Retro LAN Games, Introduction to the Series

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title: Retro LAN Games, Intro

date: 2013-06-27, 01:28:47

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One of the past times that me and my compatriots enjoy enacting when we want to relax and unwind (or have an exciting social gathering where we can kill, maim, conquer, and otherwise dominate each other) is the humble LAN party. There are really three ways to go with this: Current Windows Based Games, Old Windows Based Games, and Games Compatible with our Operating System of Choice, GNU/Linux.

The First one I want to talk about (mostly because I have been working with it extensively for the last few days) is the Retro LAN Party. For the Time Being, we will limit ourselves to the following:

• The Game has to have come out in or before the Early Naughties. The tentative year I am currently using as a cut off is the year 2003 (as in, everything that came out in 2004 or later is off limits.

• The Game must Natively Run On Windows. This means that I should not have to supply an emulator (as these generally work better on GNU/Linux) and that it will be simple to set up and get working. (NOTE: DOSbox is used in these examples because I personally have set these computers up with Windows XP. There is no MS-DOS in XP, so if You are running a DOS-heavy LAN, You may want to consider win98. Otherwise, DOSbox is fine. All GOG.com Games that ran on DOS come packaged with it, anyway.)

• The Game should run with Modest Specs. Not totally minimalistic, but at the very least, my HP Pavillion dv9000 and NVidia GeForce 8600M GS should be able to handle it. This shouldn’t be a problem, considering the first condition above.

• The Game must be Playable Over LAN. Kinda Obvious, but it does eliminate a few types of games, notably those that are meant to be hotseat, and oddities like You Don’t Know Jack.

• The Game must be Entertaining to Play. I am not doing this for academic reasons. This is a practical list of games which hopefully will be used to create LAN Party Rosters in the Future. They Gotta Be Fun. (That said, if a game satisfies the above, and turns out not to be fun, I will probably still talk about it, just not include it in the final list.)

I may increase or decrease these restrictions in the near future, but for now that will do. I hope that, given the amount of time I am spending on this, I will be able to eventually have a list of games that are fun to play, with reviews of each one, and a good, strong idea for public retro LAN parties.

Time for me to get back to work. Comments are always appreciated!