In this day and age of online gaming, one great type of party play has been lost – the experience of the LAN.

Basically a LAN, or Local Area Network to give it the full name, is where you and a bunch of friends get together a link up you consoles via ethernet cables or nowadays wi-fi and have huge 8-16 player games together. Now obviously these LAN or system linked games can take a bit of organizing and do require a separate console and TV for every four players, but they are definitely worth it.

One of my first experiences of using the system link was on the original Xbox playing the original Halo. At the time we could only manage to get 8 people and two sets of equipment, but it was still a blast. Capture the flag is a lot more fun when you can shout and jeer at the other team when they are sitting right next to you.

These days with more technology and a greater focus on online gaming, system linking your consoles may seem a little redundant but still some modern games do include the ability. One of the best games out there at the moment is the Xbox 360s Gears of War, and soon to be release Gears of War 2. Each support a cooperative approach to gameplay and with numerous modes and tactics to be used, suit the system link idea perfectly.

If you like the idea of the system link or have indeed tried it yourself and have found the same joy as I have then why not try something special. The idea of a 24 hour LAN was an idea that came out of boredom between myself and friends and originally intended for the PC. If you’ve never stayed up for 24 hours straight playing video games then it’s an experience worth having, just don’t expect to get much done the next day! To effectively pull off one of these events you need a few essential items:

1. A list of games to play:
   Planning is so important for this type of thing, because you don’t want to be sitting around at 3am arguing about what to play with 7 or even 15 other people!
2. A list of equipment.
   There is nothing worse than turning up all ready to go and then finding out that someone has forgotten to bring the link cables or their wi-fi adapter.
3. Snacks:
   Probably your most important item. High caffeine and sugar is obviously the order of the day and having a set idea of what take-away food to have on hand is also a good idea

Although 24 hours of gaming is too much for some, I do urge you to at least give the system link LAN idea a try as I’m sure you’ll have an amazing time.