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.
