An “extremely early” Left 4 Dead prototype is now available to play thanks to Counter-Strike’s 1.6 update.
According to content creator Gabe Follower, the prototype – called Terror Strike – was “accidentally compiled” and added to the Counter-Strike update, showing how the zombie game’s DNA lies firmly in the mod for Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and was developed using CS assets, including Counter-Strike weapons.
The files were quickly pulled from the 22nd November update, but not quickly enough to stop them being yoinked and then distributed publicly.
You can see it in action in the video embedded above, or via Gabe Follower’s tweet below.
“What you see is gameplay of Left 4 Dead back when it was a simple project using Counter-Strike: Condition Zero,” explains YouTuber ilovethevopo (thanks, PC Gamer).
Valve accidentally compiled and pushed earliest Left 4 Dead prototype called “Terror Strike” into the latest CS 1.6 update and community figured out how to play it. pic.twitter.com/llVkYCip69
— Gabe Follower (@gabefollower) November 23, 2023
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“Yes, this is older than zombie_city and the leaked L4D footage that was re-discovered a few weeks ago, both of which were based on Counter-Strike: Source. Zombie_city was originally built for CZ and ported to CSS, but we never got any actual content from the CZ era of L4D until now.