Videogame preservation in action.
What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found while cleaning out your garage or a relative’s storage unit? For former game developer Chad Jessup, it’s probably the beta version of the original Half-Life he uncovered this month, now shared to the Internet Archive by videogame preservation enthusiast Reagan for all to enjoy.
Jessup’s industry credits include Destiny 2’s expansions and the Xbox 360 Shadowrun, and he mentions having been an external tester on the original Half-Life. Thanks to the more “from the hip” crediting of the ’90s, some of Half-Life publisher Sierra’s QA workers only seem to appear in the game’s credits as a special thanks to “All our other hardworking beta testers,” but Jessup’s industry bona fides and the fact that he had the goods leave little room to doubt he was one of them.
Jessup first posted on X, “The Everything App” about emptying out his old storage shed on September 12, and less than a week later, under a host of other ’90s gaming goodies, he struck paydirt: A CD-ROM dated to October 20, 1998 labeled “Half-Life, Beta 2, Net Test 2.” In a subsequent tweet, Jessup explained that “This version is a few weeks before official release, but folks have found unfinished levels, script and texture changes too. Some surprising differences.”
Reagan, the archivist, has uploaded an image of the disc to the Internet Archive for download, but actually installing it doesn’t seem like an undertaking for the faint of heart: Commenters reference having to remove certain files for the game to run, while its multiplayer modes will attempt to connect to an online service that no longer exists. Helpfully, Reagan has shared some initial findings from the beta build to their personal blog.
The changes documented so far are mostly subtle: Differences in scripting, AI, models, and textures, but there is a very substantial change to the level Forget About Freeman. In the beta version of the game, the level completely diverges partway through into the Communications Center, a map which forms the basis of Half-Life’s Uplink demo level and whose original version is one of the oldest maps in the game, according to Reagan.
And there’s likely more to be discovered as well: Reagan only spent 15 hours with the build before writing their initial report, and Jessup’s mention of “unfinished levels” is certainly tantalizing, assuming he wasn’t just referring to the WIP Forget About Freeman. Whatever remains to be found, this is a definite win for videogame preservation, and gives me hope for future serendipitous discoveries. I always joke about some former Black Isle employee finding the source code to Icewind Dale 2 rolling around in the footwells of their car—maybe that’s not such a preposterous notion.
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