Shack Chat: What was your first online gaming experience?

The Shack Staff waxes semi-nostalgic about modems and early Xbox Live games in this week's edition of Shack Chat.

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SCREECH. SHRIEK. Oh, sorry. Don't mind me. That was just my modem trying and failing to connect to my friend's phone line so we could frag each other in Doom II. Yes, in this week's Shack Chat, we're reminiscing about our first online gaming experiences, abysmal though many of them were.

Now, we're using the term "online" loosely here. What we want to know is, what was the first game you played by connecting with another person who wasn't in the same room? Did you play Halo 2, one of the earliest Xbox Live-compatible games and newly released this week on PC as part of the Halo Master Chief Collection? Maybe you rolled around in the MUD with multiple other users in a text-only dungeon. Or maybe you had better luck than some of us had connecting our modems to play early FPS titles like Doom and Duke3d.exe.

Read on to learn about our expeirences in those and other online (and "online") arenas. Once you've ruminated over our entries, tell us:

Question: What was your first online gaming experience?


Doom - Asif Khan, Has played online games with a 28.8 modem

The first time I saw Doom was a religious experience. My friend got a Pentium computer for his birthday just in time for Doom’s launch. It was probably a few weeks later that our group of friends tried out online play via phone modems. It was awful, but it motivated our crew to start up LAN party weekends. I had a Mac Plus at the time, so I had to jump on my friend’s computer when they were taking a break. I didn’t get a decent PC until a few years later when Quake launched.


Halo 3 - Ozzie Mejia, Which Halo came out this week again?

I might have played video games since I was five years old, but there was a long period after high school where I fell out of gaming. It wasn't until I picked up my QA job with THQ that I felt the need to get back into the game. And yes, I owned a GameCube at the time. But I wanted something else. I wanted something that was capable of going online. I wanted to be one of the cool kids who were playing Halo.

So that led to me buying an Xbox 360. And with it, I bought Halo 3. Had I played the previous two Halo games? No, but that wasn't going to stop me. Besides, I was less worried about Master Chief's story than I was about jumping into the online space and getting my multiplayer game on. I remember my thinking at the time being, "It's just like Goldeneye, right?"

No, it wasn't quite like Goldeneye, but I loved the good times with Halo 3 anyway, whether it was Team Slayer, Oddball, or King of the Hill. I even liked Capture the Flag, just because I could whack some dudes with the flag. Hee hee hee… WHACK! But nothing was better than getting that sticky grenade kill. Those are still the best.

Just don't ask me to drive. I'm pretty sure I can drive an actual warthog better than I can drive Halo's Warthogs.


Age of Empires - Sam Chandler, Guides Editor

I got my first copy of Age of Empires in a box of Kellogg’s cereal. It might have been Corn Flakes, or perhaps even Coco Pops, it doesn’t matter. For some reason, I now had one of the best RTS games released on PC, and I played the heck out of it.

A few years later, my family upgraded from dial-up to ADSL, and I experienced my first real online game. I jumped into a match against someone else in Age of Empires, never really interacted with them, and then the connection failed or the game ended. Not a great start to my online gaming career.

But upgrading to ADSL meant that I could finally experience the best online game: Halo 2. So while Age of Empires is what I used as my first experience, Halo 2 is where I cut my teeth with online gaming.


Halo 2 - Donovan Erskine, Intern

I was a mere 6 years old when my dad bought Halo 2 for me and my older brother, on the agreement that we wouldn’t try to take out rocket launching antics into the real world. We had endless fun playing with local kids on system link, but our entire world changed once we got access to Xbox Live. So many summer nights were spent playing custom matches on coagulation until the sun came up. I also recall times where we’d would try to create our own Red vs Blue episodes.


GunZ: The Duel - Brittany Vincent, Senior Editor

None of my online interactions were that significant when it comes to multiplayer gaming at an early age. I dabbled in online FPS matches as a child when I probably shouldn't have, and jumped into SOCOM with PlayStation 2, but the most important part of my online gaming history was my experience with GunZ: The Duel. That's when things really started heating up.

I spent hours and hours in this free-to-play third-person shooter in my final year of middle school and ended up making friends that I would continue spending time with throughout high school and beyond. This "K-style" shooter combined Uzis with swords and let you rock the most badass Western-style trench coat you'd ever seen when you reached a certain level. I was all about getting that trench coat, and when I did I felt like I joined the coolest club ever.

Sure, the game was ridiculously buggy and full of boosters and hackers, but it kept me busy most nights and I made important connections there. I miss the original iteration of the game and often find myself wishing I could go back now, but those operating the private servers on the old version are simply far too OP for me.


SOCOM II U.S. Navy SEALs: Bill Lavoy, Landscaping Noob

It was probably early 2004 when I picked up SOCOM II in a local Walmart. I got it because I liked the cover art, and because it came with a headset. I played offline for a bit, but eventually jumped online to give it a shot. 

The first night I played I met a group of guys with names like Viper, Burner Up, Sgt. Shorty, Benzolamas, and a whole bunch more I can’t recall. We played on a map called Sujo, which to this day remains my favorite map in any online game I’ve ever played. You either tried to attack and plant a bomb to destroy some drugs, or defended. It was insanely hard to attack on that map, but it was a challenge that our group enjoyed. In fact, we liked SOCOM II (and each other) so much, we created a clan that ran more than 30 deep at some points and competed in tournaments. We called it Rogue 7, and we of course had a website.

Over the next few years, this group largely stayed together, moving from SOCOM II to SOCOM 3. When the PS3 came out we kept playing, but once a game called Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare dropped, that was the beginning of the end, sort of. I still keep in touch with a few of those guys. Viper is one of my best friends to this day. A mentor that helped me lose the chip on my shoulder that I carried through my 20s. 

I consider myself lucky that the very first game I ever played online turned out so well for me. Lifelong friendships, and developing a passion for shooters that carried me into Battlefield 3 and Medal of Honor: Warfighter, where I made more lifelong friendships and broke into the games journalism industry.

Damn, I really miss SOCOM II.


Team Fortress 2- Josh Hawkins, Guides Guy

Before I graduated from high school in 2010, I lived a fairly sheltered life. I didn’t play all that many games outside of what I had on my consoles, and we never had any kind of online subscription services at the time. Fast forward to May 2010, when I bought a really crappy laptop with my graduation money and finally was introduced to PC gaming.

A friend of mine at the time ended up gifting me a couple of things -- mainly Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Team Fortress 2 -- but my laptop was nowhere near capable of running the Bad Company 2 all that well. Which is why I ended up picking up Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, and Valve’s Orange Box. It was pretty easy to get into the Left 4 Dead series, but I wouldn’t really consider it my first online experience. Sure, I played with randoms, but it wasn’t until I started playing Team Fortress 2 a week or two after I installed it that I really got into the online multiplayer scene.

Team Fortress 2 was unlike anything I had ever played before. It was amazing, and fluid, and a load of fun. It was the first time I’d ever really dabbled in an online FPS, and it had a lot to offer. It also made me a load of new friends, friends which would eventually move with me over to Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, where I’d end up sinking hundreds of hours into both games.


WarCraft 2 - TJ Denzer, Tides of News

My first online experience was with the classic RTS WarCraft 2: Tides of Darness. Having been worked out a bit in previous titles like StarCraft and Diablo, Blizzard adapted WarCraft 2 in a “Battle.net Edition” of the game. It was 4 years after WarCraft 2’s initial launch in 1995, but I remember my mind being blown at the idea of being able to take the real-time strategy I’d come to know inside and out and be able to compare my battle tactics to those of other players on the world wide web.

It was also a sobering experience, jumping into an online game for the first time. In a solitary environment, you might think you have the best strategy or pattern. However, with the advent of online gaming, all of the “pros” among us were quickly exposed to a world that showed us all of the flaws in our gameplans.

But that’s what became even more fun about it, you know? Being exposed to strategies that you otherwise would have never known about through a system that connects otherwise unreachable players together. Online gaming has come a long way since the days of Battle.net on games like the first StarCraft and WarCraft 2, for better and worse, but few revelations will ever be as eye-opening as that first time coming up against a truly good WarCraft 2 player in those early years.


StarCraft - Greg Burke, Never owned a OG Xbox

My family wasn’t a PC family. In fact I didn’t even have good internet access at all until late 2002. Sure there was AOL and 56k, but my dad only had one laptop and Computer, which couldn't run games at all and I wasn't allowed to touch it. We eventually got one of the first iMacs in 1998. The thing was meant to be an e-mail and homework machine. We eventually got satellite internet which would send down and upload back data in large packets at a time. Fine for Email and web surfing, but for Online gaming? FPS? No way. Everything would freeze for 10-15secs, then speed up 300 percent to catch up and I’d be dead before I knew what happened, Tribes, Counter-Strike, Halo 2, nothing worked online well.

So I never bought any Online games, or the OG xbox, there was really no point. However, Blizzard had recently made StarCraft, and to my shock it could run on the iMac we had, and although online was a little laggy it ran good enough for me to play with my friends. That was my first true online game experience.


WarCraft 2 over Kali - David L. Craddock, long reads editor

Kali.
Kali.

When I proposed this week's topic to the staff, I was certain Doom 2 was my first online gaming experience. We're using "online" loosely, here. I remember firing up the game from the setup menu in DOS, and jumping through whatever hoops we had to jump through to connect via modem. We tried both ways: My modem dialing into his, and vice verse.

And today, sitting here, I realized we couldn't get it to take. Who knows why. "Online" gaming was finicky in the '90s. I had a similar experience with Command & Conquer. I'd upgraded to a 56.6K modem, but that attempt didn't get off the ground either.

Then came Kali. If you aren't aware, Kali is a service that tricked your computer into thinking it was connected to a local network, when in reality your modem was dialing out to connect to other people. (Kali's still around today, though it's obviously less useful than it was 20+ years ago.) It provided what so many DOS-era games lacked, a universal interface that bypassed arcane command line input. For a one-time fee of $20, you could play any modem-compatible game online: Doom and Doom 2, Heretic, Hexen, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, WarCraft 2, Command & Conquer. (Kali proved such a popular way to play WarCraft 2 that Blizzard included a separate executable configured for play over the network on the game disc.)

You could even play newer games that came with their own graphical user interfaces and online networks, such as Diablo and StarCraft. Sure, you could play those games over Blizzard's Battle.net, but if you and your buddies had all plunked down your 20 bucks, why not?

Kali was magic to me. It still is, even in an age where connecting to others and playing my favorite games is as common as digital storefronts and day one patches. The little kid in me still sees video games and all their moving parts as magical, and hopefully always will.


G-Toons - Steve Tyminski, Contributing Editor

G-Toons.
G-Toons.

When I was in middle school, I can remember playing on the computer at my friend’s house. We would go to his house after school, watch some Toonami on Cartoon Network and play some games. There was a “card-game” type game on the Cartoon Network web site called “G-Toons” where you would make a deck of toons and play against random people online. Each toon had special abilities and highest score won the battle. At the same friend’s house, I recall playing some Xbox games like the NHL and NBA franchises online, as he was the only one of us with an Xbox Live account.

Fast-forward to my own experiences and it was all Nintendo. I did own a Dreamcast but I never hooked it up to the Internet, as we didn’t have the greatest Internet growing up. Anyway, by the time the DS was around, the family Internet was better and we had a router that could support the likes of Pokémon and Mario Kart 7, those being the games I went online with the most. Being able to trade with random Pokémon Trainers and race random people in Mario Kart was great, especially after Nintendo patched in the anti-snake driving.

Shack Staff stories are a collective effort with multiple staff members contributing. Many of our lists often involve entires from several editors, and our weekly Shack Chat is something we all contribute to as a group. 

From The Chatty
  • reply
    May 15, 2020 11:30 AM

    Shack Staff posted a new article, Shack Chat: What was your first online gaming experience?

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      May 15, 2020 11:37 AM

      Direct dialup with Wolf 3D or Doom. Truly Internet? QWTF.

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        May 15, 2020 12:39 PM

        Dial up counts. It was awful, but it counts!

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          May 15, 2020 12:49 PM

          I had 26.4k (usually couldn't even negotiate at 28.8 and 56k was no go) dialup Internet until I moved out of the house in ~2001 and got cable. It was so brutal.

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          May 15, 2020 12:52 PM

          There were some games it worked well enough for. I played a ton of ROTT over dialup and had fun with it.

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        May 16, 2020 3:09 AM

        This

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      May 15, 2020 11:39 AM

      I think it was a MUD - Shadowdale to be precise. And that scared me away from MMORPG for a loooong time (and when I finally did play EQ2 I was sucked in for a long time again)

      I played plenty of LAN Doom, Duke3D and Quake before online was a thing tho.

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      May 15, 2020 11:43 AM

      fuck I feel old reading all these entries

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        May 15, 2020 11:53 AM

        Even mine?

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          May 15, 2020 12:34 PM

          Yes, in that it reminds me just how long ago it all was. :) My experience was very close to yours: same game, and running the phone line from the kitchen to a 9600 baud modem on a 486 DX

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            May 15, 2020 12:38 PM

            My dad had an NEC 386 for like payroll and stuff. But I didn’t have my own PC until 1996. It was an amazing year to get a computer capable of playing Quake, Doom, Duke3D.exe and more.

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      May 15, 2020 11:46 AM

      Door games on dial-up bulletin board systems. Trade Wars 2002, Legend of the Red Dragon, etc., over a 2400 baud modem connection.

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        May 15, 2020 4:12 PM

        oh shit, if were counting BBS door games then totally LoRD

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        May 15, 2020 4:13 PM

        Totally this.

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        May 15, 2020 10:40 PM

        if door games count, this is mine as well.

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      May 15, 2020 11:47 AM

      Local LAN was DooM. Online online was Quake I think.

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      May 15, 2020 12:15 PM

      BBS games. Maybe Tradewars?

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        May 15, 2020 3:36 PM

        I sunk soooo many hours into that game. I even setup my own mini-bbs just to play on a pristine map.

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      May 15, 2020 12:35 PM

      I think it was probably playing NHL 95 with my dad. I had a sidewinder joystick that I kept tryng to use to play, and it didnt' work super well.

      Also, there was that one banana tossing monkey game that you could play online--it was basically like Scorched Earth, like one of those pre-Worms, type games, but you could connect over the internet and throw bananas at each other.

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      May 15, 2020 12:35 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 15, 2020 12:38 PM

      NEOPETS

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      May 15, 2020 12:52 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 15, 2020 12:55 PM

      Duke3D on the Total Entertainment Network. Apparently they still have a nominal/historical website: http://www.ten.net/

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      May 15, 2020 12:56 PM

      Anyone here use early online gaming services? TEN, Kali, GameSpy, etc.? I think I tried TEN, but I was a devout Kali user for years. I played pretty much all pre-Diablo 2, Internet-compatible games on it. I got to interview its creators several years ago. I loved that service so much.

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        May 15, 2020 1:04 PM

        [deleted]

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        May 15, 2020 1:16 PM

        Kali and GameSpy I recall. It was not so fun to find servers back then.

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        May 15, 2020 2:07 PM

        Kali and Gamespy for sure.

        I thought there was another online gaming service I used around the Kali era, but I can't recall what it was called?

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        May 15, 2020 2:08 PM

        Also, wasn't T.E.N. what Valve used for online play and authentication before Steam?

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        May 15, 2020 2:26 PM

        I hated GameSpy. I always thought it was such a garbage application. I liked Kali. But by the time I could afford hardware to game online, I had found the Shack and that was the best experience.

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        May 15, 2020 2:32 PM

        [deleted]

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        May 15, 2020 3:37 PM

        I've used most of those and a few most haven't heard of like Prodigy.

        Ah yes, Kali. That was really a game changer.

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        May 15, 2020 3:53 PM

        I remember Sierra online imagination network it was going to change the world. I remembered how exciting it was to open the package and then you had to wait forever for anything to load.

        https://youtu.be/rQDCptBzR64

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          May 15, 2020 4:11 PM

          I think you got like 2 hours free then had to pay. I was a kid and couldn’t get my parents to pay for more hours.

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        May 15, 2020 4:10 PM

        GameSpy was essential when Quake first came out (and was QuakeSpy)

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        May 15, 2020 6:22 PM

        Kali
        Gamespy
        Westwood online
        Heat.net

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        May 15, 2020 7:44 PM

        Terminal Velocity on mplayer was my first online gaming experience. I used heat.net as well.

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      May 15, 2020 12:59 PM

      warcraft 2 on kali. was a disaster

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      May 15, 2020 1:00 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 15, 2020 1:08 PM

      GL QuakeWorld

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      May 15, 2020 1:08 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 15, 2020 1:20 PM

      I pirated TCP/IP software for DOS (Beame and Whiteside) so that I could play the QTest with Shackers. This was 1996. Blew my mind. 400ms ping with no client side prediction. Still stoked.

      Serial cable only until then.

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      May 15, 2020 1:24 PM

      Anyone else remembering Imagination Network (Sierra) or TEN?

      http://www.sierrahelp.com/Misc/INNRevival.html
      http://ten.net/199706/html/ten_home.html

      Besides Compuserve/Prodigy these were my go-to's growing up and got me into PC gaming. Played a TON of Duke 3D on TEN back in the day. Lots of Red Baron on the Imagination Network.

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        May 15, 2020 3:39 PM

        I did beta for IN. I kinda remember it never quite got off the ground.
        TEN was more realized.

        I did crazy stuff in Prodigy with it's drawing language. I figured out how to scan a coloring book page (line art) and use their language to draw it floodfilled on the screen.

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      May 15, 2020 1:24 PM

      Sierra Online on a dial up modem

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        May 15, 2020 1:39 PM

        Hell yeah baby! Also first time doing "cyber sex" or anything of the sort was on there. Was prob an older dude lol.

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        May 15, 2020 3:21 PM

        They had cool casino games

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          May 15, 2020 3:45 PM

          Yeah they were pretty good. My favorite was Red Barron

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      May 15, 2020 1:27 PM

      There was an MMO called Age or Realms of something or other. A friend of mine has a account in ~1994/1995 I think

      It was so cool

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      May 15, 2020 1:32 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 15, 2020 1:41 PM

      Wacraft 2 direct dial up!

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      May 15, 2020 1:48 PM

      Side-jack, do you remember the first cheat or hint you looked up online?

      Bizarrely I have a vivid memory of looking up a puzzle for the text adventure Alice in Wonderland (but it had hints built in and it was a LONG time ago so maybe im remembering wrong) but the puzzle involved putting a piece of paper under a door and then use a straightened coat hanger to push the key out of a lock onto the paper and retrieve the key.

      Games were a lot harder before you could instantly look up a solution to everything - and self control in this world is a lot more difficult.

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        May 15, 2020 1:59 PM

        iddqd :)

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        May 15, 2020 2:10 PM

        I think Half-Life cheats were the first ones I remember looking up online.

        Doom and Quake before that were just word of mouth or maybe from PC gaming magazines.

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          May 15, 2020 2:20 PM

          Aye, Doom was definitely in the BBS days but Duke3D and Quake rode that hazy line between when BBS slowed down and the internet took off - I dont quite remember whether it was BBS word of mouth or forum, internet etc. I seem to the internet being more ubiquitous around the time of HL tho?

          Oddly enough I thought about Ranma 1/2 for the first time since 97~ this week too. Not sure why I'm on a nostalgic kick

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        May 15, 2020 3:07 PM

        Had to have been Doom. I scored an invite to some other kid's birthday party in 5th or 6th grade because I shared the cheat codes with him.

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        May 15, 2020 3:40 PM

        Online? Ugh, probably a late era Sierra game.

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        May 15, 2020 9:46 PM

        Anyone have the game genie?

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      May 15, 2020 1:56 PM

      NULLMODEM DOOM!!
      Nah, it'd be some Spacewar or Civ variant.

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        May 15, 2020 1:59 PM

        You just reminded me of SubSpace! I definitely played that a bit online in the mid 90s.

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      May 15, 2020 1:59 PM

      Quake one... and I was never the same. I logged hundreds of hours on that damn game

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      May 15, 2020 2:04 PM

      Holy shit, this is really hard to remember.

      I know that QW was when I got REALLY into online gaming all the time. But I recall playing games like Doom2, Heretic, and Hexen with friends over a modem before that. Maybe Command & Conquer before that? I also remember playing MechWarrior 2 multiplayer, and I'm pretty sure that was before QW.

      For sure QW was when non-modem online gaming took off for me, but all of the direct dial-up modem play before that gets very hazy with timelines.

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      May 15, 2020 2:05 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 15, 2020 2:08 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 15, 2020 2:11 PM

      Descent 1 and 2. Man I loved those online. I was in a clan, and it was such a fun experience playing against other folks. It was a whole new world.

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      May 15, 2020 2:24 PM

      We had Descent in the computer lab and that shit blew my fragile little mind. I probably wouldn't be where I am today without that experience. Everything I learned was for gaming from 1994 - 2002. Then I was like "oh shit, I know some stuff" and started learning more to make money.

      Duke 3d followed and then quake.

      Quake was the first one I played online with just completely random people. I did play Descent and Duke over Kali (if my memory is right) at a friend's house. But Quake was on an AMD K5 that I fucking owned god damn it.

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      May 15, 2020 2:28 PM

      Quake, I remember dropping into a game first time with everyone behind a gate all wearing blue, it was a CTF mod where keys were the flags. Was the coolest most fun feeling ever playing online.

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      May 15, 2020 2:30 PM

      English snackers - anyone old enough to remember Ceefax / Teletext games on TV?

      https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a787941/ceefax-and-teletext-from-bamboozle-to-mega-zine-why-they-were-way-better-than-the-internet/ just sent me on a massive nostalgia trip

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      May 15, 2020 2:31 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 15, 2020 2:44 PM

      BBS door games of course, but I vividly recall playing a 3D tank shooter on a 9600 baud modem in the early 90s. It was very primitive in 16 color EGA at best, but I recall it had such a generic name that modern day searches for it come up blank.

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      May 15, 2020 2:52 PM

      Uhhh... Legend of the Red Dragon if that counts? If not then Doom over local. Duke3d over modem.

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      May 15, 2020 2:57 PM

      Exodus MUD and CounterStrike.

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      May 15, 2020 2:58 PM

      Warcraft 2 direct modem connection or Doom multiplayer via modem. So many good memories, tying up the phone line at night.

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      May 15, 2020 3:16 PM

      Does Legend of the Red Dragon count? That and other BBS door games were my first. I think my local BBS had TradeWars, but I mostly remember using all my daily turns in LoRD like a young teenage fiend.

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      May 15, 2020 3:17 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 15, 2020 3:21 PM

      Maybe descent, direct peer to peer modem to modem. Or doom, direct modem to modem.

      Glory days

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      May 15, 2020 3:29 PM

      I’d play those old MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) style games on the Commodore 64.

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      May 15, 2020 3:32 PM

      Either direct dial connecting to friends for warcraft or C&C, or oldschool blizzard bnet. Can't remember.

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      May 15, 2020 3:32 PM

      BBS games - LORD, Trade Wars. Then Doom.

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      May 15, 2020 3:41 PM

      I think it was Warcraft II. I sucked at it. Didn't play anything but single-player before that. Then after that probably counter strike? Dunno.

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      May 15, 2020 3:42 PM

      It was a mech game in a maze that me and friend would play direct over modem.
      Then he got a new pc and did not tell me and his mech would walk and shoot at least twice as fast as mine, I had a 386sx and he got a 386 DX 40

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      May 15, 2020 3:45 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 15, 2020 3:45 PM

      Space Empire on bulletin board systems has got to be the first. That glorious ascii. It was really creative though.

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      May 15, 2020 3:48 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 15, 2020 4:10 PM

      Direct Dial up to a friend of mine who had Doom installed and we did deathmatch over modem, if that counts.

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      May 15, 2020 4:12 PM

      An AOL trivia game with friends in the early 90s. Then built my first PC in 1997 and played Diablo1 through BNET and QWTF through Kali and Gamespy.

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      May 15, 2020 4:12 PM

      Truly using the internet? Quake. But before that I had done point to point dialup with Dark Forces with a few friends.

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      May 15, 2020 4:25 PM

      Doom shareware in the CAD lab in high school. A lab full of 486 DX/2's. It was also the first time I ever played Doom. What a fucking experience that was, holy shit.

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      May 15, 2020 4:40 PM

      FarsideMUD

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      May 15, 2020 5:19 PM

      I think StarCraft.


      Oh wait... maybe Duke Nukem? But I don’t know if I ever played it online... maybe just the SP and/or LAN when at school.

      Either Duke Nukem or StarCraft.

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      May 15, 2020 5:48 PM

      I know there was a game or two before it Warcraft 2 was one of the first ones I got BIG into.

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      May 15, 2020 5:49 PM

      i remember dialing my friends computer directly to play Red Alert.

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        May 15, 2020 5:50 PM

        We had to tell everyone in the house not to pick up when the phone rang.

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      May 15, 2020 6:21 PM

      Probably BBS games? TradeWars 2002, Legend of the Red Dragon... others I can't remember. TradeWars was the best -- we'd all huddle around the computer, take turns logging in to play through our turns, coordinating attacks on other corps, building up our sectors with defenses and fighters, and drawing out trade routes on pen and paper to make money.

      I also have fond memories of playing Command and Conquer against my friend who lived 5 minutes away over direct dialup.

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      May 15, 2020 7:02 PM

      Quake DM and it was glorious.

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      May 15, 2020 7:08 PM

      Diablo 1 on a 14.4 modem

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      May 15, 2020 7:45 PM

      War2 over kali

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      May 15, 2020 7:58 PM

      Probably Marathon 2 on the college bookstore demo computers.

      OTOH Warcraft 2 in the dorms around the same time, and Command and Conquer. Maybe those

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      May 15, 2020 8:00 PM

      bbs games (solar realms elite, legend of the red dragon)?
      linewars?

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      May 15, 2020 8:04 PM

      Duke 3D technically, but Quake 2 really

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      May 15, 2020 8:26 PM

      Everquest. I remember blockading someone into their own house. That’s where l learned to troll.

      q2 after that. I still remember my first game on edge and the spectator chat screaming at me to get the armor.

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      May 15, 2020 8:27 PM

      I'm pretty sure it was Duke3D, followed shortly thereafter by MUDS on CompuServe.

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      May 15, 2020 8:44 PM

      Would be Doom over dialup and the inevitable mom you picked up the phone!!!

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      May 15, 2020 8:46 PM

      xconq in about '87 I guess.

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      May 15, 2020 9:05 PM

      The earliest was a CompuServe game room in the early 1980s. I don't remember what the game was or how I felt about it. After that was BBS door games in the mid late 1980s.

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      May 15, 2020 9:24 PM

      A/S/L ?

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      May 15, 2020 9:43 PM

      Modem, doom
      Internet, quake (not quake world, i don’t think it existed yet)

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      May 15, 2020 9:58 PM

      Counter-stike using the free netzero internet. WORLD OPPONENTS NETWORK EVERYONE

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        May 15, 2020 10:03 PM

        You just gave me PTSD. My dad had Netzero. WHen connected, it displayed this graphic that took up a quarter of the display, bled through any other software running. If you clicked on it, your active program minimized. I remember playing StarCraft and constantly maneuvering the graphic so I could click on workers, buildings--everything.

        What a nightmare.

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      May 15, 2020 10:38 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 15, 2020 10:48 PM

      Browser based Chess app probably. I remember messing around with Duke3D and Doom a little on dialup but Quake was the first online video game I really really played.

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      May 15, 2020 10:50 PM

      Duke3D on wireplay

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      May 16, 2020 2:17 AM

      I'm not 100% positive on this but I think it was Warcraft II around 1997/98. Starcraft followed shortly thereafter. And then DOOM II.

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      May 16, 2020 4:52 AM

      Sierra’s The Realm! And way too many hours probably.

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      May 20, 2020 1:52 PM

      Old school The Sierra Network. Played a bunch of Shadows of Yserbius and Red Baron. All were pretty slow on my 33.6k connection. Then everything got real once QuakeWorld came out.

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