Most of friends try to play it cool and claim they prefer sports to video games, but once I have them over and they’ve had a few drinks, well, I don’t have to tell you what happens next.  The Nintendo Wii, Guitar Hero, and the casual gaming fad have made it so I don’t have to get my cool friends drunk just to play video games.  So here are things to make sure you have when throwing a video game party.

Maximize the number of players

Few of us can afford multiple HDTVs, but if you have a quality computer monitor, you can quality double your pleasure.  I keep the Wii hooked up to the HDTV in my living room and move the 360 to my computer monitor and speakers.  With the Wii on mute, four people could play Super Monkey Ball to the background music of Guitar Hero.

Batteries

Make sure you have tons of batteries for controllers.  Do I need to explain this further?

Know how to work everything

It sucks to waste time trying to figure out how to set-up multiplayer or not knowing how to play a mini-game or simply not knowing how many people can play something.  Be the expert so everyone else can just relax and make fools of themselves.  It’s less fun when you’re fool because nothing works.

Finger food

Just because you’re playing video games doesn’t mean you have to eat like a six year old.  Put together a cheese platter, cold cuts, and of course, junk food.  Just make sure to provide a balance.  Being a geek can still be classy.

Have a non-video game space

Even with two rooms of games, it’ll be hard to get more than 4-8 people playing at one time.  Assuming you have more friends than that, you will want to have space for socializing so people can just watch the gaming but still talk about non-geeky things.  Normal people aren’t used to 12 hour gaming marathons so be sympathetic.