A big day passed earlier this week. That day was November 19, and it was the 25th anniversary of the release of Half-Life. I know that may not mean much to most people, but Half-Life is a big deal for me. It is not that strange for people to say a book or movie changed their life. For me, this video game changed mine.
I can still remember seeing the box in a game store. I heard it called the “greatest game ever made” on X-Play but did not buy into the hype. This was the game of the year version, but what caught my eye was the level editor. I thought it would give me a shot at game development. Much to my surprise, Half-Life is still the most immersive video game I have ever played. The game never made me feel like I was Gordon Freeman but instead made me believe Gordon Freeman was me. It went from a normal day at work, to a battle for survival, to a trip to an alien world to save ours. I was along for the ride the whole time.
After beating the game, I did try my hand at mapping. I never released anything big, but I did get into playing MODs. I started to spend more time playing MODs than games! This also got me into software development. I started to follow both Valve Software and Nintendo closely. My interest in software development went so far that I studied software engineering in college. The skills I learned there still influence how I make decisions to this day!
To celebrate, I decided to dig out one of the only Half-Life and Catgirl-related artworks I found over my many years of playing Valve games and blogging about catgirls. I went looking for it to make a custom spray for multiplayer when I realized I never did a proper post for it. Last time, I didn’t even know who the artist was! Let’s fix that today.
This image features Apricot in the flesh, or should I say the hazard suit? Apricot is an original character by Yamai. From what I can tell Yamai is connected to a doujinshi circle known as L.S.D. I was finally able to find some of Yamai’s pages. Sadly most have not been updated for some time. Nevertheless, I am thankful for this amazing trip down memory lane. Thank you Yamai and that you Valve!
So what do you think?