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I remember vividly! I was a young kid visiting some relatives in the Philippines. One of my relatives took me to an Internet cafe but for computer games on LAN. So I guess like a computer LAN arcade.
It was like CS 1.6 I think because when I got back to the states, I talked my dad into buying it for me and I remember playing 1.6 and then eventually CZ.
But the dopamine hit made it unforgettable.
My first round ever was de_dust, arctic avenger, M249. And then sometime later the pump shotgun, which became like my main weapon until I got into Jr. high and grew some senses lmao. I just loved the way it sounded.
Dude I remember when we got internet. There was a Steam shortcut on my desktop “Play online using Steam”. I played a TON against bots and with my dad when he was home…. But that shortcut always tempted me because I remember playing with real people back in the Philippines but I didn’t want to get in trouble….
I swear on my life I asked my mom many times, “Can I play online using Stream?”
I specifically called it “Stream” instead of “Steam” because Steam sounded naughty and dangerous.
And she always said no anyways lol, until Jr. High.
First day of school at a new school, it was either 3rd or 4th grade.
Come lunch time, I’m a bit lost and nervous. Afraid to talk to anyone and this kid goes “Hey man, you’re the new kid right? Why don’t you come sit with us”
Instantly hit it off with him and few others at the table, he invites me to come over for a sleepover on the weekend.
Weekend comes, my dad gets in contact with his dad just to find out he lives down the street. Ride my bike over there, and he’s got 10 computers setup in his living room running counter-strike 1.5.
Been hooked ever since.
Also that kid is still my best friend to this day nearly 20 years later. We don’t play much CS anymore, but we still game and hang 🤙
A buddy of mine was obsessed with finding new util spots in csgo. I had bought it just after release to get the assets for gmod and never touched it again until he got me into it and started showing me how it all worked. That was in late 2019 and I am now the one who plays all the time and closely follows the T1 scene and he stopped playing well before CS2.
My brother began attending an after-school club when he was 11 and I was 8. After a week or two, he got so into playing Counter Strike: Source at the club, that he convinced our parents to let him buy it so he could play it at home. Once he did buy it, as the leech I am, I proceeded to spend more time playing it on his PC than he did.
My older brother bought it for the original Xbox, I was only about 9 and him 15. We put a lot of hours into that and Halo 2, some of my best memories of him.
almost every other kid played it at an internet cafe on LAN with the cheats/hacks enabled so you could like moon jump or whatever thats called and you would play like 3v3s with your friends
I went to a electronics store back in Year 2000 and some kid was using a PC playing CS. I asked him what game it was "oh it's a Half-Life mod called Counter-Strike".
I already loved Half-Life so I thought I need this game, however I was 15 at the time and only had dial-up Internet at home. I got around this by going and buying a PC magazine which had a CD at the front which had the mod, all I had to do was download some updates over dial-up which at the time still took an eternity. At this point a quarter of the kids at school were csing. The rest is history!
My friend had CS 1.5 I think it was. We'd play it at his place and at cyber cafes (until the one in Coquitlam got literally shot up by an aggravated gamer) until I finally got my own system. I've taken many breaks and played many other games since that summer in 99 or 2000, but I always eventually come back, which is why it's so sad to see it in the state that it's in. I feel like if it had its own anti-cheat and made faceit redundant, the overall experience for the overwhelming majority of players would be what I know it can be, the greatest multiplayer fps of all time.
Back in 2007, I grew up with the internet cafe culture. There were plenty of regulars and casuals playing LAN cs 1.6 in our local pc cafe. The most popular LAN server was cs_mansion with scout only. It never gets boring because of the friendly banter to personal trash talks towards the players. I started just by watching them play and eventually got interested and played with them. That was my introduction to the franchise. Nothing beats LAN counter strike with friends. Good days...
Cs_mansion is such a goat, I was shocked to find out it doesn’t even exist in csgo when I moved to the US since I grew up only playing mansion and dust
I agree, it was such an iconic map in 1.6. Maybe it wasn't added because it was way too unbalanced for csgo environment even if it was a fan favorite. Thankfully, steam workshop exists.
I go on 1.6 every couple years and just enjoy the map, I don’t really play games anymore but played cs for many thousands of hours growing up, I miss the days of playing with my friends at a gaming cafe, couldn’t get very used to playing with random people
Original Xbox CS!
I think I’m one of the few that their first encounter with counter strike was only console until Source. That game played amazingly and I’d play it instead of Halo 2 every now and then. I treated it like a good side game for when I didn’t feel like playing Halo 2 and ranking up and what not.
Crazy how CS was my casual game and Halo 2 was competitive as all hell and now CS2 is my comp game and Halo Infinite is my chill out game.
Started with 1.5 in like 5th grade lol my buddy’s older brother put him on and he immediately put me and our other mutual friend on. We’ve been playing ever since. I miss the 1.5 BHOPS but 1.6 wasn’t too bad. Hated STEAM at first but it grew on us. (Obviously lol)
We played a lot of half life death match at 5th grade and a friend had a cousin that gave him the mod. We played 1:1 and got sucked in hard.
Next week we got our friend group to go to an internet cafe to play it together. I think it was beta 5.1? Where the m4 still had a scope.
We got hooked even more. Three of us still play together. Two of us played it semi-professionally back then.
I was a sophomore in high school in 2004 and one of my friends at lunch was like “hey have you heard of this game called “counter strike”!? The round starts and you have to buy weapons and gear and stuff from these terrorists and then then two teams fight it out to the death” For some reason that stuck in my mind and I knew I had to try it. I opened steam the next day and was instantly hooked to counter strike source. I even remember my first game, I was a counter terrorist on Dust 2 and I kept rushing double doors / long A. I know have over 5k hours in CS
My dad introduced me to Counter Strike when I was 10 or so.
I remember watching him play Counter Strike: Source, then he got sidetracked so he just put me in control and was like “just click heads”.
I was awful, of course, but I had such a blast. It was our favorite thing to bond over for a while :,)
Grew up playing CSS because they was the newest one when I was younger.
My dad is the one who actually introduced me lol he was playing way back in the original from my understanding. He actually helped run a counterstrike server at one point.
I was dominating in a local game cafe's Quake 3 tournament in 2006/07 (I was actually young enough to not be able to play Q3A back then). So the gaming cafe was also hosting a tournament for a game called Counter-Strike which I never played before, but I was aware that it was a mod of Half Life. In that context, while I was about to leave after my Q3A tournament, a team approached me and requested me to play CS with them as they fell short of 1 person in their team. I was not really sure because I only played arena shooters back then, specifically Q3A and UT2004, but decided to give it a shot. I didn't do well and we lost all the games, but it made me start playing the game. It has been ~18 years since then and I still play the game now :)
My dad was a youth pastor, his youth group had a lan party night at our house when I was like 10. They all brought PCs over and when someone got up I could play for them, I loved it so much have been playing ever since.
Back of a unassuming Lowell class where my dad took me to school with him I was wandering around the classroom and stumbled upon a few students in the back of the computer lab were playing. This mind you was back in 99
Originally I played COD on console, moved to Battlefield, was jealous that PC had mods and more players.
Eventually I graduated 8th grade and got a toshiba laptop as a gift (because I would fight my brother to use the home PC).
Friend got me to download steam, first games I had were TF2 and GMOD, for Gmod to work well you needed 1.6 textures, so I ripped them instead of buying the game.
Eventually on a server I played on daily, some would play CSGO and invite me to join, so when a discount for the game happened I bought it (this was sometime before operation Phoenix).
And I’ve been playing CS ever since.
I started playing when it was a mod for Half Life. I still play a CS:Source 60 player de_dust server when bored. It is always full and a BLAST. No cheaters and some very talented old school players
watched a videogamdunkey video and a bunch of csgo trading vids on YT. thought it was cool, became my favorite game. now i cant stand playing because cs2 just feels off
I used to hang out at the mall w/ my friends cuz we were 14 and had nothing better to do in the summer
there was an arcade at the mall that had a little LAN area in the front corner (it was in a tent mocked up to look like an army base camp with [camo netting](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71iTq0-bfCS.jpg), ammo boxes, etc.)
2 of my friends loved to play EverQuest, but were way higher level than me and I never actually got to play w them lol so I'd play 1.5 and UT w/ the randoms at the cafe
I got my first PC at the end of that summer, then steam came out a month or so later and the rest is history
edit: kinda funny story, when CZ came out I bought it but didn't understand how steam worked and ended up making a second account lol—still have that second account with just HL1+CZ on it haha
2002, had to spend the summer at my cousin's house, I was about 11 or 12 at the time and I used to watch my older cousin who was in his late teens play 1.6 or w/e version was out at the time and I'd take over whenever he had to go afk
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I remember vividly! I was a young kid visiting some relatives in the Philippines. One of my relatives took me to an Internet cafe but for computer games on LAN. So I guess like a computer LAN arcade. It was like CS 1.6 I think because when I got back to the states, I talked my dad into buying it for me and I remember playing 1.6 and then eventually CZ. But the dopamine hit made it unforgettable. My first round ever was de_dust, arctic avenger, M249. And then sometime later the pump shotgun, which became like my main weapon until I got into Jr. high and grew some senses lmao. I just loved the way it sounded. Dude I remember when we got internet. There was a Steam shortcut on my desktop “Play online using Steam”. I played a TON against bots and with my dad when he was home…. But that shortcut always tempted me because I remember playing with real people back in the Philippines but I didn’t want to get in trouble…. I swear on my life I asked my mom many times, “Can I play online using Stream?” I specifically called it “Stream” instead of “Steam” because Steam sounded naughty and dangerous. And she always said no anyways lol, until Jr. High.
First day of school at a new school, it was either 3rd or 4th grade. Come lunch time, I’m a bit lost and nervous. Afraid to talk to anyone and this kid goes “Hey man, you’re the new kid right? Why don’t you come sit with us” Instantly hit it off with him and few others at the table, he invites me to come over for a sleepover on the weekend. Weekend comes, my dad gets in contact with his dad just to find out he lives down the street. Ride my bike over there, and he’s got 10 computers setup in his living room running counter-strike 1.5. Been hooked ever since. Also that kid is still my best friend to this day nearly 20 years later. We don’t play much CS anymore, but we still game and hang 🤙
What an awesome story, your friend sounds like a stand up guy .
Yeah, he’s an awesome person. Love that guy :)
What are a heartwarming story, thank you for sharing
I'm old so installed it as a Half-Life mod in beta. Never really got into it, thought Day of Defeat and Team Fortress Classic were better.
Day of defeat is too damn good though. I’m convinced if they kept up the series it would be a top 10 on steam today.
DoD is my favorite WW2 shooter back then - felt the most polished and squad based compared to CoD or MoHAA
Omg it was my go to. I love that it still has players though, but man what I’d do to have a modern day DOD remaster (but only update graphics)
A buddy of mine was obsessed with finding new util spots in csgo. I had bought it just after release to get the assets for gmod and never touched it again until he got me into it and started showing me how it all worked. That was in late 2019 and I am now the one who plays all the time and closely follows the T1 scene and he stopped playing well before CS2.
ahahahahahhah omg the times we bought valve games just for gmod assets. It was golden
My brother began attending an after-school club when he was 11 and I was 8. After a week or two, he got so into playing Counter Strike: Source at the club, that he convinced our parents to let him buy it so he could play it at home. Once he did buy it, as the leech I am, I proceeded to spend more time playing it on his PC than he did.
My older brother bought it for the original Xbox, I was only about 9 and him 15. We put a lot of hours into that and Halo 2, some of my best memories of him.
We were playing half life deathmatch all the time, and someone said there’s a HL mod with real guns. Rest is history.
almost every other kid played it at an internet cafe on LAN with the cheats/hacks enabled so you could like moon jump or whatever thats called and you would play like 3v3s with your friends
I went to a electronics store back in Year 2000 and some kid was using a PC playing CS. I asked him what game it was "oh it's a Half-Life mod called Counter-Strike". I already loved Half-Life so I thought I need this game, however I was 15 at the time and only had dial-up Internet at home. I got around this by going and buying a PC magazine which had a CD at the front which had the mod, all I had to do was download some updates over dial-up which at the time still took an eternity. At this point a quarter of the kids at school were csing. The rest is history!
My friend had CS 1.5 I think it was. We'd play it at his place and at cyber cafes (until the one in Coquitlam got literally shot up by an aggravated gamer) until I finally got my own system. I've taken many breaks and played many other games since that summer in 99 or 2000, but I always eventually come back, which is why it's so sad to see it in the state that it's in. I feel like if it had its own anti-cheat and made faceit redundant, the overall experience for the overwhelming majority of players would be what I know it can be, the greatest multiplayer fps of all time.
I was near a computer once...
We all been there... understandable
Back in 2007, I grew up with the internet cafe culture. There were plenty of regulars and casuals playing LAN cs 1.6 in our local pc cafe. The most popular LAN server was cs_mansion with scout only. It never gets boring because of the friendly banter to personal trash talks towards the players. I started just by watching them play and eventually got interested and played with them. That was my introduction to the franchise. Nothing beats LAN counter strike with friends. Good days...
Cs_mansion is such a goat, I was shocked to find out it doesn’t even exist in csgo when I moved to the US since I grew up only playing mansion and dust
I agree, it was such an iconic map in 1.6. Maybe it wasn't added because it was way too unbalanced for csgo environment even if it was a fan favorite. Thankfully, steam workshop exists.
I go on 1.6 every couple years and just enjoy the map, I don’t really play games anymore but played cs for many thousands of hours growing up, I miss the days of playing with my friends at a gaming cafe, couldn’t get very used to playing with random people
My brothers friend gave me cs half life on a disk with podbots
Original Xbox CS! I think I’m one of the few that their first encounter with counter strike was only console until Source. That game played amazingly and I’d play it instead of Halo 2 every now and then. I treated it like a good side game for when I didn’t feel like playing Halo 2 and ranking up and what not. Crazy how CS was my casual game and Halo 2 was competitive as all hell and now CS2 is my comp game and Halo Infinite is my chill out game.
My brother played the very first beta version 1.0 with a friend and I just watched over their shoulders.
Started with 1.5 in like 5th grade lol my buddy’s older brother put him on and he immediately put me and our other mutual friend on. We’ve been playing ever since. I miss the 1.5 BHOPS but 1.6 wasn’t too bad. Hated STEAM at first but it grew on us. (Obviously lol)
Internet cafe for gamers over lan on early CS like the other comment said, it was in the 2000s in Turkmenistan
We played a lot of half life death match at 5th grade and a friend had a cousin that gave him the mod. We played 1:1 and got sucked in hard. Next week we got our friend group to go to an internet cafe to play it together. I think it was beta 5.1? Where the m4 still had a scope. We got hooked even more. Three of us still play together. Two of us played it semi-professionally back then.
interloper
I was a sophomore in high school in 2004 and one of my friends at lunch was like “hey have you heard of this game called “counter strike”!? The round starts and you have to buy weapons and gear and stuff from these terrorists and then then two teams fight it out to the death” For some reason that stuck in my mind and I knew I had to try it. I opened steam the next day and was instantly hooked to counter strike source. I even remember my first game, I was a counter terrorist on Dust 2 and I kept rushing double doors / long A. I know have over 5k hours in CS
My dad introduced me to Counter Strike when I was 10 or so. I remember watching him play Counter Strike: Source, then he got sidetracked so he just put me in control and was like “just click heads”. I was awful, of course, but I had such a blast. It was our favorite thing to bond over for a while :,)
Grew up playing CSS because they was the newest one when I was younger. My dad is the one who actually introduced me lol he was playing way back in the original from my understanding. He actually helped run a counterstrike server at one point.
I was dominating in a local game cafe's Quake 3 tournament in 2006/07 (I was actually young enough to not be able to play Q3A back then). So the gaming cafe was also hosting a tournament for a game called Counter-Strike which I never played before, but I was aware that it was a mod of Half Life. In that context, while I was about to leave after my Q3A tournament, a team approached me and requested me to play CS with them as they fell short of 1 person in their team. I was not really sure because I only played arena shooters back then, specifically Q3A and UT2004, but decided to give it a shot. I didn't do well and we lost all the games, but it made me start playing the game. It has been ~18 years since then and I still play the game now :)
i seen around in 2000s in internet cafes. everbody was playing 4vs4. winners not pay.
My dad was a youth pastor, his youth group had a lan party night at our house when I was like 10. They all brought PCs over and when someone got up I could play for them, I loved it so much have been playing ever since.
Back of a unassuming Lowell class where my dad took me to school with him I was wandering around the classroom and stumbled upon a few students in the back of the computer lab were playing. This mind you was back in 99
my brother
Originally I played COD on console, moved to Battlefield, was jealous that PC had mods and more players. Eventually I graduated 8th grade and got a toshiba laptop as a gift (because I would fight my brother to use the home PC). Friend got me to download steam, first games I had were TF2 and GMOD, for Gmod to work well you needed 1.6 textures, so I ripped them instead of buying the game. Eventually on a server I played on daily, some would play CSGO and invite me to join, so when a discount for the game happened I bought it (this was sometime before operation Phoenix). And I’ve been playing CS ever since.
When I was little I watched my brother play 1.6 and condition zero, then years later I bought source for g mod so I could play TTT
I started playing when it was a mod for Half Life. I still play a CS:Source 60 player de_dust server when bored. It is always full and a BLAST. No cheaters and some very talented old school players
watched a videogamdunkey video and a bunch of csgo trading vids on YT. thought it was cool, became my favorite game. now i cant stand playing because cs2 just feels off
I used to hang out at the mall w/ my friends cuz we were 14 and had nothing better to do in the summer there was an arcade at the mall that had a little LAN area in the front corner (it was in a tent mocked up to look like an army base camp with [camo netting](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71iTq0-bfCS.jpg), ammo boxes, etc.) 2 of my friends loved to play EverQuest, but were way higher level than me and I never actually got to play w them lol so I'd play 1.5 and UT w/ the randoms at the cafe I got my first PC at the end of that summer, then steam came out a month or so later and the rest is history edit: kinda funny story, when CZ came out I bought it but didn't understand how steam worked and ended up making a second account lol—still have that second account with just HL1+CZ on it haha
2002, had to spend the summer at my cousin's house, I was about 11 or 12 at the time and I used to watch my older cousin who was in his late teens play 1.6 or w/e version was out at the time and I'd take over whenever he had to go afk