Recognizable titles did that, sure, but you could grab a used copy for less than half of that, and I recall buying plenty of games for under $24 new. Counter S

Recognizable titles did that, sure, but you could grab a used copy for less than half of that, and I recall buying plenty of games for under $24 new. Counter Strike for me counts as a childhood game, though. I was early teens when it came out and I played it on the order of thousands of hours. It was developed by a relatively small player, Sierra, who also had some other awesome games I enjoyed prior to that, and the game was initially awesome. I enjoyed everything up to and including 1.3, and even dabbled in competitive play. I've played every version of CS since and nothing is even comparable to versions 1.3 and below. I guess all good things must come to an end, and while I really hoped to see the efforts behind cs promod take off, nobody really advertised it (it was a re-packaged v1.3 when 1.6 and later source were basically killing the competitive scene).