The unreleased Sega Dreamcast edition of the classic shooter Half-Life is now available as a mod for the PC version on Steam.
Why, you might ask, would you want to play a PC-based mod of a console port of an old PC game? Seems like a lot of running around just to get right back to where you started, after all. But the version of Half-Life for the Dreamcast console that never saw the light of day is more than just a straight-up remake; the levels are different, it sports unique NPC models and props, tweaked difficulty and “a host of sly Dreamcast references hidden throughout.”
The game was being developed by Gearbox and slated to come out in late 2000 before the plug was pulled, presumably because of the Dreamcast’s failure to catch fire. And that would’ve been that, and was for more than a decade, but thanks to the miracle of modern technology we don’t have to settle for playing “new” games on our obscenely expensive entertainment systems – we can play old games that never actually existed in the first place!
Along with everything else, the mod features an overhauled menu designed to “closely emulate” the Dreamcast interface, password notifications, a CD-quality soundtrack that will override the default 48kbps MP3 files used by Steam and a whole mess of other “little differences.” Sounds like it might be fun as a curiosity if nothing else, and it’s free, which is a pretty big plus. Download links, instructions and a small but growing collection of positive feedback can all be found at the Mod DB.
