At the beginning of 1999, two game developers, named Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, wanted to create
a game centered on the conflict between terrorism and counter-terrorism. Eventually they decided
to create a mod for the recently released game Half-Life. On June 19, 1999 the first
public beta was released and the gaming community absolutely loved it. So much so that the two
developers didn't even have to make any maps themselves. Because right from the beginning,
fans would simply submit their own through the official website. Popular fan created
maps like Dust, Siege, Nuke, among others became essential parts of the game's early
development. In other words, Counter-Strike was a major success. Valve, the creators of
Half-Life, quickly took an interest in the mod and by Beta v4.0 began assisting the developers.
By the end of 2000, Valve had actually hired the developers and released Counter-Strike
as a stand alone game. The franchise quickly grew in popularity to become one of the most
popular first-person shooters on the market. Even today, the original Counter-Strike is
among the most popular games on Steam with the most recent installment, Global Offensive,
at the very top.
It's possible that the Counter-Strike series is a prequel to the Left 4 Dead franchise.
You see, a few areas and maps in the Left 4 Dead games can also be found in Counter-Strike:
Global Offensive. The maps are of course remade but the resemblance is still quite obvious
at times. These overlaps can be found throughout the game and it makes you wonder if the two
series are actually part of the same universe. I mean, if this was any other game developer we
would be calling them lazy, but hey it's Valve so...
Yay!
So the question is, is this just asset recycling or actual hints towards something more?
Much like the arcade version of Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Neo is the arcade version
of Counter-Strike. Released sometime in 2003, the game is only available in Japan and is
some form of futuristic shooter with cyborgs and anime looking characters and yeah.. Basically
a reskinned version of the game made to appeal to a Japanese audience. Three other spin-off
titles has been made as well titled Counter-Strike: Online 1 and 2, and Counter-Strike Nexon: Zombies.
In 2009, a small Counter-Strike tournament between the two Russian teams Virtus.pro and
ForZe was held in Russia. The event promised a night of competitive gaming between two
highly ranked eSport teams. But the sponsors of the event had a slightly different idea.
They decided to make things a little more interesting by secretly inviting a couple
of strippers to see if the players would get distracted. The women did all they could but
the competition went on as usual and the players seemed completely unfazed.
Well maybe not completely.
I guess Counter-Strike players are just really dedicated to the sport.
The names of some of the bots in the games are actually named after real people. For
example, on hard difficulty there's a bot named Gabe as a homage to Gabe Newell. There's
also a bot named Dave after the creator of maps like Dust, Dust II, and Cobble. In expert
mode, two bots can be found named Minh and Cliffe as a reference to the original developers.
On normal, there's a bot named Chris who's named
after the creator of maps like Aztec, Inferno, and Frantic.
Has a player in a game ever made you so angry that you wanted to actually kill that person
in real life? Back in 2010, a man in France decided to play some Counter-Strike. One particular
match ended with him being killed in a knife fight. The man got so angry by this that he
decided to spend the next 7 months tracking this guy down. When he finally found out who
he was and where he lived he traveled to his house and when he opened the door, he stabbed
him in the chest with a knife. Luckily for the victim, he missed his heart by a few centimeters,
so he survived the attack. But seriously, how do you go seven months without thinking
"You know what? Maybe I'm overreacting here. Maybe I'm just overreacting a bit."
"Maybe I should think this through?"
No?
Seven months, still doing this?
Ok...
On the highly popular map Dust II, you can find this piece of graffiti that reads Goose.
This isn't exactly a secret since the area is often referred to as just Goose. But not
everyone knows why though. Goose is actually a reference to one of the creators of the
original mod, Minh Le, whose online nickname is Gooseman.
In 2007, a student at a school in Texas was suspended simply because he created a Counter-Strike
map based on his school. This happened in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting where
32 people where killed. Because of the heightened sense of fear caused by this, schools around
the country were on high alert for any suspicious activity. So when teachers realized that a
student had created a level in a game where the objective is to fight terrorists and planting
bombs, things got out of hand pretty quickly. Police got involved and it was seen as some
sort of minor act of terrorism but the boy was never actually arrested. He was however,
kicked out of the school and was forced to transfer to a new one. All because of some
poor timing and a harmless map in a video game.
All the radio commands and dialogue heard in each installment
was recorded by co-creator Jess Cliffe. It wasn't until Global Offensive that each faction
received their own unique voice actors.
Thus replacing most of the originals. But not all though. For example, the final messages like
or
still remain.
In Counter-Strike: Source on the map Inferno, there's a room dubbed the boiler room or just
boiler for short. In Global Offensive, they either forgot or choose not to include this
room and players quickly noticed. So in late 2014, Valve updated the game to include this
boiler. This created a minor outcry within the community as players thought it was kinda
strange that Valve would update something as trivial as this while still not fixing
many bugs in the game. This escalated even further when the map received yet another
update where they removed the boiler again and instead placed it here, in this pickup
truck. This turn of events quickly turned into a sort of running joke or meme if you
will, and the boiler has since been found on other maps as well.