In a way, that modem might still be considered good: the head-to-head play meant that one player had their modem dial the other player's modem, so the link that was established was a direct 28.8k symmetric connection with no IP routers in between. As long as you weren't going long-distance, you would have sufficient bandwidth and latency that was good, not great, but very consistent because the PSTN cares about that in a way that ISPs don't.