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the WALL OF Subby!

It had to have been 1987 when I stumbled upon an X-based game called Xtrek. Back then, it was the most thrilling game I had ever seen. The simplicity of the game and the intuitive user interface made learning how to move the ship a simple task, a task that, having accomplished it, immediately opened a whole new world for me.

I wasn't alone in that world. That was what hooked me for good. Just the idea that if I worked at it enough, I could be better than the other twenty-five to thirty MIT people who logged into that Vax11750 on a daily basis was enough to get me to try it (occasionally at the cost of valuable study-time). Of course, I wasn't the only one who had this idea, and so competitive Xtrek reared its ugly head at MIT for about a year and a half.

It turns out that Xtrek wasn't the only networked game around, and over the course of the next three years, I played a great deal of Empire, and dabbled in a few other internet games. Then I met Tim, and he introduced me to Netrek - Xtrek grown up.

It was Xtrek again, and yet not Xtrek. The game was about alot more than staying alive, or killing the other guy more than he killed you. This game was about armies, planets, and taking over the galaxy. It was about genocide.

To say that Netrek is more intense than Xtrek is like saying Endorphin Rush pepper sauce is more intense than sucking a lollipop. And that was just playing pickup.

Then came the INL, and I was hooked all over again. Organized intensity is a much bigger rush than pickup, though by then I made sure I was connecting to the Bronco server every evening to play with the best in the world. Sure it sounds corny, but it's true, and it may never be true again, for Bronco no longer exists.

At that time (circa 1992) the people to learn Netrek from went to CMU in Pittsburgh. They took Netrek seriously down there, very seriously. It was "Old McDonald's Farm" that shed some of the first real insights into Netrek theories and strategies. I pretty much spent my time figuring out and executing strategies thought up by guys like ZZnewguy, Balton, and others.

From there, we dabbled in forming an MIT team, with one or two ringers from CMU. The first MIT team worked great, but a forfeit ended our season.

Then came the good year. The year of Footlocker. Two undefeated seasons, and two INL championships. It was a great time to play netrek.

Of course, other seasons followed, and I've had great success in the INL.

Since then, I've captained two MIT based netrek teams. The first was FoodTruck, which was also the first time I ever captained. To let you know, captaining can either be the most frightening or the most satisfying experience that you can ever endure. With new players, and some rookies, we didn't set our goals too high for that season. Nevertheless, we went undefeated in INL play. Unfortunately we had to forfeit the championship game to KLOC, since it was near the very end of the term here at MIT, and not a free machine was to be seen.

This season we hope to be different. I'm captaining the MIT team The Usual Suspects. We have our core eight players, as well as two new players that we're developing. With luck, we hope to get to the championship and win.