The ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions have completed 25 years of continuous efforts in theory and experiments. In this years a jump of a factor of ~20 in the center of mass energy has been achieved, and today we are looking to the probably last enrgy jump of ~25 to happen at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN. The wealth of data accumulated is enormous and has open some windows in our knowledge of the complex matter created in collisions of heavy ions. The very name has changed over the years assuming many forms: quark gluon plasma, Strong quark gluon plasma, perfect liquid etc. The talk will be oriented towards a review of the existing experimental results and a description of our tools to confront the experimental challenges at the LHC.