How Valve released five of its greatest games in a single day

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The year is 2007. Console owners tap their fingers in barely contained impatience. For years they have been starved of Valve's delicious, full-bodied courses, forced to watch from the bleachers as Valve mixes a unique blend of kinetic first-person with extraordinary tech. Besides a brief dalliance with the original Xbox and the PlayStation 2 - which produce pale imitations of its best work - Valve has remained faithful to the PC.
And then, in a flash, five of them arrive at once; neatly packaged morsels for a new generation reared on Microsoft's sophomore console. Five games, all in one orange box. Valve serves the PC too, for it is October 18 - a day of celebration - and everyone should feast. The Orange Box is out in Europe.
"It would be awesome to say we planned The Orange Box all along," Doug Lombardi tells me, "but it was really more of a creative solution to having three really different products ship at the same time." By 2007, Valve was working on Half-Life 2: Episode 2, the continuation of Gordon's saga, Team Fortress 2, a multiplayer shooter and Portal, a complete unknown.
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