There was a lan gaming place back when people had dial up... and that place had a T1 to the store that had double low double digit ping times when triple digit was common.
Tribes was one of the games installed and this also had the advantage that when a few people in the store were playing it they could coordinate playing a tank much better than other players on the server.
MissionForce: CyberStorm is over on GOG for another game from that publisher from that timeframe.
They had 20 game machines (for the day)...
> Each gaming computer has a 1-Gigahertz Athlon, 21-inch Monitor, GeForce 2 GTS, Sound Blaster Live, 256Mb of 133Mhz RAM, 10/100 Ethernet card, and an optical logitech mouse.
that were in two rooms in the basement. You could get 10 people in one room, and 10 in another and then have team games against each other where you could talk freely without worrying about the other side hearing you (unless you were shouting).
> Each computer is on its own 100 Mbit Full Duplex switch port. The network as a whole is linked to the internet via a T1.
It was $2.50 / hour (and if you played for 3 hours, you would get another 2 hours free). On the weekends, high schoolers and college students would sometimes play for a good 10 hours for $15 (way cheaper than the classic quarter per play arcade).
The vending machine was stocked at $0.50 for each thing in it... so you could get a candy bar and soda for $1.00.