Sometimes a real treasure can be found in old warehouses or attics. This was the case with a former game developer. He discovered a CD with a beta version of Half-Life from 1998, which contained previously unknown material. Valve
Chad Jessup was once a game developer himself. When he started cleaning out his warehouse, he found all sorts of ‘old stuff’ related to gaming. In addition to historical hardware and old game cartridges, the highlight was a CD-ROM. On the golden disc with a capacity of 650 megabytes, “Half-Life, Beta 2, Net Test 2” was written by hand in permanent marker.
According to the date of October 20, 1998, which is also noted on it, the CD is 26 years old and has been in the warehouse for at least 15 years. Jessup therefore feared that the data carrier would probably no longer be readable. But he was “absolutely shocked that the CD showed no damage or signs of deterioration.” Release trailer for the modification Half-Life 1: Ray Traced
He had come into possession of the Half-Life 2 beta as one of the external testers of the legendary shooter. Therefore, he also knew that this version of the game from Valve contained “some surprising differences” compared to the released version, such as “unfinished levels, script and texture changes”.
After posting his find on X, Jessup was contacted by an online archivist named Reagan. To preserve the artifact for posterity and make it accessible to everyone, they uploaded an image of the CD to Internet Archive high. So if you want to get an idea of the beta yourself, you can theoretically do that. But it is not that easy. There are a number of compatibility problems on modern systems.
The special version of the game currently only seems to run in Windows ME compatibility mode. According to Techspot Users also report that some files have to be deleted before the game can be started. A kind of time bomb code that ensures that the beta can no longer be started after a certain date has passed can be circumvented by manually adjusting the system time to a date in October 1998.
Reagan himself has already made a few discoveries in the game. In level 13, “Forget Freeman!”, there is a kind of communications center that was completely removed from the finished game. He also found unused weapon textures, such as a crossbow with a modified bolt gun mechanism and a 3D model of an alien called “Stukabat,” which also did not make it into version 1.0 of Half-Life.
A few more discoveries are likely to be made in the beta version soon. After all, Jessup also mentioned “unfinished levels.” If you have the time and inclination, you can go on a treasure hunt yourself thanks to the uploaded version in the Internet Archive.
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