I fondly remember xpilot(1) combats at my university. Must have been around 1992?
We'd go to dinner together at 7pm and then descend into the basement of the electronics department to room full of HP Apollo 9000 workstations with gigantic monitors and an unreal resolution (1280x1024!!!)
Sometimes we'd play until 7am in the morning when the first students would come in to start working on their assignments, our hands completely cramped from pressing the right keyboard combinations to engage the ECM of our ships.
Really missed that LAN parties, it was something small but so much valuable. Our first addictions was Half-life (got stuck in Stalkyard for months) and AoE. I'm still playing Command & Conquer. Also found Red Alert mac version recently, can't wait to rock n roll with Tanya.
Yeah, done that. Using Arcnet. Which BTW, even though already then obsolete and slow, was way better for ad-hoc gaming setups than coax ethernet, because it had a hub-and spokes setup. Much more reliable than fiddling with coax ethernet and its terminators.
This sometimes involved hauling our PCs and (large CRT) monitors over to one person's house. And sometimes commandeering the computer labs at school.