> I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers.
I miss GameSpy, the original application, not the service it morphed into later. It was so easy to find a server to play on, playing the levels/mods you wanted to play.
Before that, I spent a lot of time (and money from my dad's credit card) on DWANGO. For those not familiar with DWANGO, you dialed in to their servers and then it acted like you were on a LAN. You could play games like Doom, Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, etc against other people. There was a main chat room to talk about what games you wanted to play.
It was also a much nicer place to play, partly because you had to pay _per minute_ in each game. The price wasn't anything crazy, if I recall, but it definitely kept people focused on the game.
Also met some good people and ended up working on a gaming site with one (MeccaWorld.com, on the off chance someone remembers that - I ran the Quake section) and started a company with them a decade or so later.
> I miss GameSpy, the original application, not the service it morphed into later
You drove me down nostalgia lane, looked in email and have my GameSpy receipt with unlock code. We paid $21.55 after tax in March of 1998 - my memory is really fuzzy but besides CS I think Quake III Arena was also popular at the time.
I miss GameSpy, the original application, not the service it morphed into later. It was so easy to find a server to play on, playing the levels/mods you wanted to play.
Before that, I spent a lot of time (and money from my dad's credit card) on DWANGO. For those not familiar with DWANGO, you dialed in to their servers and then it acted like you were on a LAN. You could play games like Doom, Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, etc against other people. There was a main chat room to talk about what games you wanted to play.
It was also a much nicer place to play, partly because you had to pay _per minute_ in each game. The price wasn't anything crazy, if I recall, but it definitely kept people focused on the game.
Also met some good people and ended up working on a gaming site with one (MeccaWorld.com, on the off chance someone remembers that - I ran the Quake section) and started a company with them a decade or so later.