Half-Life

Half-Life
System(s): Sega Dreamcast
Publisher: Sierra On-Line (US), Havas Interactive (EU)
Developer: PyroTechnix, Captivation Digital Laboratories, Gearbox Software
Licensor: Sierra On-Line, Valve Corporation‏‎
Developer(s) of original games: Valve Corporation‏‎, Gearbox Software
Planned release date(s): 2000-09, 2000-10, 2000-11-01, 2000-11-22, 2000-11-24, 2000-11-29, 2001-01, 2001-04, 2001-06-01, 2001-06-29
Genre: Shoot-'em-Up
Number of players: 1
State before cancellation: Late in development
Status of prototype(s): Prototype dumped
Peripheral(s): Dreamcast Mouse, Dreamcast Keyboard

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Half-Life is an unreleased Sega Dreamcast first-person shooter developed by Captivation Digital Laboratories and Gearbox Software. The highly-anticipated port of Valve Software's popular Half-Life, it was originally scheduled to be published Sierra On-Line in late 2000 - a date which would eventually be pushed back to June 2001. With Sega's official discontinuing of the Dreamcast in March 2001, Sierra On-Line announced the port's cancellation on July 31, 2001, citing "changing market conditions".

By then, Half-Life's Dreamcast version had already received a significant amount of both advertising and public awareness. Virtually every part of the game's production had been completed, from promotional kiosks to magazine reviews, and its official strategy guide had even been shipped to a small number of retailers for sale to consumers. With such a high-profile title seeing a very late cancellation, Half-Life has since developed a reputation as one of the Dreamcast's most infamous unreleased games.

Gameplay

Half-Life would have featured identical gameplay to that of the Windows PC original, but with minor differences. Most notable are the game's updated graphics, which was touted as one of the Dreamcast version's unique selling points. When the game was cancelled, these graphics were ported over to Windows PCs, where they were further updated and released for free alongside Half-Life: Blue Shift as 2001's Half-Life High Definition Pack.

Due to its unoptimized nature, the game's framerate can frequently sink into the single digits during particularly-intensive scenes. Besides this, and the use of a Dreamcast Controller instead of a keyboard and mouse, Half-Life largely plays as it does in its original release. A minor addition is the inclusion of small cameos of Sega products in the game's breakable crates: two of the crate's debris models were replaced with a VMU and the game's Dreamcast disc. In early builds of the Japanese version, this disc is replaced with that of Sonic Adventure.

Half-Life: Blue Shift

Gearbox had developed an extra gameplay campaign which was intended to ship with the game, titled Half-Life: Blue Shift. While the main game's Dreamcast port failed to materialize, Blue Shift was later moved over to Windows PCs and released as a standalone expansion pack on June 12, 2001.

History

The entirety of the game's models were updated to take advantage of the Dreamcast hardware.

Prerelease

Half-Life was demonstrated at the European Computer Trade Show in 2000, being praised by the press and featuring as a cover story in many gaming magazines of the era and even in a television advertisement. Rather than being a straight port of the game, the Dreamcast version featured higher polygon models than its PC counterpart (about twice as many polygons overall) and would have included an exclusive side-story titled Half-Life: Blue Shift. The Dreamcast version would not make an official playable public appearance until the first annual Gearbox Community Day 2011 which featured the last completed build as part of their legacy showcase.

While the core game was set to be released in late 2000, a special online-enabled version was also planned for early 2001, which would have included Team Fortress Classic.

Development

Main article: Half-Life/Development.

The Dreamcast port of Half-Life was hugely anticipated, and despite being virtually finished, would eventually see its release cancelled at the last minute by publisher Sierra On-Line. By this time, it had already received substantial advertising and public awareness, ensuring Half-Life's legacy as one of the Dreamcast's most infamous unreleased games.

Cancellation

The game's cancellation was so abrupt that its official strategy guide actually made it to retail.

The nature of Half-Life's cancellation makes it perhaps the most notorious unreleased game for the Dreamcast. The initial plan was for the game to be released for the 2000 holiday season, with ancitipated for a release in North America and Europe during September 2000 (a date it missed - DC-UK later claimed it would arrive in Europe in November of that year, priced at the usual £39.99 in the UK.)

However, despite being publicised, the game saw an unexpected delay to mid-2001, by which point the Dreamcast console had been officially discontinued. Despite the game being finished, publisher Sierra On-Line, pulled the plug on the Dreamcast version a few weeks before release due to "changing market conditions". By this point it was the middle of June 2001 - Blue Shift had been released as a PC expansion pack (alongside the "High Definition Pack", upgrading all the in-game models), and much of the re-worked assets were being used in an upcoming PlayStation 2 version of the game, which launched in November 2001.

Half-Life was not the only Dreamacst game to be delayed into 2001, only to then be cancelled, but it was the most high profile case, having received extensive magazine coverage through the latter half of 2000. Not only had the game been reviewed highly by publications on both sides of the Atlantic, retailers had been equipped with promotional material and display stands - everything except the game itself. Even the game's official strategy guide, published by Prima Games made it to market - there was no game to accompany it, but the publication still went on sale.

Magazine articles

Sega Retro Average
Publication Score Source

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Based on 0 review

Sega Retro Average
Publication Version Score Computer & Video Games (UK) 100 Dreamcast Monthly (UK) PAL 90 DC-UK (UK) 90 Dreamcast Magazine (UK) PAL 81 GamePro (US) NTSC-U 98 SuperGamePower (BR) 98

	93
Based on 6 reviews

Half-Life

Main article: Half-Life/Magazine articles.

Promotional material

Main article: Half-Life/Promotional material.

Technical information

Main article: Half-Life/Technical information.

Artwork

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ROM dump status

System	Hash	Size	Build Date	Source	Comments
?	CRC32 MD5 SHA-1		2001-05-11	GD-ROM	V0.900			Page

External links

• Half-Life for the Dreamcast officially cancelled article by Shane Satterfield at GameSpot (Wayback Machine)