Despite the age, Half-Life is a game that many set their sights on, mainly for the challenge that is speedrunning. You know, the thing where people try to beat a game as fast as humanly possible, with or without scripts. And loads of bunny hops and grenade jumps. Loads of ’em.

Using a mod that restores Half-Life to its original 2001 version, a group of people has after 4 years of preparation and practice managed to beat the world record speedrun of 27 minutes, with a whopping 20 minutes and 41 seconds clear time.

If you’ve been a follower of the Steamcast Podcast and have been wondering what happened to their website, Twitter and RSS feed, don’t worry they’re still around, just under a different name.

Due to a legal problem regarding the name ‘Steamcast’, the podcast has had to rename itself to ‘Steamchat Podcast’, which fortunately has also allowed them to keep their logo and acronym intact.

Reporting up here in the black and white LambdaGeneration dirigible HQ, I bring you fantastic news! So don those manacles and grab a cigar because the exiting nostalgic news is after the jump!

We recently sat down with Richard Seabrook, the developer of the upcoming fan-made Half-Life: Opposing Force sequel, Prospekt, to ask him some questions about the game and it’s development. We also put forward some questions to him from the community too.

You can watch the video interview below.

Recently, GoldSrc speedrunner “quadrazid“, previously famous for his 20 minute Half-Life 1 speedrun, uploaded a video of what he calls “Half-Life Backwarding”, which is exactly what it is.

In the short video, quadazid attempts to make his way through various Half-Life levels such as the Hazard Course as fast as he can, but this time facing backwards.

If you thought normal Half-Life speedruns are crazy enough, then this has just taken it to a whole new level.

The original Half-Life was first announced in early 1997, initially set for that year’s holiday season. But one very impressive E3 1997 showing later, and suddenly Half-Life was on everyone’s radar – expectations were ramping up, and suddenly, Valve were in the center of the gaming world’s attention. And so, later that year, close to their projected release date, Valve decided that a delay was in order. Once they’d attained it, a lot of the pressure was off, and the team at Valve spent began to intensely evaluate every aspect of the game, and all of the content they had created in one year of development.

And while there had been a considerable amount of progress, and the game itself was in very good shape, it just seemed like there was something missing – as Valve engineer Ken Birdwell stated in The Final Hours of Half-Life, the game simply wouldn’t have gone “over the edge anywhere“. To Valve, it seemed like Half-Life could be a lot more revolutionary and a lot more groundbreaking. Thus, in late 1997, an entire game’s worth of content and design was completely scrapped, and Half-Life underwent a complete redesign, fully from the ground up.

What gamers eventually got one year later in November of 1998, amounts to an entirely new game (in fact, according to Ken Birdwell, it really is a Half-Life 2 of sorts). But what happened to the Half-Life that never was – the “Half-Life 0” that Valve unceremoniously threw out the door?

For a long time, we had this idea of making a little something like a podcast. Now, after months of throwing ideas around, it’s finally here! This is the first episode of “All Things Lambda”!

In the first episode, Ooiman, Jeff and Dhel talk about the SteamBoy handheld, the mysterious Team Fortress 2 Bread items, and Dota 2’s ‘The International’. But of course, we couldn’t forget about the biggest gaming event of June: E3! We share our opinions about the conferences and go over a list of games announced!

This episode turned out to be longer than anticipated, too! Future episodes will be about 40 minutes long.

We hope you enjoy out first try at producing a podcast, and please do leave us feedback!

Email [email protected] or send us a Tweet.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel for future episodes!

Speedrunning! It’s been around since 1994. Some consider it a form of art, some don’t. But what we do know about it is that it is damn fun to watch! I mean, come on. Whether you’re watching a Quake speedrun, a Metroid speedrun, or what have you, it’s almost as entertaining as actually playing the game in question.

There’s two main types of speedruns: single-segment speedruns and multi-segment speedruns. The latter is a speedrun in which the runner does not actually do it in one sitting – he does it in multiple sittings, in multiple segments to ensure perfection and correct any mistakes. The former is a speedrun made out of one single segment. No pausing, no saving. One single sitting. That means every time you make a mistake, you either bear with it, or call off the entire thing and start over. So a single-segment represents the ultimate test of skill and endurance.

The Valve community hasn’t shied away from speedrunning either. Last year’s astounding 9-minute Portal speedrun by DemonStrate still holds the world record for Portal speedruns. And there’s also been numerous Half-Life speedruns – single-segment, multi-segment, crowbar-only, you name it, these guys have probably done it.

The world speedrunning record for Half-Life 1 is still held by Blake “Spider-Waffle” Piepho, who completed his infamous “Half-Life in Half an Hour” speedrun (for which a series of commentary videos can be found here) in October of 2006, with a time of 29 minutes and 41 seconds. Blake’s also done a number of other Half-Life speedruns. For more information on Half-Life speed runs in particular, head over to Source Runs. You should also check out the Speed Demo Archive, and the Speed Run Wiki.

But let’s get to business, shall we?