Older memories

[timech187]

I liked the thread about the memories of the first time people heard of HL2, good stuff .

It got me to thinking. Actually, all the threads in this forum, especially the hyped ones got me to thinking about old HL1.

I remember when I first heard about it. I was working in Montgomery, Alabama as a Network Admin at a rich, upscale private school. The kids were nice and man, were their parents loaded .

One of the gifted computer kids came to me and asked me if I had ever played Half-Life or an online game. I had told him no and he advised me to do so.

He was right. I started HL1 later that week and I was in true awe. I remember the train ride into Black Mesa, wondering how to get out of that train, why wouldn't my buttons work and why was this taking so long! LOL, the good ole days.

My actual first online game was Alien Vs. Predator. I met a good buddy using Roger Wilco to talk. After a short game of AvP, we decided that we would try HL, TFC and CS. It was there that we made more friends and created a clan, Clan 187. I still use the name today...Timech187.

As they say in the valley, Half-Life is the bomb .

Timech187
Looking forward to HL2, TFC2, CS2 and HLDM2.

 

[soccerdude21490]

Half-Life is DEFINITLY the bomb! I don't remeber exatly how I found out about HL2... but man when I did I started flipping out and learned as much as I could about it. I remember the day I first played HL.. that was only 2 years ago! My friend told me about Counter-Strike and he said it was a MOD for Half-Life.. some game he never played though so I ran out to WalMart and picked up the very last copy of HL:GOTY and came home and played it for HOURS I thought it was the BEST that got me into PC Games a LOT... I never really played a true PC game before that. so that you Valve for introducing me to the world of PC Games!!!!!!

 

[manny_c44]

Hmm, I knew about HL1 fromt he beginning and followed its development closely, so I didn't have any suprise encounter with Half-Life. I knew it was going to be awesome, and it was. The best is showing other people that don't know about, even today it holds up as a unique gaming experience.

 

[KagePrototype]

Heh, I remember seeing that crowbar with a shadow making a "2" on the back of Edge magazine. That put me on a 6-month high.

As for HL1, I remember reading a review of it in CVG way back in '98 and thinking that it looked unbeleivably fun to play. A week or two later, I had a copy.

 

[Mujuro]

I remember those damn scientists and their annoying voices...

 

[ne0_shiny]

heh heh
stupid scientists

 

[koopa]

HL1 was the real 3D game I'd ever seen. I knew about Doom & Quake, but didn't have a PC at the time. Half-Life blew me away - I saw someone else with it and had to buy a PC + 3D card just to play it. That was back when 300 MHz was a creditable machine!

 

[affen]

The only thing I heard of HL before playing it was my nephew telling me that Half-Life was a pretty good game. So I followed his advice and played the game and up till now it's the best gaming expercience I've had (though Wolfenstein 3D impressed me too, but that's because it was the first game I played on pc).

 

[PvtRyan]

I remember reading a review of it, and I was very interested in it because it had low system requirements. Bought it, turned out my harddisk wasn't big enough for the game (a whopping 400 MB!!!) so I couldn't play it until I got a new PC. Played it at a friend's house though.

 

[timech187]

...and up till now it's the best gaming expercience I've had (though Wolfenstein 3D impressed me too, but that's because it was the first game I played on pc).

Same here. I've played some very good games since, but none have made quite the impact that HL1 did. Guess since it was the first that tried using all the elements that it did, made it unique.

It's like how Everquest was my first MMORPG, even though it wasn't the best looking and had many bugs, it was my first true addiction...of any type. My life was terribly sad then .

So as always, I keep hoping the next best thing will be...the next best thing.

Timech187

 

[Brian Damage]

First I saw of HL was at my friends house, where he was playing it on his computer... he let me have a go...

I had a go for five straight hours... 'nuff said.

 

[Letters]

I heard some dude screaming about how awesome TFC was at school... so I bought HL just so I could play that... was worth it.

 

[$niffy]

I went round my mates and he started playing TFC. I was like "wtf is that" and he explained what half-life was and started playing it. Lent me the game that night, hooked since

 

[timech187]

TFC was my second favorite part of HL, the marines in the single player game where the best.

 

[Plug]

Ok well this is quite a story here... I've been involved with halflife from day one without stopping... hehe hope i don't bore anyone.

A friend told me that half-life was going to rock, so i checked out planethalflife.com (while it was still contaminated.net at that time) and was impressed with the screenshots and description.
I monitered it, getting more and more excited and when it came i bought it as soon as i could! (within the first week)

It was the most amazing game i had ever played! I had never seen so many npc's, with mouths that MOVED and great voice acting! It was like i was walking through a real world.

I was addicted from day 1. Multiplayer was a BLAST (and i'm sad to see it not return for hl2), and then tfc and other mods started to come out... I downloaded counterstrike's first release (i still have it) and that was lots of fun!

Hehe, i remember reading a preview type thing of CS on a website. It said "There are lots of good mods coming up for halflife, but this one just seems extra special... worth keeping an eye on". God was he right!

The mod scene started to explode, and i decided i wanted to get in on it, so i started modelling in milkshape and joined a mod called "Cold Ice" which was a fairly well known weapons mod. I made a bunch of crappy models, which the mod leader loved.

Because there was such a shortage of talent at the time, i got a bunch of offers to work on mods. I don't remember any of the ones i didn't join - but one sticks out. I was invited to join the Day of Defeat team. Hehe beleive it or not...

I joined, they were really organised. We were having an icq chat, and were discussing what we would all make - it became apparent that i was way out of my league with modelling, so i quit in a couple of days apologising. If i had only known... Hehehe.

A little while after that me, my brother and some friends got together to make a mod called "Runaway Train", or RAT - based on a few funny games of regular halflife dm on one of my own maps and then later subtransit. The basic idea of RAT is you get points for staying on a moving train in a map, and maps were to be based around the trains. It was alot of fun! We had a bit of a community vibe! People made maps and sent them to us to get featured on the website... there were some (not enough!) organised matches where lots of players would come and have a go. Developement and friendship became strained soon after our second release and RAT died.

A while after that a fellow wanted to remake RAT, he called his version "Train Hunters" which was based on the idea, but... it just wasn't the same. To be honest it was kind of crap compared to the original RAT. Ah well, life goes on.

And so did Halflife, gunman chronicles was released commercially, CS was acquired, and much later DOD was too. That was a hilarious surprise to me

The golden years... they really were.

To think, I only paid $80 for this game 6 years ago. I'd pay 5 times that if i knew how much i was going to get for it.


Anyone else have any long winded person halflife stories? I'd like to hear!

 

[we11er]

Mines really long:

I bought Half-life, played it, loved it.

Nuff said.

 

[Joe]

Long post ahead...

My history with PC games started back in 1998 I believe, I purchased Flight Simulater 98. This quickly evolved and I soon purchased Flight Simulater 2000. I "played" those two simulaters for hours online on the MSN Gaming Zone. Eventually, I purchased Combat Flight Simulater, and soon realized how much fun action games were.

One game that always seemed to appear all over the "Zone" was Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear. I took the hint and bought it, and instantly loved it. I played that game (CO-OP and sniping exclusively) for almost a year and a half. I joined a clan called *MERC* and rose to one of the top positions. By now, it was somewhere in 2001.

I was searching the web for Rogue Spear weapons mods when I came across a site in, what I think was, german about Counter Strike(http://atf.ngi.it/index.htm No longer running). The game looked really cool. It slipped my mind for about a month, when one day I was in Walmart and spotted it. I figured "What the hell?" and bought it. That night, I must have stayed up till 3AM playing it. Not long after, I noticed all the games listed on the back of the box, and wondered what they were and how they played. One of them was Firearms 2.4. I quickly searched google and found their website, and to this day, I still post in their forums (Mostly in the Weapons forum).

This is where I got into mods, and soon discovered DOD and such. I kept hearing talk about Blue Shift and Half Life, and I realized I had never played any of them. So once more, I took a trip down to my local walmart and picked up Half Life: Blue Shift. I quickly found out what I was missing! I beat blueshift that same day, and then installed Opposing Force and spent the next few days beating that. I knew I had to get the Original Half Life and get the full feel. So, in a sense, I beat the Half Life series backwards...

Operation Flashpoint caught my attention in late 2001, and my playing mostly revolved around that, with the occasional game of Firearms or DOD. I joined a Operation Flashpoint clan called Vetserver in early 2002, and stuck with it for two years. Unfortunately, my PC could no longer handle all the addons (A Pentium 2 455mhz, 386MB of RAM and a god awful video card, combined with a 6GB hard drive made it impossible to play with modern graphics.). And after that I sorta faded back into Half Life and it's mods. However, the PC in my signature will be ready by the end of this week, and I can finally retire this P2, and will once more begin playing Operation Flashpoint and Half Life.

Over the last 6 years, I've had more games then I've listed here. None of them I ever really got into multiplayer or community wise (Delta Force series, Medal Of Honor, the Flight Simulaters, etc) Only 3 games have ever stole the vast majority of my time. Operation Flashpoint, Rogue Spear and Half Life. I cannot forsee any other games outside of these series being added to that list.

 

[Peqkx]

I had a WON ID in the low 1,xxx. That should speak for itself. HL, unreal, and q1-2 were the best back then. All 3 devs of those are obviously doing well today ;p


I saw the HL box from my neighbor, but he doesnt play hl online anymore, but we used to lan a lot of hl dm. i bet his serials/won id was one of the first thousand.

 

[The Bait]

I remember when I first got HL1. I got that boxed set that had HL1, Opposing Force, and TFC. Good times, good times.

 

[dæmon]

Mine is similar to some other peoples' experiences: a friend kept telling me how good Half-Life was, so eventually I went around to his house and played TFC. The character movement convinced me this game was the way to go.

I was apprehensive during the tram ride, as I knew that aliens would be involved and expected them to appear at any moment during the introduction. I soon realised Half-Life had more depth .

 

[Logic]

HL was a surprise to me.. I'd never been that big on FPS games (I hadn't played unreal, for example) but by complete chance, someone on IRC or ICQ (I forget now) asked me if I knew HTML. I had put together a few horribly amateur websites by then, so I said "yes" or "a bit" or something, and he asked me to help him out with something. It turned out to be a menu on an Australian PC magazine cover CD (Internet.au I think it was called), and in exchange for helping him out (not that I did all that much in the end, I think the guy was just after some inspiration rather than actual help) he sent me some copies of what the magazine were previewing\reviewing at the time. The first thing I tried was labeled "Half-Life OEM", and it contained 'Half-Life: Day One'. This was before the game was out, and I hadn't even read about it, so I didn't know what it was all about. Needless to say, I was blown away (I'd never felt such tension in a game before) and obviously, I bought HL when it became available.

 

[Cole]

I oringally was at the store, with my cousins. I had like 50 bucks and didn't know what to buy. So I bought Counter-Strike & Soldier of Fortune. Personally since i was on a bad 56k connection CS lagged like shit, so I did SOF singleplayer & every now and then multiplayer. I didn't like CS at first but then I really started getting into it after I tried it again, I learned more about it and more and that it was oringally a mod to HL. So eventually i asked some diffrent cousins if I could borrow HL, i love HL soooo much. Then I got into other mods like NS, Dod etc...

If it wasn't for CS, i would of never realy got into FPS's, as i am oringally a Diablo fan and Sc fan. Very very big RTS fan i am. Now Diablo and Diablo 2 seem pointless, i hope Diablo 3 will he tombs and everything and be in 3rd person, with fantastic graphics and lighting. D1 or D2 in 3rd person with great graphics would...blow my world. Make the tombs in act 2 spooky as hell..you could really make a game. For d1 the whole labryinth with sharp shading, third person, dead people cut open on the walls bleeding in great graphics... it would just blow my mind. But that if blizzard north ever gets smart n doe sit.

But thx to Cs i bought HL. Then a few christmas's ago for christmas i got the Plantium Edition or whatever for HL. Got opposing force & blue shift + more cd keys . Heh, really put me in love with HL.


And it's all thx to CS.

 

[LeXo5]

I had a friend who had a pirated version of HL1. He was like, "this game rocks, you gotta try it." So I tried a small part of the intro level (jsut the train ride and locker room) .... I liked that tiny bit soo much, I went and bought the "Adrenaline Pack" for $50 at Walmart. I loved the single player and opposing forces.

 

[Ownzed]

Yes I loved it from the second a played it.

 

[MrMan16]

hehe...those were the days! I rememebr playing the Day One Demo from PCG, and being awwed! H-L truly was one of the best games ever, and I think HL2 will be a worthy sequel. .....*sigh*.....