Play Counter Strike 1.6, with full multiplayer, in the browser

Met what ended up being a great friend in real life somewhere in some random IRC room looking for a 5th member to join my friend's group

He had a special CRT monitor to get the best refresh rate to be as competitive as possible for the game

Feels like a lifetime ago

I was always amused by how many of my friends got crazy monitors but still just used headphones. Surround sound for 1.6 made the game incredibly unfair. Being able to hear specifically in what direction and volume footsteps were coming from was basically a wallhack. I would often use headphones because parents weren't the biggest fans of hours of that a night, and it was so crippling.

Funny enough, my semi-pro career (I made $60 total) ended when I abandoned my surround sound when moving out in undergrad.

You already get 99% of that "wallhack" by having stereo headphones. The game is mostly flat.

For casual level play it’s indeed fine. But the “flatness” of a level doesn’t really mean much. You want to know which specific part of a nearby room someone is in. To the left… in front? Behind? Are they going through the hallway or cellar in cs_italy?

Like any game, you get huge value out of slight advantages when you get to the more high level skill.