Link dump:
Mintz's already wrote about the LAN: http://hushedcasket.com/node/1628/
Midnight blogged about it: http://midnight.hushedcasket.com/2007/01/16/gears-of-war-halo-1-lan-at-raptures/
70 photos from the LAN: at Flickr.com

THX'ers gather around for 3-shot lessons

This past Saturday the Hushed Casket held its first epic HALO LAN of 2007 in Huntsville, Alabama.  It was massive (over 30 gamers), starting on Saturday morning at 11 AM and lasting until 6 AM on Sunday.  That’s 19 hours of hi-def gaming.  Travelers made their way to the event by flying in from as far away as California and Philadelphia.  Others made the drive from the Auburn and Birmingham areas.  While we’ve hosted LANs with more people in attendance in the past, the local Casket community brought the gear, making it the most high-tech and playable LAN to-date.  We had nearly two dozen original XBOX and XBOX 360 consoles at the event along with 10 hi-def displays and copious standard-definition displays scattered throughout the home, including a 95” LCD projector display (image).

The Prey, Phoenix, and Myth trash rapture's office

For almost the entire time, we LAN’d HALO like it was 2001.  Actually, we weren’t running around spraying enemies with Assault Rifles halfway across Blood Gulch, so I guess we LAN’d like it was 2002.  We had three 4-v-4 matches running at all times.  Our only breaks were to eat the 20 pizzas (image), LAN Gears of War (for about 2 hours) (image), and to watch the lame ending to “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” deep into the night.  (Why did we do that, again?)  Team Slayer matches to 50- and 100-kills were the norm while sprinkling in the occasional Oddball and Capture the Flag gametypes.  Damnation, Chill Out, Hang ‘Em High, Derelict, Beaver Creek and Wizard were played all night long.  The night ended with Hog Wars on Blood Gulch in which we were blowing Warthogs across and on top of the map.  Yeah.  We were pretty delusional by then.

I picked jayWHY up at the airport on Friday.  I showed him NASA and the military base before heading to Radio Shack to pick up an audio adapter or two that you-always-need-but-can-never-find when holding a LAN.  FoulBreed joined us at the house and he started dishing out the tech goodness:  namely two 32” LCD HDTV’s (image) and what seemed like miles on network cabling and thousands of S-controllers.  Later that night, we headed out to Rosie’s Cantina for some burrito/enchilada action.  There, jay learned that apparently in the South, 5 minutes means 30 minutes and 45 minutes means 75 minutes.  Fuzzy math.  BTW:  Rosie won that LAN.

Saturday morning, before the LAN, we made a breakfast run to Chick-Fil-A.  Noticing that it was 10:30 AM, we opted for the lunch menu instead of breakfast.  Again, I taught jayWHY that fast food means waiting 20 minutes in line for a chicken nugget.  Unfortunate.  I dropped by the local EB Games and bought an XBOX 360 VGA cable just in case someone wanted to play a 360 on a computer monitor.  It’s something that I wanted just in case we needed it.  We never used it, so I may take it back.  I’m still undecided.  I mean, I’d rather have that HDMI cable for the XBOX 360 that isn’t ever coming out, you know?

We arrived back home just at 11AM and FoulBreed arrived with what seemed like five or six younger clones of himself.  ‘Breed also came with more gear (image).  He knew this LAN was about to rock.  A few minutes later I noticed that people were showing up on time and in great numbers (much unlike our New Year’s Eve party we hosted earlier that week).  People arrived so fast that I didn’t know who was arriving and when they arrived.  We tried to LAN, but it just wasn’t happening.  We couldn’t divide ourselves up into teams.  We couldn’t settle on TV’s or consoles. 

And then Midnight arrived (image).

He's back

Midnight is known for his managerial skills at our LANs.  He can always figure out a clever way to divide the teams and get them as even as possible.   Knowing that everyone was hungry for some LAN action, Midnight did what he thought was best and divided the teams by month of birth.  Not exactly scientific, but maybe that’s how they do stuff in the Marines.  We didn’t ask questions and it was great to see Midnight instructing us.  Oh.  Midnight, you gave me the number, 8.  I’m not quite sure why I was given that number, but you told me to remember it.  Can I forget it now?

We were off and rolling.  We had our teams.  We had our Mountain Dew.  We had our setups in the garage, living room, office, sitting room, dining room and breakfast area.   We had the wired network strung all over the house.  Even JDOGG left his mark and it was confirmed, with the arrival of his HDTV, that he is a hairy man (image).

Mintz was winning a lot of games over on his private LAN.  He began to get cocky.  Just when we got tired of hearing how Mintz and Frankie are best-friends-forever, how they LAN together ALL the time, how they play Guitar Hero II together, and how he’s got Frankie’s cell phone number, an amazing thing happened.   Frankie "supposedly" showed up at the LAN (image)!  He made the drive from southern Alabama after visiting family in Bayou La'Batre for the New Years.  He was quite different in real life than I pictured him.  The funniest thing of the night was when Frankie denied knowing who the heck Mintz was.   Obviously, something was a little off and Mintz’s internet credibility is destroyed!  The good news was that Frankie said that everyone at the LAN will have a spot in the HALO 4 beta coming up in Q1 2008.  The catch was that we had to pay him $30 to get in.  Uh, deal!  We all gave him our money and can’t wait for the beta codes!  Thanks for stopping by, 123.

Midway through the night a grudge match ensued.  Midnight, FoulBreed, and random THX staffers decided to challenge the cooked Gamers who happened to be in attendance to some 3-v-3 Team Slayer.  Although D1ESEL, jayWHY and myself had to use the less than preferred gaming input devices (XBOX controllers) we still managed to go undefeated using just two fingers and a couple of thumbs, lower resolution graphics, and reversed stereo audio (don’t ask).  Nothing surprising here, though.  They got cooked!  Crushed, even.  Move along. 

Crushed. Then cooked.

Gears of War was briefly LAN’d in all it’s HD glory (image).  What a fun game!  On LAN, the game ran smooth and the pistols were lethal.  It was a good thing Slayer wasn’t there.  I’m not sure that even then we could have handled his nasty Gnasher on LAN.  Of course, he probably would have quit out during every other match, so he probably wouldn’t have been effective anyway.

After Gears, we returned to our first love and gamed HALO until the crack of dawn.  All was well in the world of the Hushed Casket.  We were definitely undead.

Interesting facts for the night: 

I didn’t play on Chiron, Boarding Action, or Sidewinder once during the night.
I made the order for everyone’s pizza, yet, I forgot to order for myself.
I now have no H1 or H2 discs.  GG, thieves.  

This LAN was a success because of everyone who brought equipment (image).  The equipment made it possible for everyone to comfortably game on full and split screens.  Everyone had plenty of screen real-estate all night long and we were all sitting in comfortable arrangements and playing on the three 4-box setups.  Without your TV’s players would have had less options.  Thanks for bringing TV’s.  Maybe Black Friday 2007 will be just as good for THX as it was this year.

I have no idea when the next LAN will take place.  We can only wish to be able to host a HALO 3 beta LAN. Regardless, we will definitely have another epic LAN somewhere in Huntsville in the next 6 months whether it's on an updated version of HALo or not.  As always, expect more community events that don’t involve an XBOX to pop up over the next few weeks.

Thanks to jayWHY for making the CAT-5 cables (and then not taking them back with you) and not being a weirdo.  Thanks to Brick for sweeping my floors.  Also, thanks to Brick for his ninja-like pet-snatching skills as he captured Emma at 2AM in the morning using high-tech laser pointers and LED’s as she was spawn-camping my neighbor’s front door.  Thanks to everyone who brought big-ass HDTV’s.  That rocked.  Thanks to everyone for cleaning up after yourselves and putting away your garbage (we completely filled my garbage can with Mountain Dew, beer cans, and pizza boxes).  Thanks to everyone for opening their mouths and making this one of the most “quotable” LAN’s of all time (Midnight already started requesting submissions for the best quotes of the night).  Thanks to dolbex for not showing up due to his wife’s birthday (LAME!).  Thanks to dirtyJ for the X2VGA and dufflebag o’sweetness.  Thanks to Chaos King for the delicious cookies (image) and breaking into Slayer’s perfectly neat bedroom and snatching his gaming gear.  Thanks to Mintz’s mom for supplying Mountain Dew (image) and Cheetos.   Thanks to BattleBitch for giving Emma 8lbs of cat food.  And, thanks to everyone who came out to LAN, especially the travelers from outside the North Alabama area.  We’ve always got more room in the casket.

Final roster:

1. FoulBreed
2. Midnight
3. Brick
4. jayWHY
5. D15AVOW3D
6. Predator
7. Frankie123
8. Reverend
9. Mintz
10. Chaos King
11. Chaos Prince
12. Chaos Theory
13. hollywood
14. D1ESEL
15. Max Power (pooberry)
16. The Prey
17. SHYZZA
18. Hubcap
19. Phoenix
20. S34N
21. BattleBitch
22. Oculus
23. forty7after
24. Bullet
25. 5ling5hot
26. Datadog
27. Convict
28. Myth
29. Apocalips
30. Celery
31. dirtyJ
32. rapture
33. JDogg