Orange Box includes single by geek troubadour Jonathan Coulton

38 Comments by Christopher Grant Oct 4th 2007 6:56PM
Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

As if the inclusion of Half-Life 2, HL2: Episode One, HL2: Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 in Valve's Orange Box didn't already represent one of the most incredible values in video games ever, they've just announced geek troubadour Jonathan Coulton (he of "Baby Got Back" and "Code Monkey" fame – WARNING: MySpace link) has recorded a "surprise" track to be included in that massive package.

But Coulton didn't go it alone. No, he had the help of the Valve design team (who are apparently fans, go figure) so we can surely expect something about Zombines eating your brains. At this point, with less than a week to go before the game's (games'? gameses'?) release, we're surprised the track hasn't already made its way to the seedy, illicit , peer-to-peer underbelly of the internet. Hey record industry, you should take notes!

Tags: HalfLife2, Jonathan-Coulton, OrangeBox, Valve

(Page 1) Reader Comments

YourSlay3r: Oct 4th 2007; 6:59PM

Luckily for us 360 owners we have background music.

Mr. P: Oct 4th 2007; 7:14PM

In before flame war.

Poisoned Al: Oct 4th 2007; 8:17PM

Lucky for us PC owners that we're already playing TF2 now and don't care.

Neebs: Nov 9th 2007; 3:28PM

Luckily for us PC users we'll be playing our music in our lightweight Winamp player with no slowdown.

WhatIsThatThing: Oct 4th 2007; 7:07PM

BEST. NEWS. EVER. Too bad I only wanted Portal. Oh well.

Word of the street(IDF-Digital Ruler).: Oct 4th 2007; 7:16PM

Who the panchitas is that guy?

Paul: Oct 4th 2007; 7:39PM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2lLRBiEBRAc

Code Monkey love Tab and Mountain Dew!

Word of the street(IDF-Digital Ruler).: Oct 4th 2007; 7:47PM

Great but the guy from the video disturbs me,please tell he isn't that guy.

Arturo: Oct 4th 2007; 7:48PM

wtf, ghey

Christopher Grant: Oct 4th 2007; 8:02PM

Uh, that's a lady. See her note here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6dvi_uWFw9M

blooh (CDF - Ass Ring): Oct 4th 2007; 8:06PM

ugh, i paused jimi hendrix to listen to THAT? bleh, i closed the window 5 secs into the song

screw the oj box, i'm waitin to get portal individually whenever it goes down to 10 bux

Word of the street(IDF-Digital Ruler).: Oct 4th 2007; 8:16PM

Still disturbing but now a little bit less but it was necessary to link me to that video? ,I mean believe you if you told me “check her profile is a girl”.

I have been in the internet for a while now so I get extremely suspicious with everything; thank the people from 4chan and Gamepro for that. (Weird but not the people from something awful)

blooh (CDF - Ass Ring): Oct 4th 2007; 8:18PM

goons are tite

Elad: Oct 4th 2007; 7:39PM

he is a badass that makes badass music

Mr Khan: Oct 4th 2007; 7:46PM

Even if i actively hated TF2 and Half-Life 2, i would still want Orange Box for Portal

That game just looks neat, for want of a better word

Poisoned Al: Oct 4th 2007; 8:20PM

Well if you hate HL2 you should bugger off and play Peggle until you die. :D

Einhanderkiller: Oct 4th 2007; 7:46PM

http://oxihosting.com/files/100/01_vortal_combat.rar

The song is awesome.

DangerMouse: Oct 4th 2007; 8:06PM

Can i have a refund please?

Macroy: Oct 4th 2007; 8:14PM

Jonathan Coulton is awesome.

Dan Bugglin: Oct 4th 2007; 8:14PM

I wonder how Steam users will access this. Either it gets added to "My Media" which would be sorta lame for just a single song having a whole entry in Steam... or it's the title or credit music for HL2EP2 or Portal, and we'd get the mp3 by extracting it from the GCF.

Taco_Hell: Oct 4th 2007; 8:17PM

I'm still kind of angry that they took the Black Box away, and that if you just want Portal, Episode 2, and Team Fortress, you have to pay 20 bucks for each in Steam. Man, this month is just sucking my money away. Anyhow, since he got helped from the guys from Valve, I'm sure the music isn't that bad...I hope.

adg1034: Oct 4th 2007; 8:35PM

...or you pay $45 for all 3, plus copies of HL2 and Episode 1 that you can give to your friends. I'm not seeing what the big deal is. Valve had even said that the Black Box would be $40, and you're complaining about $5 for two other great games.

Taco_Hell: Oct 4th 2007; 9:35PM

The thing is, all of my friends who have PCs able to run Half-Life 2, already have it. Also, when did Valve say the Black Box was going to be 40 bucks? If memory serves, which usually these days it doesn't, they didn't put a price before canning it.

Word of the street(IDF-Digital Ruler).: Oct 4th 2007; 8:24PM

Interesting fact: The orange box has 99 achievements, yep that’s a lot of achievements all right. Orange box is officially the game with the most achievements but sadly enough is not the game with most achievement points, that’s right enjoy busting you a$$ playing Half-life 2 again for 5 miserable achievement points.

One would think each game would have 10 achievements for a healthy total of 50 or in the case of 99 achievements more than 1000 points let’s say at least 1,800 points but oh well.

I think I will just play the 3 main games seriously I don’t feel like playing HL2 or episode 1 again not even for 5 points.

blooh (CDF - Ass Ring): Oct 4th 2007; 8:35PM

who gives a fuck about achievements? you don't get anything for doin em

Word of the street(IDF-Digital Ruler).: Oct 4th 2007; 8:42PM

True but you get an immense sensation of self-satisfaction afterwards, yeah I don’t get it either.

Ska Oreo: Oct 4th 2007; 8:42PM

except bragging rights. Which is fucking awesome. Plus it's all about competition my friend. Having more points than your friend, or everyone else who has a god damn 360 feels pretty fucking good.

blooh (CDF - Ass Ring): Oct 4th 2007; 8:47PM

i guess some people care about that

i sure don't

they can sometimes be nice challenges to try in addition to playing a normal game, but i don't care that much

Word of the street(IDF-Digital Ruler).: Oct 4th 2007; 8:53PM

Bragging rights?,I just did it because it freaking great to see my gamerscore OVER NINE THOUSAND.

I'm stuck in 6,000 but after getting the all the Halo 3,Forza 2 and Oblivion points I get somewhere between 9,500 and 10,000.Odd but so far I'm the only player that has almost every achievement in Dead rising except for the last 2,I wish I had 16 free hours to get those last achievements.Hell not even the l333t players in Gears of war have those achievements.

Word of the street(IDF-Digital Ruler).: Oct 4th 2007; 8:56PM

Actually achievements can enhance a game more than you think, not only as a challenge but they can make you do a lot of crazy stuff or simply play the game on a different way for example trying to answer all the Otis calls or rescue all the 50 survivors of Dead rising.

blooh (CDF - Ass Ring): Oct 4th 2007; 9:11PM

you don't need achievements to get incentive to rescue all 50 survivors, you could do it just for the challenge. I never even tried that one though, it sounded soooooo annoyying. They'd have to give me some super-weapon or something in-game as a reward for that

Word of the street(IDF-Digital Ruler).: Oct 4th 2007; 10:00PM

Actually it does give you something; achievements in Dead Rising always give you something in exchange.

For example the RMB,Fuck yeah!

Also trying to get 50 survivors is one hell of a task but try to get 8 of them at the same time, yeah if it wasn't for the last 2 achievements (5 and 7 day survivor)I would pwn Dead Rising already. Dead Rising is a great example of how achievements work since they give you an incentive to continue no matter how hard the task looks,actually The Otis walkthrough is the hardest of them all and it has a sad ending but all the achievements in Dead Rising show you how much fun you can have with 1 game by just changing your goal.

vinny: Oct 5th 2007; 9:23AM

crackdown still had my favorite achievements ever so far, man that game was good

NvM: Oct 4th 2007; 9:22PM

This is now Day 1 for me.

gigatwo: Oct 4th 2007; 10:34PM

JoCo is my favorite songwriter. First of May is an amazing song, kind of nsfw though.

Donald: Oct 5th 2007; 10:51AM

Good to see someone else appreciates a song about outdoor ****ing.

Blazur: Oct 5th 2007; 9:29AM

No idea who that guy is, but if he supports Orange Box I support him. Oct 10th can't come any sooner...

Michael: Oct 5th 2007; 8:49PM

Damn. I'm not paying $40 for Portal. I was happy to pay $20 for it, but I neither want nor care about the rest. :(

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