I can only speak for Half-Life, I ended up just buying a retail CD off eBay. Make sure it comes with the key to install.

Look for retail disk pre 2003 that's very important. Also a pentium MMX will struggle with Half Life.

candle_86 wrote:

Look for retail disk pre 2003 that's very important.

Yeah, some perusing on eBay looks like one can find 1999 releases anywhere from $30-$150.

candle_86 wrote:

Also a pentium MMX will struggle with Half Life.

Agreed, for sure. As mentioned it was barely playable on the 586 I had at the time, and tolerable on a PII. I was mainly looking for the memberberries... may or may not be worth the money.

The Orange Box does not contain Half-Life. The Orange Box never supported Win9X nor Win2000

I remember playing the original Half-Life on my P166 MMX with my 3dfx Voodoo Banshee.
I bought the "Game of the Year" edition in late 2000 or early 2001 (can't recall) while in the UK (3d accelerator not required 🤣).
Spend endless hours playing these.

You can't get original media from steam, just the current up to date version. You have to acquire the original installer through whatever your preferred source is.

Reverse question, if you own the old big bawks editions of HL/OF/BS can you get the games on Steam for free?

Yes, you can register the original CD keys on Steam (provided nobody else already has)

I had the original Half Life Anthology (*can't remember the exact name, it was a big box collection of Blue Source / Opposing Force etc. sold in the UK around 2000) and when I registered it on Steam, not only did I get all of those games included but also some that came out later and were included in later versions of the collection

I've always wondered this about Half Life 2. The original release of Half Life 2 (I still have my copy), included the original version of Steam which was required to decrypt the files on disc, and then of course would automatically update. Is there any way to play the original released version of Half Life 2? You can't install it from the original disc as Steam would update it (if it could even find the old servers)

Oh, and while we're talking about old Valve games, does anybody else remember Gunman Chronicles? I've always been surprised it's never made it's way to Steam. I don't think it was made by Valve themselves, but it was a lot of fun

SRQ wrote:

You can't get original media from steam, just the current up to date version. You have to acquire the original installer through whatever your preferred source is.

Yes, that is a problem.
You will want a non-Steam version. The problem I had with my old PC is that I tried to install an old Steam version... That worked... until it connected and figured it should update Steam. Apparently there are no compatibility checks, so it just downloaded and installed a version of Steam that was not compatible with my OS/CPU.

I really think Valve should do something about that, so that people can play old games they legally own on the old machines they originally used them on.

I had that problem once with Warcraft III and Battle.net on an old iMac. I was running OS 9 but the update downloaded the OS X executable, so the game became unplayable after update.

I remember that once, many years ago, I registered my CD copy of HL onto battle.net, and immediately afterward I had available in my account for download the original version (same one I registered). It was still there a few years later - but I haven't checked for a long time so I'm not sure it's still available now.

Nipedley wrote:

Oh, and while we're talking about old Valve games, does anybody else remember Gunman Chronicles? I've always been surprised it's never made it's way to Steam. I don't think it was made by Valve themselves, but it was a lot of fun

The game wasn't indeed made by Valve, it was made by an unknown back then company named Rewolf Software.
It was a good game in my opinion but was not appreciated at its true value.

Nipedley wrote:

I've always wondered this about Half Life 2. The original release of Half Life 2 (I still have my copy), included the original version of Steam which was required to decrypt the files on disc, and then of course would automatically update. Is there any way to play the original released version of Half Life 2? You can't install it from the original disc as Steam would update it (if it could even find the old servers)

Yes, there is a copy of HL2 that was 'cracked' to run without the need to have an up to date copy of steam.

I could give more details but that might be bad due to the whole piracy thing. Suffice it to say, I have owned a copy of HL2 ever since it came out, it ran beautifully on my P4 with win2k, half a gig of RAM and a FX5200 back then. The recent versions of HL2 wont work in such a configuration (basically because Steam requires at least XP). I got a 'no steam' copy, installed it on a PIII with win2k and a MX440, and it runs amazingly well!

The original release technically supports dx6 cards so you can play it on a tnt2 in throry

candle_86 wrote:

The original release technically supports dx6 cards so you can play it on a tnt2 in throry

Yup! I actually did this too, using an AGP TNT2 card.

RJDog wrote:

Agreed, for sure. As mentioned it was barely playable on the 586 I had at the time, and tolerable on a PII. I was mainly looking for the memberberries... may or may not be worth the money.

I can say otherwise. It will run on a 200mhz Pentium Pro and windows NT or a 166mhz Pentium under 95 but 3D acceleration is key. A Voodoo2 or similar is a must.

I really think Valve should do something about that, so that people can play old games they legally own on the old machines they originally used them on.

I have the original multi-disc CD release of Half-Life 2 which will run under Windows 98SE and for pure kicks at a LAN party I'd love the ability to grav gun into the night on a 1.4ghz Tualatin and a 98SE box.

Obviously ignore the below if trying to run the latest steam HL ver on a Pentium 😉

The below shows Half-Life 2 working with Kernelex so theoretically the latest Steam HL should work on 9x. (The old Steam HL which was basically the same as retail probly worked fine)

https://sourceforge.net/projects/kernelex/fil … 0Notes.txt/view

There's also a switch you can add to the command line to run it offline without Steam. Visiting my parents so don't have access to my games.

Now that I think of it I think since Valve updated HL a year or two ago they switched to SDL for Linux compatibility. Not sure if SDL1 or SDL2. If SDL2 possible kernelex won't work.

Nipedley wrote:

Yes, you can register the original CD keys on Steam (provided nobody else already has) […]
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Yes, you can register the original CD keys on Steam (provided nobody else already has)

I had the original Half Life Anthology (*can't remember the exact name, it was a big box collection of Blue Source / Opposing Force etc. sold in the UK around 2000) and when I registered it on Steam, not only did I get all of those games included but also some that came out later and were included in later versions of the collection

I've always wondered this about Half Life 2. The original release of Half Life 2 (I still have my copy), included the original version of Steam which was required to decrypt the files on disc, and then of course would automatically update. Is there any way to play the original released version of Half Life 2? You can't install it from the original disc as Steam would update it (if it could even find the old servers)

Oh, and while we're talking about old Valve games, does anybody else remember Gunman Chronicles? I've always been surprised it's never made it's way to Steam. I don't think it was made by Valve themselves, but it was a lot of fun

There are probably tools to rip the game files out but it's likely easier to dig around on the Internet to find the game (something you shouldn't have to do and Steam should just provide....). I deleted my old copy of the steam HL ver since I have the retail and didn't see any point in keeping the steam infected HL ver.

For instance I have an offline copy of the Portal demo I ripped out of some steam files a long time ago.

You wouldn't just need to rip it, you would need to replace the executable and some other things with properly compatible older versions. The versions now rely on XP and up hooks and at least DX9, probably a newer opengl.