Re: A Nostalgic Ramble: Online gaming services of yore

On Thu, 15 May 2025 19:06:19 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

<ramble type=nostalgic>

Like I said, I best remember Kali but I'm pretty sure I tried TEN and
Gamespy. I know for a while I paid a monthly subscription for some
service (I can't remember which one though! Maybe it was HEAT.Net?
MPlayer? INN? There were a lot of them back then). I didn't stick with
it long because none of my IRL friends were on there, playing with
strangers only had limited fun, and most of the games I was interested
in supported direct IP connections anyway (even if they were trickier
to use).
>
But it still makes me smile remembering that this --something we now
take for granted will be included for free-- was a service we once
paid extra for. How things have changed.
>
Did any of you ever use these services (assuming you were gaming back
then?) Or did you avoid them because of the cost, or for other
reasons?
>
</ramble>

Gamespy was my favoured app for online gaming. I particularly remember
playing hundreds of hours of Codename Outbreak, both in co-op mode and
PVP. I even bought a hardware desktop dial-up 56K modem to 'reduce' my
ping down to around 200ms so that I wouldn't cause so much rubber
banding for my friends in the US.

I still remember this wonderful sound from those days
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94REPJsioHA

That sound meant that the kids were in bed and I had a few precious
hours to myself.

I also remember using WON for online games. I think I played Quake 2
via WON for a while.

--
Rob