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Comment by iwwr | Hacker News Reader

I remember a time when you needed to carry 30 floppies to be able to copy C&C:Red Alert... and it was worth it.

I just used the CD trick when playing multiplayer. You start the game with the disc in one computer and then eject and run into the next room to start the game on that computer.

I think 9/10ths of the games I played with my brother were exploited with this trick until the warez scenes started developing proper and timely released nocd cracks.

Why? Westwood were probably the only game company that understood this problem, and shipped their games on two CDs (allies and soviets), even if the content was mostly identical, and could all easily fit on one, just so that two people could play at once.

It wasn't a particular problem with Westwood games, although it was when we got another player involved. I was thinking more of Age of Empires when actually saying that, I remember getting a 3-way going using a single disc.

We managed a 7-player at school, but that was using 2 discs.

Haha you just reminded me that we used to do this same trick for tribes 2 at a friend's house. We'd play online, too, so every time the map changed on the server, we'd have to run back and forth to load the new map.

Yep, and now it takes seconds to download for the iPad.

Same for when the demo of Quake came out, loved it.

I remember playing Quake on a 486 at 66 MHz.

Performance was terrible, but this was real 3D with a cool atmosphere. My Quake came on a CD though ... which I loved because of the included Nine Inch Nails soundtrack.

I just spent two nights pulling that ~10MB down from a BBS.

10 fps 3D action!

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