What was the very first PC game that you played in multiplayer mode? Notice that I didn't say "online" but "multiplayer" so that includes games that you played on a local LAN.


For me that game is Falcon 3.0 which I played over a local LAN with a friend at his house from time to time. The first game that I played over a MODEM connection was the original Doom.

Either Jane's "688i Hunter/Killer" or Microprose "1942 Pacific Air War".

Steel Panthers was my first multiplayer, hotseat with my brother.

Delta Force by Novalogic was the first online game I played.

First Call Of Duty on dial up.

We had a big SimHQ group playing "Joint Ops" when that first came out. Those were some great times and some of the on-comms conversations we had were golden.

Doom......

Probably Doom,played over a null modem cable with my brother.

I think it was Age of Empires 2, over serial cable connection.

Here's an acronym that only old time gamers know: PBEM

Panzer General 3D Assault

Source: https://youtu.be/1wlS-LXsO1Y


Wheels

Technically, the first multi-player game I played was called Maze Wars on a Mac, back in 1985, where people brought their Macs to the store where I worked and we hooked them up with AppleTalk.

The first multi-player flight sim I played was Flight Simulator on the Atari ST, and the first combat flight sim I played was Jet, also on the Atari ST, both with a modem, calling a friend. After that, I did Falcon for the Atari ST using a 50-foot null-modem cable connecting the computers that were in two different rooms of an apartment.

Trade War 2000 over a 300 baud modem to a local BBS. After that is was probably Sierra Online Red Baron (not RB2 or RB3D) where it was 2 vs 2 planes and they charged by the hour.

Quake on a LAN in my high school's computer lab circa 1999. Those were the days.

Allied General on my Mac in 1995. Play by Email.

Battlefield 1942 over VMI’s ethernet. We had most of Alpha Company’s 4th classmen on there, it seemed. It was a good time.

MS Combat Flight Simulator.
Took forever to load the launcher site to find a room, which would usually crash out.
Finally got in a room in a Spitfire or something and got down by some asshat in an F16 that instantly shot me down with a sidewinder.

It was so frustrating that it was the end of MP gaming for years to come...

You guys are old.
Old.

That's the SimHQ world for ya!

Mine was that insane dogfight mayhem that MS had...no clue what the name was.

My experiences with IL-2 online were like this. Never did it again. 56, its not that old.

Red Alert on LAN with friends. Two computer in two rooms with a cable across the hall.

First over the internet was Fighter Squadron, in a Spit Mk V against some guys from the old SDOE board.

Don't let him fool ya. He's just as old as the rest of us!

Counter Strike on LAN, in... 1999 I think. And Operation Flashpoint was my first multiplayer online experience in 2001. And to be honnest, I stopped playing online since 2 years, yougest players are just boring me, insults are at everyline of the chat now.

Play By EMail

I've played only one game that way that I can recall. Combat Mission

Long time lurker... Airwarrior on Compuserve. Joined a squad after spending a small fortune getting decent at it and had a blast for a year or so. Good times

WarCraft2 LAN with my Dad

One of the earliest network games - from 1983: Snipes
Though I played it as apprentice in our company network sometime around ~1988-90.

I can't remember what my first attempt at a multiplayer game was. Wish I could go back and see what all I was messing about with. My best guess would be Spec Ops II: Green Berets as that's what I remember. I remember one night calling and talking to my friend. We came up with a game plan and he gave me some tips of what to do, inputs I needed to make to get into the server room or to host the game.(All way over my head). I think I tried and failed, unplugged and hooked the phone back up to call and ask my friend for more help. One of my suggestions was that if we did get in game, use your flashlight like three times to let me know if its my friend.(I had no idea how to identify anything or anyone) We got it to work for a couple of minutes. I climbed up into a tower and someone followed me up so it was kind of eerie but once we started in with our flashlight comms I knew it was him. I think I got timed out or crashed and froze or something and could never get back in.

My fondest memories would be PosititveG giving me some tips through SimHQ PMs to help me get my Xbox 360 connected online. I wish I could remember who it was but someone else from SimHQ actually met me on Xbox Live to get me squared away and joined up in a game of COD4 to get me familiar with getting into an online game. By that time COD4 multiplayer was getting old. I think it was Jeevz. Another good memory was a Red Orchestra match. With my luck I seem to get one or two really exciting/everything clicking matches out of three dozen. I happened to join a server and teamed up with a random guy in a tank and it was a great hour or two. He was polite and easy to communicate with and I drove while he commanded and manned the cannon and guns. Other good times I've had were joining up with and playing some later Call of Duty games with TopGun and sometimes his brother. Good guys. Played a few times with Magnum too.

Archon in 1988. After that, there was Kings of the Beach volleyball, then Star Control 1.

My first modem based multiplayer game was Falcon 3.0, which I played against the sysop of a local BBS, probably around 1991.

Of course, this is only for the PC, and doesn't count Atari 2600 games earlier in the 80s...

Air Warrior, back when it was still on America Online.

This really captures a time for me playing multiplayer as well. Nice Coot

Played Gears of War with Magnum and the boys as well

Hmmm, Doom with the two PC's joined by a null modem cable. I guess that would be '93 or '94.

First "online" multiplayer was Red Baron over the Sierra network - what an exercise in lag and warping - in '92 or '93.

Stunt car racer on Amiga via null modem cable. But that was really just dual player

The first real multiplayer over network must have been Duke Nukem 3D that we played at a friends work a weekend.
I think we were 5 or 6 players, it was awsome!

Interesting thread

My first MP experience was Sierra's 3-D Helicopter Simulator around 1987 in 320x200 16 color EGA graphic. A home built joysticks and rudders made of some electrical plastic tubes and glue/tape got me hooked on heli's and flight sim's in general.

LAN didn't really exists back then for personal use so the hook-up between the two PC's was a null modem serial cable @ 9600 bps.



After that we played 688 Attack Sub in 640x480 256 color VGA graphic using the same null modem serial cable as well as over my new 2400 bps modem - LOL!

Grand Prix Legends

I played Air Warrior for about the first 2 years after release. I even went to a LAN meet in New Jersey to play it along with Falcon 3 and Doom!

European Air War in the late 90's and still flying it today

Counter Strike 1.5

EAW on the old MS Gaming ZONE.

Ah the MS Gaming Zone. Loved playing Xwing vs.Tie Fighter and Jedi Knight on there even though the lag/latency at times got really bad.

EECH. I played with a dude that called himself Enforcer (I think). At some point, Starshoy joined in, too.

MS Gaming Zone...yeah that was the one. Seems like I had something on MPlayer too about that time.

If we’re talking local MP on pc, there was a Battletech game on Amiga in ‘89 where 3 of us played on the same pc. I remember a turn based strategy war game..Empire?...that was cool with sea battles etc. The “look away” honor system taking turns. LOL

I distinctly remember getting on MPlayer when I bought the original Alien vs. Predator back in 1999 since the MP for that game required it. I think soon after that in 2000 or 2001 MPlayer got bought out by Gamespy.

EAW at the Zone....naively thinking "I can beat a computer at this! Human opponents will be a Piece of Cake!"

That in fact is my first: 1993 VGA Planets

next was probably DOOM

snap.

Red Alert 2

Friend was teaching me how to play. But his base somehow blew up. We were noobs.

I think it might have been Jet for the Amiga using a null modem cable across our apartment. A couple of years later around 1990 I flew a few MP games of Knights of the Sky at work across a null modem cable.

Not sim related but during that time one of the guys at work had a LP MUD at home we could call into and eventually he sold me that machine so I still have it though I have no idea if it would even boot up these days.

In '93 we were looking at doing a location based center where you could fight against other players. Depending on your play style you could pilot a giant mech, a fighter aircraft or a tank. We were going to be running this on SGI workstations so before we got to the point where we could do multiplayer in our game we had fun dog fighting in the flight sim that came with all the SGI machines. I gather along with just being a good for demos it also had a lot of diagnostic information so they could use it to test your machine if you thought it was having issues. The game we were working on never saw the light of day and we still had a good ways to go but you could fight against each other and we grabbed some video of it in action before we got shut down. I'll have to see if I can find the tapes and if so put them up on YouTube.

Elf

Duke Nukem 3D against my brother.
"OK, when we hang up I'll call your computer. If we don't connect within 5 minutes I'm calling you back, so pick up the phone. OK?"
"OK."

LOL

I remember those conversations!

Or how about when you are in the middle of a fun and heated online game and your mom in the living room picks up the phone and disconnects your session? Ugh.

I just realized this was 20 years ago. Where does the time go?

My specialty was sneaking up on guys sniping from ridgelines with the Barret. I loved sticking them with a blade

I still vividly recall that very first co-op mission I took part in. Funny how these things stick with you.

Well the internet was a distant dream the last time some of us ever lived with their moms.

I can’t remember if it was flying circus a ww1 game or a mod of quake online

There were several attempts on games I don't recall, that failed miserably.
But it was either Jane's WW2 Fighters or Rainbow Six:Rogue Spear that i started to get some serious online coop.
And Joint Ops was stupid fun back then.

Picked up my nickname "The Marshal" because in Rogue Spear you could customize your uniform with unit/moral patches on the shoulders. I picked the US Marshals logo. It was easy to see.

Yeah, I was dialing into BBS's from my Atari 800 last time I was living with my parents...

I should clarify. Home PC's, BBS's etc. were all a distant dream when I last lived with my mother!

You guys are really old!


I stayed at home while I went to college. I was starving enough as it was so I couldn't have imagined going to college off in some other state!

I remember when I first got broadband, an always-on internet connection 24/7, at a blistering 6mb. I thought I was turning into a cyborg.

Nowadays of course, if my iNet drops out for any length of time I have no idea what I'm going to do.

I used to think it was so awesome being able to download something in a few hours. Now I have Gig internet and am surprised if a 5Gb download isn’t finished in the time it takes me to go run to the bathroom, lol.

Too true. I mentioned Delta Force, and that was '98, and I can still remember I had ATT Worldnet dial up. I would stare at the transfer rate and cheer when it hit 5 k a sec.

First multiplayer experience:

Besides arcades, it was AberMUD at the Univeristy of Oslo in fall 1990.

Original Doom shareware on a LAN.

The game was limited to the local subnet because it used IPX, but I once was able to get a multiplayer game working with some guy at the University of Saskatchewan by experimenting with a program called ipxtunnel which would, of course, tunnel that traffic between our machines. It was laggy as hell but it worked.

GPL

Marc..

Remember LAN party's? Used to go to one's thrown by all the data center people I worked with in the 90's. Unreal Tournament and Quake were the games of choice then. Big noisy towers and CRT's crammed into someone's basement or garage. That was back when playing a game for 10 to 12 hours straight was no big deal.

I worked for a company that produced high end graphics machines. We had about a dozen people that would stay late to play Doom over the building network on 27" monitors. It was awesome.

First time ever (not including coin op arcade games, of course) was playing Doom over a LAN at a store here in Vancouver, called Software Alley. The salesman gave me a pretty severe thrashing, about 25-0 in kills. First MP flight sim was over a serial cable, F-16 Combat Pilot, and there I was rather better, defeating my brother fairly comprehensively. First time playing public games over the Internet was on Quake 2, which even then was awash in team killing morons. First times playing MP over a whole night were in Singapore at the ad agency where I worked. Games of Doom and Marathon sometimes just kicked off at about 11 pm if we worked late on a project.

First time for my daughter was last year, with Star Wars Battlefront (the good one, from 2004). Always wanted to yell, "You're all clear, kid..." etc. to someone, and now I have.

never liked them

Yup, those were great! I even drove up to one in New Jersey in 1993 to play Air Warrior, Doom and Falcon 3.

There was a LAN party at my house every weekend. Ok,I only had 4 PC's (5 sometimes) but it was the best fun ever!

Favourites back then were BF2,Half Life,TOCA and various other shooters. It was a much better experience when you could taunt your fellow players face-to-face

want to say it was Jane's USAF with a bunch of people from here back when we had a Janes forum.

Mine was Novalogics Mig29/F16/F22 in NovaWorld dial up 56k servers. I was a member of the Fulcrum Squadron (Blade) and I had a blast with the likes of Primal, Yankee, Wired and I can't remember the rest of the Squad. This even lead to RL meetings with Andy(Wired)from England and Billy(Primal) from NC and some really good times together. I could never quite reach the expert skills these guys had and how they got their Mig29s to perform so well. Years after it all was over I found out that most of these guys and other Squads had figured out how to hack the FMs and enhance the flight characteristics. This was something I never new about and never would have done and it made me so mad to know they were subtly cheating all along. Il2 was a first for me in WWII planes and was great fun until cheating took its toll on that MP fun. I have never really been into MP since, which kind of sucks because I had great fun competing with these guys while I was ignorant of their cheating. Such is it with my naivety I guess.
Look it had a BOX, CD, a Manual and a Keyboard quick key reference which I still have over my F keys along with the F16, Delta Force, Joint Operations and Black Hawk Down overlay! It is still on steam I think. LOL those were the days and Novalogic was King!.

S!Blade<><

Edit: This was when my 3DFX Voodoo5 reigned supreme also!

probably the first one that i actually got to work was Command & Conquer on a null-modem cable. the game came with 2 discs so you could play multi on two computers without buying the game twice

some of the other early ones: Novalogic Werewolf vs Comanche, Accolade's Deadlock, Xwing vs Tie Fighter, Missionforce Cyberstorm - all local network or nullmodem

the first actual internet multiplayer game I played & liked was Joint Operations

F18 Korea,Graphic Simulations on Lan with my dad, got him started at the age of 65 on flight sim, he loved HK and the tutorials, was an aircraft mechanic for the military/civilian for 40+ years. Good times

Marc..