In the mid 90’s David Spell and Darin Smith met playing Doom II on a dialup (Yes, I said dial up!) DWANGO server in the Los Angeles area. They started to play games like Doom II and Duke Nukem locally at David’s house over a coax copper network (Yes, under 100 ping). Soon other friends started to join in on the LAN parties. Inspired by the DWANGO name, David and Darin came up with the name LANGO (Local Area Network Gaming Organization). The LAN Party popularity grew as new games like Quake and Unreal Tournament came out, which took FPS’s (First Person Shooters) to the next level. David and Darin even contemplated opening a gaming location where people would pay to play like the LAN Parties, but with both working full time jobs that never happened. All the popular FPS were played at the LAN Parties, but one of the most popular games back then was Quake III. Hours of DM (Death Match) and capture the flag were played. Sometimes LAN Parties would last all weekend. Most of the members of LANGO were into building their own gaming computers with the latest and greatest hardware and graphic cards. Can you imagine spending $400 for a graphics card back in the late 90’s, $700 on a 900 MB (Yes MB) hard drive, and $700 for a 10 Mbs 16 port switch. Yes, we did! Some of the members were into creating custom maps for the games we played such as Quake. Many of the members also followed the gaming industry very closely and attended events such as QuakeCon and E3. After the early 2000’s, many of the members started families and were not able to game as much as they did when they were single. However, over the years the members still get together from time to time to have a LAN Party again like old times. Many of the members had children that also turned out to be amazing gamers themselves.