Back to the Roots – and why we won't be hauling heavy monitors in 2025
Hand on heart: When was the last time you had really sweaty hands, because your buddy is just around the corner with the shotgun de_dust2 Laughed? Or the innocent question ‘who owns the explosive package there’ was answered with a spontaneous detonation. Sure, Discord and high-speed internet are super convenient. But nothing, absolutely Nothing at all suggests the feeling of squeezing several beige tower PCs into a small car, ordering tons of pizza and yelling at each other across the table.
We have decided: It's time for the ultimate retro revival. We're reviving the 2000s. Not emulated, but really. On sheet metal and silicon from the time!
Our Golden Age of LAN Parties (1999-2005)
Who remembers the magical feeling when the box first comes up? We're talking about the era when graphics cards still had names that sounded like fighter planes.
The CPU Wars: Pentium III vs the legendary AMD Athlon XP. 1 GHz was the sound barrier!
Graphics power: One GeForce 2 GTS or the legendary Radeon 9800 Pro. Whoever had these in the AGP slot of his computer was the king of the gym.
The sound: One Creative Sound Blaster Live! because onboard sound at that time still sounded like a tin can under water.
The heart: The CRT monitor. 17 or 19 inches, for the workout enthusiasts also like 21s, unwieldy 15-25 kilos heavy, but with a refresh rate that some modern panels still dream of today.
Sidenote: Since most gentlemen have now all aged more or less well and hardly any longer have the nostalgia tube monitors in the basement, the towing is dispensed with for health reasons and instead activates the 5zu4 TFT resterampe.
The playlist: Our ‘Holy Grail’ Games
What comes to the disk (of course a rattling IDE hard drive)? Here are our set classics for the celebration and bridge days:
The shooter escalation: * Quake 3 Arena & Unreal Tournament: Faster than any energy drink. ‘M-m-m-monster Kill!’
Half-Life & CS 1.5: The standard. Without a round Assault or Italy or the Council maps Skeeball is not a LAN.
MoH: Allied Assault & CoD: Pure Kar98 action. Who camps or with the Panzerfaust rum guffelt flies out!
Strategy nights with Warcraft 3 & StarCraft: ‘Work, work!’ – Whether tower defense or classic Melee, Blizzard had us in full control at the time.
C&C Generals & ZeroHour: When the Scud storms fly, or the superweapon general from ZeroHour sends the gasoline Aurora bombers, the hut burns.
Fun & Racing with Need for Speed: Underground and Porsche: Lil Jon’s ‘Get Low’ bounces from the desktop speakers.
Revolt: Small remote controlled cars, huge frustration factor, we love it.
Armagetron: Tron lightcycle racing; Simple, clean, great, because it already ran on every potato at that time.
The challenge: Taming old Windows
A retro setup in 2024 is not a walk. We struggle with drivers that can only be found on dubious archive pages and hope that the old Elkos on the motherboards do not give up the ghost.
The plan: We put on dedicated Windows XP (and for the masochists Vista) boxes. Due to the lack of alternative driver support, there will also be a Win7 system here and there. But! the whole thing will be a local zoo! No Internet, no updates, just pure IPX/SPX and TCP/IP pleasure.
Nerd tip: Don't forget your spherical mice! But take the old Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical with you, your wrists will thank you.
Are you there?
We dusted the 10/100 network switches and sorted out the crossover cables as a precaution. It gets loud, it gets hot in the room, and it gets absolutely glorious.
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