Halo system link still holds up more than 20 years later

theverge.com:

Moments after booting up Halo: Combat Evolved with some friends, stepping onto the legendary Blood Gulch map, and dying nearly instantly from a few well-placed pistol shots, I remembered exactly why wires are good.

When my friends brought two original Xbox consoles along for a beach weekend, I expected that there would be some hassle getting them to work for our planned six-player matches. The game and consoles are more than 20 years old, likely predating even the dusty flat-screen TVs we were playing on. But to my surprise, just a few minutes after we had set up the consoles and connected them for system link play, we plugged in some controllers, made a Halo lobby, and began trash talking each other across the entire house.

The simplicity of jumping into Combat Evolved was a major counterpoint to how many hoops there can be in modern multiplayer games. Take Fortnite. My wife and I play the game nearly every day, but we play online across two different systems; I’m on the PS5 while she’s on the Switch. To play together, we both have to start the game; wait for it to load and download any necessary updates; party up; start matchmaking; and wait some more for the match to actually start. And then we can run around the Fortnite island. The whole process doesn’t take too long, but I spend a lot of time tapping my foot impatiently.

Halo over system link was a lot speedier. One group would make a lobby that the other joined, then the lobby-maker would decide the map and the game rules, the game would count down, and then the match would start. Halo even lets you mash the buttons to speed up the countdown, which is something I now want in every local multiplayer game.

With online games, I get that starting a match takes