Quakecon '99

Imagine going over to your friend's house for what you expect to be a little LAN party and finding 1000 people, each with their own system essentially camped out in your friend's living room. That's pretty much how we felt upon entering the convention hall of the Hampton Inn where Quakecon '99 took place.

This is how the players practiced (above), you can see that the lights are turned down and that the place is packed with different types of systems sitting right next to each other. A plethora of trash talking, laughing, and random noises filled the air as the gamers did their thing.

The tournament itself took place on some very powerful systems with some very not so powerful video cards, while most of you probably expected TNT2s and Voodoo3s to populate the tournament systems, it turns out that Quakecon '99 was the perfect example of how far you could push beta hardware running a beta game.