4 ms·

I've only done a few LAN parties in the last handful of years, and they weren't quite as magical as doing it as a teenager where you spend 75% of the time decid

I've only done a few LAN parties in the last handful of years, and they weren't quite as magical as doing it as a teenager where you spend 75% of the time deciding on what to play and then figuring out how to crack it so everyone can play.

thesnide 3y ago
A 90s retroLAN would be great... Playing 90s games, that are rather cheap nowadays.
- nvy 3y ago
  Probably one of the more viable options because just about anything worth playing in the last 10+ years doesn't have LAN support.
  - eru 3y ago
    Isn't it mostly the AAA games that lack LAN support? I wouldn't call them the only things worth playing, just the opposite. Btw, most of the 90s are about 30 years away now. So you could play games from the 2000s, too, even if nothing from the last decade works in a LAN.
  - mike_hock 3y ago
    Just about anything worth playing was made 10+ years ago.
  - BlueTemplar 3y ago
    Early 90s games LAN support is worse, between only hotseat multiplayer and other protocols than IP... As for recent games that do not have normal IP support, better to ignore them.
Tomte 3y ago
Don't forget getting 10BaseT, NetBEUI and IPX to work on all players' computers [1]. Easily half a day was lost every time, but it was part of it, and almost fun. [1] Extra points if a player had participated in another LAN party with other people and had changed some or the other Windows network setting for that LAN party. "It worked last month and I did not change anything!" was always only true until the "and".
- LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
  Easyly solvable by booting some very early linux flom floppy disk(s), doing that 192.168.x.x/255.255.255.0 shit, pinging and arping around, making notices. Rebooting into Windoze and resetting shit according to those notices. Done in 30 mins max.
- hypercube33 3y ago
  I was fortunate that kids I grew up with had computers all over their house. network cables up and down the stairs. one family had a room built on their garage setup for band practice and tables around the thing for lan parties since their dad was some high end coder or unix wizard or something. later we took over an old single theater in north branch MN (the battle shack) and kids just lived there for the summer. 24/7 lan party and movies and music and just wild stuff going on. you'd show up with your PC and hook up and wander around trying to organize games, check out people's crazy setups (kids with crazy workstation CRT monitors for each color in as coax) and stuff like that. After I got out of highschool we went to AWOL lans which I think died over the pandemic finally but they had like two days of games organized in a hotel with a huge arcade, laser tag, go karts.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  I worked at a computer repair place that had a bunch of 16 port hubs (not switches) collecting dust. Naive teenage me thought "that's a lot of ports!" and I begged the owner to let me have them for my LAN parties. He gave me a funny look and said sure why not. The chaos that ensued having those things involved, not understanding collisions, really kickstarted my networking career.
  - thesnide 3y ago
    Bonus points to have those used as the backbone as they are looking very entreprise grade...
- mvkel 3y ago
  Totally. Getting everything to work was so rewarding. The actual playing of the games was icing on the cake
smabie 3y ago
I think the key component is you being a teenager
wvenable 3y ago
The last time I did a LAN party was in the 90s and you would spend at least an hour diagnosing network issues before you could play a single game with everyone.

thesnide 3y ago

A 90s retroLAN would be great... Playing 90s games, that are rather cheap nowadays.

nvy 3y ago
Probably one of the more viable options because just about anything worth playing in the last 10+ years doesn't have LAN support.
- eru 3y ago
  Isn't it mostly the AAA games that lack LAN support? I wouldn't call them the only things worth playing, just the opposite. Btw, most of the 90s are about 30 years away now. So you could play games from the 2000s, too, even if nothing from the last decade works in a LAN.
- mike_hock 3y ago
  Just about anything worth playing was made 10+ years ago.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  Early 90s games LAN support is worse, between only hotseat multiplayer and other protocols than IP... As for recent games that do not have normal IP support, better to ignore them.

Tomte 3y ago

Don't forget getting 10BaseT, NetBEUI and IPX to work on all players' computers [1]. Easily half a day was lost every time, but it was part of it, and almost fun. [1] Extra points if a player had participated in another LAN party with other people and had changed some or the other Windows network setting for that LAN party. "It worked last month and I did not change anything!" was always only true until the "and".

LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
Easyly solvable by booting some very early linux flom floppy disk(s), doing that 192.168.x.x/255.255.255.0 shit, pinging and arping around, making notices. Rebooting into Windoze and resetting shit according to those notices. Done in 30 mins max.
hypercube33 3y ago
I was fortunate that kids I grew up with had computers all over their house. network cables up and down the stairs. one family had a room built on their garage setup for band practice and tables around the thing for lan parties since their dad was some high end coder or unix wizard or something. later we took over an old single theater in north branch MN (the battle shack) and kids just lived there for the summer. 24/7 lan party and movies and music and just wild stuff going on. you'd show up with your PC and hook up and wander around trying to organize games, check out people's crazy setups (kids with crazy workstation CRT monitors for each color in as coax) and stuff like that. After I got out of highschool we went to AWOL lans which I think died over the pandemic finally but they had like two days of games organized in a hotel with a huge arcade, laser tag, go karts.
candiddevmike 3y ago
I worked at a computer repair place that had a bunch of 16 port hubs (not switches) collecting dust. Naive teenage me thought "that's a lot of ports!" and I begged the owner to let me have them for my LAN parties. He gave me a funny look and said sure why not. The chaos that ensued having those things involved, not understanding collisions, really kickstarted my networking career.
- thesnide 3y ago
  Bonus points to have those used as the backbone as they are looking very entreprise grade...
mvkel 3y ago
Totally. Getting everything to work was so rewarding. The actual playing of the games was icing on the cake

smabie 3y ago

I think the key component is you being a teenager

wvenable 3y ago

The last time I did a LAN party was in the 90s and you would spend at least an hour diagnosing network issues before you could play a single game with everyone.