Manhack Arcade

The Manhack Arcade is a City 17 area cut from Half-Life 2 that was to be visited in the first chapters of the game. It was to be located in a business/entertainment area, between the Trainstation Plaza and Kleiner's Lab.

Overview
In this entertainment place, the player was to see Citizens playing a video game wherein they controlled Manhacks as they flew into the streets and killed fugitive Citizens for points, ignorant of the fact that the Manhacks they were controlling were real, and that people were actually dying.

There Gordon was to meet with Barney, who would tell him to head to the radio tower building, the starting point of the sewers leading to Kleiner's Lab (in the map " ").

Versions

 * The earliest map dates go back to 2001. It seems that the concept was dropped around December 2002.
 * In the maps of the inside, the arcade game is only shown at a prototype stage and does not work. Like in most of the leaked maps, the Citizens are all Citizen Male 01, group 2. Since the NPCs do not have any special properties, they by default are distracted by the player and tend to follow him while they should be concentrated on the game or the queue and mostly ignoring the player.

First version
The first version started as a blocky and empty building, located in map " " (last edited December 2002), which cannot be entered. At the end of the street can be seen the Citadel inner wall, stationed Metrocops and APCs. This map was also used for Captain Vance's headquarters, in the map "VanceHQ".

In a more recent map, " " (last edited September 2002), the building facade is remade in displacements and it can be entered. In it can be seen classic arcade machines from Earth, spread on two levels, and a counter where belongings that will be stored in a locker room can be given to a Citizen. The player was to head upstairs, where Barney was to be found. He was then to tell Gordon to leave the building through a storage room where chairs and other machines can be found and head in the direction of the radio tower. This version of the path between the Arcade and the radio tower was likely to be located in a map possibly named " ", but is missing from the mappack.

Second version
The second version shows drastic changes; the building facade and inside have been remade from scratch. As seen in " ", " " is split, heavily enlarged and now features a Breencast device, a Metropolice station and an expanded area leading to another Manhack Arcade building. A plaza with a column is added, column that will be reused in the latest version of " ". It will be doubled and its top will be replaced by a horse statue, finally to appear at the end of the Half-Life 2 chapter Anticitizicen One. The inside building can be seen in " " (last edited December 2002) and " " (last edited January 2002). In " ", the most complete map, Gordon was to go down escalators, follow a corridor and see a small room where Citizens are queuing to play. The corridor going further, he was to meet with Barney in a maintenance area. As in the previous version, Barney was to tell him to proceed through the sewers starting under the radio tower located nearby. " " is a smaller version which only features the arcade room cited before and another, bigger one, with several levels and a lift. This bigger room is the one featured as concept art in Raising the Bar.

Third version
This third version was to feature the same inside elements as the previous one, only with a different facade. One version can be found in " " (last edited December 2002), and its facade, decorated with a star, seems to be based on Macy's facade in Seattle, building also seen in concept art for the Citadel.

Another version, probably the most recent, can be found in " " (last edited December 2002). Its position is different to the previous version featured in " " and the facade can be seen from the column plaza. It does not feature a star anymore.

Although this version seems to be the third mapped version, it is likely the first version to have been designed.

Fate
Although the concept sounded good on paper, it was considered not actually very fun by the team and was therefore cut.

Trivia
In the film Toys, a similar idea shows teenagers unknowingly controlling, in a vast arcade, remote-controlled military robots that actually kill in real-life.

List of appearances

 * Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar