Origin of Counter-Strike: Navy SEALs Quake 1

Part of History of 1990s Computer Games.

Navy SEALs: Origin of Counter-Strike

Developed by Gooseman in 1997, Navy SEALs is a historically significant Quake mod that would eventually evolve into Counter-Strike for Half-Life. Thus, Navy SEALs is the origin of Counter-Strike.

In Navy SEALs the player assumes the role of a SEAL conducting a few special ops objective-based missions.

For example, in Destroyer Assault the SEAL must sabotage the navigation computer, disarm two bombs and shut down the Destroyer's engine. Note that Quake levels were not objective-based; that was introduced in Quake 2.

Gunplay in Navy SEALs is solid. Each of Quake's weapons has been replaced with special-ops variants that have switchable firing modes, and each weapon is custom-modeled with authentic firing and reloading animations.

Navy SEALs also introduces infra-red sights, crouching, grenade-throwing and scope-sniping to the Quake engine as well as enemy strafing, rolling, dodging and pistol-whipping.

The arsenal of the Navy Seals special ops division includes the Heckler & Koch Mk. 23, Mossberg 590 tactical shotgun, Heckler & Koch MP5 Submachine gun, Colt M-16 Assault Rifle and Barrett sniper rifle.

Insta-kill headshots blow heads clean off, and limbs can be shot off as well.

Level design is as vertical as it is sprawling, emphasizing multi-angle FPS gameplay and demolitions. Naturally, key targets such as the Destroyer and the Fighter Aircraft are guarded by elite soldiers holed up in advantageous positions. The SEAL needs to take out or avoid 60-70 hostiles per level in pursuance of mission objectives.

In the right-hand image of my header screencap, the SEAL started off in a mini SEAL sub (a submersible), swam underwater to the pier, and emerged from the water to pop two hostiles guarding the shoreline.

As with Quake and Doom, Navy SEALs emphasizes raw FPS skills and tactics; it isn't a modern cover-shooter that empowers inferior players, it challenges players to get good.

Of course, so much more could have been done to expand the Navy SEALs mod for Quake: the subsequent Counter-Strike featured hostage rescue missions, an equipment purchasing interface, and so on, but Navy SEALs still offers a lot of gameplay for a Quake mod.

FPS engineering and computer hardware engineering were exploding in the mid-to-late 90s. It was the time of the Pentium, of Windows and of hardware acceleration: big events on their own, let alone when taken together.

Quake came out in 1996 -- the perfect time to release such a game. Then Quake 2 in 1997 and Half-Life in 1998. And then Counter-Strike and Deus Ex would follow in 2000.

Navy SEALs was part of that lightning-fast evolution: an innovative, technically proficient military mod that is still playable in 2024.

Credits: Gooseman; Smilodon is credited with Navy Start, Destroyer Assault and Aircraft Demolition maps; Zakalwe with the Breakout map and Oeland with GLQuake compatability implementation.

Navy SEALs sQuad bots was coded by William for the Navy SEALs mod assets, but only for the Slipgate Complex map (E1M1). An in-game menu can be called up in order to configure player items as well as bot squad composition, aiming precision, respawns and direction of infiltration etc.

cf. Doom 1 Review --- Quake 1 Review --- Half-Life 1 Review.

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