Now that this is on abandonia and is legal to download, I think it qualifies as a perfect lan-party game or online meet-up first person shooter.
#1) It is fun.
#2) It is easy to find, install and get running being it is a stand-alone title not an expansion of another game.
#3) Unlike most good games from the modern 3d-era it is legally free and doesn't require cd-keys to play online.
#4) It doesn't have a steep learning curve like virtually all the other FPS games you can think of. So new comers and casual gamers won't be discouraged by mercilous addicts with no life.
If for example Goldeneye on N64 is still played by gamers, I don't see why a game with better maps, less repetitive gamplay, an online feature and far better graphics and frame-rate shouldn't be. Not to mention that it's for the PC and completely free to obtain. There is still an online community which you could help to reinvigorate, found primarily at NerfArena*net and apparently run by a guy who the original developers passed the torch to.
Playing online no longer works out of the box and requires
community packs which they made available. Also you no longer have to select software rendering to run it on a modern machine,
nGlide 1.0 has come out and made 3dfx/D3d possible through modern nVidia/ATI pcs. Now it runs on 64-bit PC's and even on Mac and Linux through
Wine. Select Win XP (or prior) compatibility mode as it was originally made for Win 95. If you have any problems it's recommended to drag the Nerf folder you downloaded from Abandonia to the default install location of the game disc C:\Program files\Atari\Nerf Arena Blast or it's WINE equivalent, which should be something like..
Code:
.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Atari/Nerf Arena Blast/