorant will certainly become a staple in the future. Since we're a large group we'll often break out into side activities during the weekend. Destiny 2 raids, or Vermintide to name a few.

 

[Kill3r7]

In the early 00s we were lugging TVs across campus to play Halo.

 

[mnemonicj]

As a teenager, this was a lot of fun but I quickly realized then that it was pain to carry all that equipment around.
I wouldn't do it today, but I would certainly recommend it to my future children.

 

[GabriocheXD]

Playing CS and Quake3 offline with the best players from my area. Having to emergency install Windows millenium because I can't connect to the Network. Sleeping like shit on three plastic chairs. Actually some of my best memories from highschool.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

I didn't do this with my PC, but we ABSOLUTELY did it with our Xbox consoles for Halo parties. We'd bring four to eight Xboxes to someone's house and hang out in their basement all night eating pizza and playing Halo until we were all too tired to talk, then keep playing for another hour as everyone passed out one by one.

Then alcohol entered the picture and we kinda stopped doing that. We tried to do one Halo party when we were old enough to drink and everyone got distracted like 40 minutes in and that was the end of it.

 

[BasilZero]

I didnt game on PC around those dark times, glad I didnt.

 

[dmr87]

Oh yes, those were the days. Warcraft 3 custom games for 12 hours straight anyone?

 

[Bomblord]

... No? I didn't have a PC in the 90's but when I did game on the go I had a Alienware m11x

Still miss the form factor of an 11" gaming tank :(

 

[exodus]

I didn't do this with my PC, but we ABSOLUTELY did it with our Xbox consoles for Halo parties. We'd bring four to eight Xboxes to someone's house and hang out in their basement all night eating pizza and playing Halo until we were all too tired to talk, then keep playing for another hour as everyone passed out one by one.

Then alcohol entered the picture and we kinda stopped doing that. We tried to do one Halo party when we were old enough to drink and everyone got distracted like 40 minutes in and that was the end of it.

Click to shrink...

Our LAN weekends are filled with alcohol now, heh. We usually go through about 140-200 beers for the 10-12 of us over the weekend. I'm not sure if that's better or worse than the dozens of energy drinks we used to drink when we were teenagers.

 

[dmr87]

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!

Click to shrink...

We used to gather like 15 people and set up a LAN at my friend's grandpa's auto workshop which had no internet so we dragged an ethernet cable from their house over the yard and in to our switch in the workshop. Was at least 30 yards, had to get that juice. We brought mattresses and slept on the floor, one guy brought a tent to sleep in.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Our LAN weekends are filled with alcohol now, heh. We usually go through about 140-200 beers for the 10-12 of us over the weekend. I'm not sure if that's better or worse than the dozens of energy drinks we used to drink when we were teenagers.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, my friend group just didn't care about video games anymore once beer entered the picture. It probably didn't help that most of us became extreme drunks in our twenties.

Nowadays we all moved to different parts of the country so there's no LAN stuff anymore. I'm not even sure some of them even have consoles at this point.

 

[Love Machine]

We used to gather like 15 people and set up a LAN at my friend's grandpa's auto workshop which had no internet so we dragged an ethernet cable from their house over the yard and in to our switch in the workshop. Was at least 30 yards, had to get that juice. We brought mattresses and slept on the floor, one guy brought a tent to sleep in.

Click to shrink...

Hah, sounds awesome. Slumming it at LAN parties was the best.
Playing games until the wee hours of the morning, then waking up and making cups of tea and getting straight back into it.
We played Unreal Tournament (and later UT2K), Operation Flashpoint, Company of Heroes to name but a few.
I treasure those memories!