Crying!
I do not remember the year. But i think we played dune and command and conquer. using null modem serial port links, and long homemade cables. I had a machine with 3 serial ports. A few years later we upgraded to a thin lan nic using coax and a hub with a coax port. For those with cat cable nic.
Played Red alert, red alert2 then a decade stright of playing CnC renegade and wolfenstein ET on the internet. Then the battlefields series ehile that was fun. Nowdays Helldivers 2 almost scratches that itch. It just needs a 32 player rush mode ;)
My friends and I were too poor/parents weren't nerdy enough to get into PC gaming. So we had red alert set up on two PlayStation 1s with a link cable, and two big ass CRTs pointed opposite of each other.
I was to young to get the networking screen in just the right settings when me and my brother were playing Red Alert. Luckily for me, 3 streets over, the dad of a friend in class got it set up over there, so i did get to experience it once or twice!