A bright-eyed dweeb in the first year of university - my first solo trip to London adding to the excitement of the chance to finally demonstrate my brilliance - arriving at the venue in Charlotte Street to find a gathering of people outside, waiting and waiting and waiting.

Apparently their servers were overheating - it was a sunny day, but I don't recall it being hot. They came out a few times to tell us "soon", but we were still waiting for quite a while. At one point they were going to give up and send us home, giving us each a free game for compensation.

Eventually I guess we were given t-shirts and instructed to go down the stairs and strike a pose. My siblings are the posers in my family, not me, as will be evident from the feeble attempt. I'd have been fine if they'd said "that looked dumb, go back and do something else".

I think the team name was decided in advance, but at no point were we asked names or anything else - I don't know whether Simon, Jason Bradbury, or Bravo supplied those - likewise being told we were from Halifax - I think our original application said "the Internet", but I don't know if they specifically rejected that, or whether Simon deliberately or accidentaly gave Halifax as location.

Spectating whilst Simon tried to land a B52 was even less exciting than it looked, yet still more memorable than the tank battle which I don't think we even got to spectate and I remember nothing at all about.

Anyway, as some point we eventually got sat in front of the computers - wondering whether we would be playing Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Unreal Tournament, or any other familiar game - but no, it was a new mod that nobody had ever heard of (let alone played), bearing no resemblance to the UT engine it used.

Initially the game started in a cave and I had either an AK or an MP5, but a short moment later it restarted - I don't know if there was a false start, if that was supposed to be a "practise" opportunity, or if it was just filler whilst filming the intro - and I found myself somewhere else, with a shotgun that I didn't choose - the shotgun has never been my choice of weapon, in any game.

A few seconds later, whilst still trying to get my bearings, I see an enemy and try to duck behind cover, but I didn't duck as far as expected so instead stand up, fire, and promptly die. Then sit twiddling my thumbs until the round ended, hoping to redeem myself in a second round that never occurred.

I still don't know whether it was because my character stood up slower than I expected, or because the mod fired projectiles from the belly rather than the torso/eyes, maybe the other guy headshotted me, or some combination of all those.

Despite apparently "winning", our only prize was a second free game each. I don't even remember keeping the t-shirts.

Fairly sure it was "here's a bunch of games, distribute among yourself", and I think Simon and/or the brothers(?) got the better selections.

I initially got an off-road racing game "Insane", then later Delta Force 2.

And yeah, I didn't mean to suggest it was a bad memory, but the highlight was meeting forumites rather than playing games.

> CounterStrike, Delta Force 2, X Plane, Operation Flashpoint, Falcon 4

I think that was what miffed me about the unknown mod - I was already good at CS, and had no doubt been practising on demos of DF2 and OF, only to be presented with something different to what we'd been told.

Also, regarding the other team members, Philip (the hacker) was Simon's friend, but I think "Metalhead" was Luke Redpath? "Bash" might have been Beseku or Dan Cross, both ex-regulars who were in the original email chain.