I'm torn on this issue as well. I have fond memories of the janky setups, but also it is nice to actually have time to play games at the party. At some LANs, I've spent hours and hours just trying to get everyone in the game and playing. Plus with a setup like his you don't have to worry about finding older games that will run on the lowest common denominator hardware that people bring.

As you said though, there was a certain magic those days...