I played Descent against my friend by dialing into his computer directly. Worked amazingly well considering the specs of the machines. We had a rule that if he got disconnected because his mom picked up the phone we'd have to restart the match.

(I was already so chronically online by that time my parents had sprung for a second phone line.)

It's amazing any real-time gaming worked with all that latency.

I routinely played Quake 2 with 200-300ms ping. I had to abandon hitscan weapons entirely, relying on rockets and grenades to do any damage. I never dominated any pub matches, but I usually wasn't dead last either. Anyway, forcing that much latency on gamers nowadays is disallowed under multiple UN sanctions.

I remember my friends and I would all be in a waiting room to load a command and conquer map when we played online.

While waiting for everything to lead there was a progress bar so you could see how far along you and your friends loading bars were.

One friends dad as in IT and got high speed internet before the rest of us.

It blew my mind to see his loading bars zoom to complete almost instantly.