From 7 to 9 p.m. April 10, the Media Archaeology Lab and the Games and Media Library teamed up in their largest collaboration to date, allowing Comets to relive the era of LAN parties by playing matches of Halo: Combat Evolved on original hardware.
The event, called Comet Evolved, featured old copies of the game running on vintage Macs and PCs that Comets used to compete against one another over LAN, a type of computer network that allows users to connect to others in the same area. While the network has largely fallen into disuse for multiplayer gaming, enjoying competitive games at “LAN parties” was ubiquitous among video game enthusiasts in the 2000s. Anne Balsamo, BAHT professor and director of the Media Archeology Lab, said Comet Evolved was only possible due to collaboration with the Games and Media Library allowing for larger and more intricate events.
“One of the things we’ve been really focused on is collaborating with the Games and Media Library … because that is an amazing resource from the Bass school,” Balsamo said. “We don’t do the games; we might have a few, but that’s not our focus … And so what we’ve done over the last year is collaborate on programs and screenings and events like this that blend [our] interests and objectives.”
The Media Archaeology Lab, located on the first floor of BAHT, was founded in 2022 by Balsamo with the intention to inspire people to think creatively about media and old devices. The lab hosts a large collection of old computers, laserdiscs and other retro trinkets that the general public is invited to use free of charge. Kyle Franks, animation and games senior and events manager of the Media Archeology Lab, said that a major motivation for hosting events like Comet Evolved is to ensure that people unfamiliar with old technology can learn how to use it, preventing the knowledge of its operation from going extinct.
“We’ve really liked … [showing people] something that might be popular on an old retro-like form factor that most people might not have known about,” Franks said. “It’s scary to some of us to hear that some people don’t know what a VHS looks like, let alone a laserdisc, or [not] understanding the concept of … a video format [being] analog versus [being] digitally stored on a drive.”
The Games and Media Library contributed the copies of Halo: Combat Evolved used at the event. Tucked away in a corner of the BAHT building’s third floor, the Games and Media Library contains over 2,000 games, art books and films open to student use. Students can check out titles and play them for free on a variety of systems, ranging from the PlayStation 5 to the Sega Saturn.
The Comet Evolved event, and other collaborations like it, allowed the library to share its games with more students. Hannah Beene, software engineering senior and lab technician for the library, said the two centers started out with small collaborations such as laserdisc screenings and board game events, since growing in size and scope.
“[Around] last semester, Professor Balsamo approached us, the Games and Media Library, saying that she wanted to do some collaborations between the two labs, and I was really psyched about it because A: we have a very small team so the support was very encouraging, and B: we have a lot of old games, especially PC games,” Beene said. “I’ve got over 150 old PC games, but we don’t have the technology to play them … the Halo: Combat Evolved events [let us get] those PC games involved.”
The synergy between the Media Archeology Lab and the Games and Media Library eventually resulted in the Comet Evolved event, which sought to emulate the early 2000s experience of competing against your friends for hours over LAN. Players had the opportunity to either engage in team deathmatches or duel their friends in 1v1s. Software engineering senior Cristian Jurkevicz said that the Comet Evolved event successfully revived the classic experience of playing Halo with friends.
“It’s just a pure nostalgia fest once you’re in the game,” Jurkevicz said. “It’s amazing, no hate, everyone’s loving the game, just running over each other [by] accident — the same stuff that we did whenever we were kids.”
The Media Archeology Lab and the Games and Media Library plan to continue collaborating on future events. On April 17, both organizations hosted the Mario Narrative Experience: Games vs. Film event, an event discussing how storytelling evolved across the Super Mario Bros. games and how it compared to the storytelling of the movie. Balsamo hopes that new life will be breathed into old video games and media through these events so that everyone can enjoy them again.
“There’s the archaeology of old programs, and the archaeology of old art pieces that were built for these [machines], and then the archaeology of peripherals and the archaeology of games that have long gone by the wayside,” Balsamo said. “I use the term archaeology purposefully because it is an uncovering of things that are not … done yet. And [these things] can be resurrected.”