Reading a recent journal on Crossfire I was delighted to see that sweRTCW s vibrant demo and movie catalogue was still in action. Browsing through the various demos I was thrilled to see an old classic that I used to love watch, one of the demos that got me into Enemy Territory - the inaugural Atlantic Battle. This I believe is the second incarnation of the event though due to the many Crossfire crashes all memory of this appears to be lost. Converting the demos from dm83 to dm84 was enough to get the juices flowing and booted up the demo just pushed me towards orgasm. Trillian, kee_ring and TosspoT all on one server!

image: jh7qs6

The memories came flooding back - from Trillian's excited tones immortalised in 'Welcome to ET' to TosspoT's 'ET Phone Home' (said in funny voice eeeeeetttt phooone hooome"). Who can forget the weekly radio show dedicated to all the awesome geekiness that is competitive Enemy Territory scene. Everyone who was anyone featured on the show including the man himself Bani - this an outlet for TosspoT to berate those around him, to dig deep into the latest scandal and to provoke discussion and debate amongst the masses. For me personally this was a time of high activity in the ET community where I regularly contributed to both this very website and the then active wArning! site marshaled by Winghaven.

This was a time where ETTV.org was in its infancy and ETTV was reserved for the crème de la crème. Once a week we'd experience the 'Bloody Sunday' where shoutcast and ETTV would combine to create a spectacle of epic proportions. The hype would begin early on in the week - be it Adacore or Cash posting the newspost, following up with interviews and predictions. GBooky was but an aspiration in Arni's eyes and the hoards flooded to CBooky to place their bets. This was a time of celebrity - where we were all new enough to the game to look up to the top players. People such as Potter, Mystic, feruS et al were the untouchables - those you couldn't approach on IRC and chat with, they were a level above. A time where hacking was believed to be a rarity and LAN events a distant dream.

The demos itself are a joy to watch. The naivety of the inner Oasis defence during the first map. Watching the American team push into the castle as the Europeans rely on sengo and Mystic respectively defending the guns, with a medic protecting the CP and a reliance on mines to prevent the advancing Yanks. It brings back the great games of the past and the gradual evolution of the game as teams gradually adapted to the 'u96d' defence, spearheaded by the insatiable r3vers and the move towards an aggressive outer protection - eventually making the map unplayable and leading to many hours spent with Cash on sw_oasis_te. Instead players focused on protecting the objectives themselves and merged a combination of Field Op spam with the aim heavy and revive focused game mode. This was a more innocent time where people were still beginning to understand the true nature of the game.

The match itself? The demo was near unwatchable and the game a wipeout - the Yanks destroyed across two maps. But that's how things were back thing. A better time? Probably not...

*I appreciate the timeline for this column aint exactly linear!