Digital Cup transports gamers to another world

WASILLA -- Scientific experiments have just released a horde of demons on Mars. You're a Marine and it's up to you to stop them.

Or you're a member of an elite counter-terrorism unit. Your mission is to sneak into enemy territory under the cover of night, rescue hostages, destroy enemy structures or assassinate a rebel leader.

Customers are transported to these worlds when they enter the Digital Cup, the Valley's only cyber caf/ that features fully interactive computer gaming. Every weekend, gamers gather at the caf/ to battle mutant demons, rogue states, gamers in other parts of the world and gamers across the room.

With 16 high-performance, custom-built gaming computers, the Digital Cup is one of the only cyber caf/s of its kind in the state, where gamers can form teams and play tournaments, talk trash to their opponents and coordinate tactics with their teammates, all in real time.

"These games, especially Counterstrike, when you put the headphones on, it literally transports you to another world," said Digital Cup employee Mike Collins. "You might as well be inside the game. It's awesome."

Every Saturday night the caf/ attracts fans and players of Counterstrike, a fully interactive team-based game released in 1999 and still one of the most popular games in the world. Counterstrike can be played tournament-style with a network of computers in the same room, or a single player can drop into a game online and play against gamers in other countries. Because it is team-based and many gamers communicate to their squad with headsets, a gamer in Wasilla can hear his teammates, or opponents, speaking in German, Russian or Czech.

"Counterstrike is really intense, you have to get involved," Collins said. "You can hear everything, small sounds like footsteps and a weapon loading. And you don't want to mess with guys when they're playing, they'll kill you."

Owners Dave and Tammy McGraw opened the cyber caf/ two years ago and have been surprised at how much interest there was, even from the start. Over the weekend a younger crowd was on hand for the release of Doom 3, which is advertised as the most intensely realistic and visually stunning game ever created. Collins said it is the scariest game he has ever played.

But the Digital Cup gets a wide variety of customers these days, Tammy said -- from travelers checking e-mail to older folks who want to surf the Internet. The McGraws' son, Chris, also builds and sells custom high-performance computers from the caf/

"We can set people up with whatever they want," Chris said. "Mostly we build state-of-the-art gaming computers, all these computers are tricked out.

"It's hard to keep up though, because the technology changes so fast, every six months there's something twice as good and every three months there's something with a better value," Chris said.

He also runs the "Geek Fleet," an on-site computer repair service, and provides repair services at the caf/ for people who bring their systems in. Since the caf/'s opening, business has steadily increased, Chris said.

The Digital Cup is also a real caf/, with a full-service espresso bar, candy bars and other eats available to patrons, who can rent computer time by the hour for surfing or gaming, or buy one of three memberships the caf/ offers.

"We get a lot of regulars coming in, especially the kids," Tammy said. "And it's been great getting to know them, there's some good kids that have been coming since the beginning. We're a little community here."