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Counter Strike's 10th birthday

Today we celebrate Counter Strikes 10th birthday!

The Counter-Strike series was first announced publicly on March 24, 1999 and made it's official debut on June 19th, 1999, first originally released as a mod for Half-Life, the mod only featured 4 maps, Cs_Siege, Cs_Mansion, cs_wpndepot and cs_mansion., and only an arsenal of nine guns were available, no surprise the game was only, 7.5megabytes big, small enough to fit onto a floppy disc! Not until the 4.0 version of the mod was released did we finally get to see DE style missions,  a year on and the game had grown, now featuring 12 maps, and 19 guns, and thousands were creating content and skinning the mod for personalisation, by 2000 it was announced Counter Strike was massive success and on November 2000, it was announced it was ready to be launched as an independent game, and thus gave the birth of 1.6, which was released in 2003, though the original was available to download for free, and still is.
 

The original saw players bash flashing soap

Back in the day, before the world of Steam, Counter-Strike was played on WON online gaming services that were provided by Sierra, on July 31st 2004, Valve took over, and shutdown the WON servers and forced players to migrate to Steam, which was a transition that has proved to be the right choice, now Steam is a world wide service, not only dedicated to Counter-Strike but millions of games.

 
The game was banned in Brazil due to its controversial elements

Counter-Strike Condition Zero arrived in March 2004, CS:CZ used the 1.6 engine to run but included updated maps, models and various tweaks, and included bots and a single player mode, and was a step to make Counter-Strike something it shouldn’t be, the work was originally partnered with a company called Ritual Entertainment, the development of the game they had created had been released, and reviewers insulted the game, and it was deemed not fit enough for Counter-Strike standards, the portion of development was included in the release of CS:CZ which was named Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes.
 

Deleted scenes scenario

Deleted scenes included single player maps, the content also included several weapons, such as the M72 Light machine-gun, the machete, and even a suicide belt, and also there was the ability to use tools such as fibre optic cameras and remote controlled bombs. Though after the scrapping of the game, and total re-development, the game still only managed achieve a metascore of 65, though despite this its still largely well played throughout Steam, and to boost the sales of the game, Valve offered players of CS:CZ a beta version of Counter-Strike Source, the complete independent game, that would revolutionize Counter-Strike.

 

Condition Zero has sold over 2.9 million copies
 

Though before CS:S there was other releases which included a 2003 remake of Counter-Strike for Japanese audiences that took away the terrorist and counter-terrorist and replaced them with anime style characters, it was known as Counter-Strike: Neo the game was only playable in Japanese arcades, and it was Namco that coincided to develop the game. 

 

Counter-Strike: Neo

Counter-Strike was also revamped and released on the Xbox in 2003 that included original play, a riot shield and the ability to play with bots, the game was a mild success, though it was all the time to fill in the gaps between the release of Counter-Strike: Source.

Counter-Strike: Source was released in October 2004, and was a complete make over of the original Counter-Strike and featured the new source engine, that had been used to create Half-Life 2, the default game setting puts you into scenarios that are familiar in the original Counter-Strike, and the rules are pretty much the same, although there are a lot of varieties of game, that has been modded and thanks to Valves Source SDK provided modders to personalize and make variations of maps and server-side mods.

 

The comparison between 1.6 and Source is prominently noticeable

Aspects of the game that have changed from Counter-Strike include the behaviour of the grenades, the physics engine, and the weapons' recoil. The smoke grenades in Counter-Strike: Source spread much more slowly than the ones in Counter-Strike, and the flashbangs, which now utilize DirectX 9 effects, have a much more pronounced effect, and bounce very differently from the ones in Counter-Strike. Counter-Strike: Source also implements physics objects, such as filing cabinets, which the user can interact with while playing. The recoil in Counter-Strike: Source differs from the recoil in Counter-Strike in that while Counter-Strike had perfectly consistent recoil, the recoil in Counter-Strike: Source is much less precise.

 

Many maps made the transition from original to source

Though a debate has always been around, which is better… it’s a subjective matter, but we’ve all watched Counter-Strike grow, from its early childhood mod days, into a full standalone game, complex with developments that are constantly being updated, so I’m sure we’re going to see much more of Counter-Strike in the near future, though Valve have a big lock on the door of the future developments, but I’m sure we’ll be celebrating its 20th birthday with fond memories, and present day pleasure as Counter-Strike carries on growing.