Growing up I played with most consoles, but I was always a PC gamer at heart. Playing for as long as I can remember, and I recall spending time at my uncle's house playing with a variety of friends on computers.

We would set up Diablo 2, Team Fortress 2, or Unreal Tournament, and all play together in a massive multiplayer royale.

It is something that I think as gamers we have lost, and it is something that can come back.

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"A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area."
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/c/handheld

Introducing the gaming pc handheld!

At first I wasn't convinced by these, I thought they were cool, and if I could get my hands on one I would. However I didn't see it as a replacement for my gaming computer, or in my current case my mini pc (that I gamed on).

Over time though just paying attention on FB marketplace I found a deal, and I traded my Xbox Series X for a Lenovo Legion Go. A deal I am really really happy about to this day because I play this thing a lot.

Perhaps even more than I played my Xbox!

Turns out it can play pretty much anything I throw at it too. It houses the AMD 780m iGPU, which isn't anything to ride home about, but it handles most things. It was actually the internal graphics that my old mini PC had too, which is what I replaced my full desktop with prior.

Meaning that it can handle all the games I'd want to play, in addition to all of the retro games too. Now I did put Steam OS on it, which does make a difference in being able to play competitive shooters, but it comes with Windows by default.

My point is that this is a capable gaming machine that is smaller than a laptop, and easier to play due to the controllers.

I've seen people bring 3DS or Nintendo Switches together to play in a group for MarioKart. However instead we could do the same for these gaming handhelds.

How would it work?

Now while I think bringing a portable router would be a good idea, thus everyone is on the "same network" I don't even know if that would be necessary.

Most games nowadays even if you wanted to play locally with a friend, they still have you go through the internet to play. Frustratingly...

Meaning you'd have to meet a place, a home or commercial place, that has decent wifi. Unless you can find a game that plays solely locally, and then just use a portable router, that would be the cooler approach (more akin to the LAN parties of old).

You could use something like meetup.com or create a group of friends on Discord (do note that discord has been really bad about privacy, so maybe consider a private self-hosted alternative).

That's it! You wouldn't have to do much, but if you're the ring leader then maybe supply the router and a couple power strips.

What games would you be able to play?

Just to name off a few off the top of my head:

  • Overcooked
  • Lego StarWars/Lego Franchise in general
  • Stardew Valley
  • TeamFortress 2
  • Diablo (although do note pc version doesn't support controllers, so I used the switch version, but that might not work for multiplayer)
  • State of Decay 2 or 3
  • Battlebit?
  • Retro Games
  • Etc

These are just the ideas I came up with on the top of my head, but I'm sure there are even better options like a MarioKart alternative or something.

Let's do it!