When I gre up I lived in a small town in Northern Sweden, ?lvsbyn. Over there we had a Computer Club, called CCC - Canis Computer Club. This was the state of the art up here, we had people from the large cities Lule?, Ume? and so forth coming to CCC.

Why? Because we had internet. The club was founded back in 1995 but 1996-97 was when it started to get interesting. Thats when Quake became popular, and with that Online gaming.

Before that the CCC did't have any internet connection, only a local "IPX" if you recall. So there were alot of sweaty teens, grown men, and kids like me playing games there. We played Duke Nukem, Diablo 1 and Final Doom/Doom2, even C&C!

But then came Quake - and Internet. Now, I was like 11-12 here but from what I undertand we had 2mbit there. 2mbit! In 1997-1998! So word spread and people joined the club because they wanted to play online and/or download and share files with each other. While Piracy was prohibithed there was nothing stopping the pirates from doing their stuff - save for the gamers, which was a majority! So there was a war between leechers and gamers, tyring to share the bandwith. At a weekend there would be up to 30 people there, and the club was located in a basemant lol.

When Quakeworld was released the real fun began. Mumin was a member of that club, and he was one of the best Quakers in the world back then. So he taught me some moves, example how to get out of the lava and so forth. he was 18-20 something and I was 11-12. Whenever I played 1v1 against him, he would have over 50 frags and I would have like -10 for all the lava kills he made.

Quake was a very mod-friendly game, and we had an own Arena server, which was 1v1 or 2v2 where you spawned with all weapons and unlimited ammo. However, normal DM or TDM was most frequently played, but some dudes played AirQuake and KQP to a large extent.

But what Quake and the local community back then has meant to me now, is priceless. Not only because I had the priviliege of being tutored by one of the best Quakers in the world, but also all the progress I can relate to. I know that Quake is the first real good online FPS, and I like to believe that I was part of the old-school community that helped shape the gaming world as it is today.

Sweden and ?lvsbyn may be small, but Sweden is the land of Broadband, and gaming put ?lvsbyn on the map in the late 90's. Sadly the CCC died out of course, when everyone started to get their 0.5mbit at home which my employer was the first one to sell in Sweden. I've also lost contact with pretty much everyone from that time.

But everytime I hear someone mention Quake1 I want to talk about it. It was a wonderful game and brings back so many good memories.

Tell me about your quake-experience, old-school that is. I don't wanna hear about FuhQuake and eQuake and so forth. Vanilla!