For more than 25 years since the release of the original Half-Life, players have tried many builds of Valve’s legendary shooter, but recently a pre-release version of the project became publicly available.
Image Source: Valve
Former developer and tester Chad Jessup a week and a half ago began clearing out the rubble in his garage and, among the artifacts of his gaming past, discovered a disk with a beta version of Half-Life dated October 20, 1998.
According to Jessup, he was one of Half-Life’s external testers, and the disc he found contains a build that was released several weeks before the official release and contains a number of “unexpected differences” from the final one.
Image source: X (ubahs1337)
Archivist Reagan (Frogsnatcher in X) documented some changes on his personal blog: for example, the second half of the map from the chapter “Forget Freeman!” in “beta” is strikingly different from the final one (see video below).
Basically, the differences are not so noticeable (scripts, AI, models, textures), although the vending machine with Pepsi drinks catches your eye – before settling on the fictitious option, Valve tried several real brands.
Thanks to Reagan, Jessup’s beta version of the Half-Life sample of the second network test was uploaded to the Internet Archive and is available for free. However, getting the game to work on a modern PC is not so easy.
Enthusiasts have already found workarounds to solve installation problems (such as disk requirements or startup expirations) and have even begun publishing installation instructions.