Event: Digital Destruction I Event Date: 9/4-5/99 Written By: Warhawk Date Written: 01/23/2026

Shortly after forming TMC. I hatched a plan to host my very first LAN Party.  It's worth pointing out that at this point LAN Parties were a fairly new idea, and I had never actually attended one, let alone hosted one.  I had no idea the logistics involved, but was determined to do it anyway. My birthday was approaching and I decided that would be the perfect opportunity to host the LAN.  I called the LAN Party “Digital Destruction” and set the date for September 4th through 5th, 1999.  I immediately started selling the idea to my friends, the hardest part of which was trying to convince them to bring their computers. Most of them only had one PC that the entire family shared. Usually they were pre-built store bought PC’s made by HP , Compaq, or god forbid - e-machines. My friends convincing their family to take the family PC out of the house was no easy task. 

The other hard part was that the 4 PC's in my room ran on a token ring network, and I was unclear how I would add additional PC's to this network without some very long coax cables; added to this was the fact that I knew next to nothing about networking at the time. Also, Windows 95/98 was horrific when it came to networking, even if you did know what you were doing (which, again, I most certainly did not).  I managed to get an additional 2 PCs to the house, although I don't remember exactly where they came from. All that mattered was we were going to play games with six players... SIX! This was unprecedented and the most simultaneous players in a single game we had ever seen... and also some of the most fun we had ever had playing video games. 

The additional PCs would not fit in my room, so they had to be put down the hall in the living room, which was on the exact opposite side of the house.  It was a ridiculous back and forth trial-and-error pain-in-the-ass to get them all talking to each other, but somehow we finally figured it out.  All the pain was worth it though, because we played 6 player Half-Life deathmatch all through the night, and it was glorious. 

None of us realized it at the time, but this would mark the first of many years worth of both hosting and attending LAN Parties.  Not only that but TMC as an organization would continue and grow and friendships would be formed that would last for years to come.

Note: these pictures are so old they were taken with a disposable camera and then scanned.