Half-Life 2 Collector's Edition

The Orange Box gets all the glory, but the real ones remember what came first. The Half-Life 2 Collector's Edition on PC bundled Valve's genre-redefining shooter with Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life: Source, a Prima strategy guide, and an XL t-shirt. Simple, direct, and tied to one of the most important games ever made.

Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life: Source were meaningful inclusions at launch, giving buyers immediate access to the Source engine's reimagining of two foundational titles. The Prima strategy guide is a nice artifact from the era when printed walkthroughs were still standard practice. And the t-shirt, well, it's a t-shirt. But it's a Half-Life 2 t-shirt from 2004, and that carries its own kind of weight.

This collector's edition didn't try to overwhelm you with figurines or art books. It leaned on the strength of the games themselves. For Valve collectors, this is an essential box. Half-Life 2 changed everything, and this is the version that said so on the packaging.