What a based youtuber, creating and editing a 2 hour video for a small audience and close to no financial incentive at all. I hope you get lucky and the algorithm boosts this to a million views.

I have a fond memory on the NeonHeights Trade map. At the time (around 2015...?), the server admin was likely bored, then proposed a little game. He said that, the player that manages kill him, would get a random hat. Then he proceeded to give himself around 100000 hp and did nothing but throw spells at random intervals. While everyone in the server was going heavy and showering him with minigun bullets, I went with the Huntsman for some reason, but I got the kill! Earned an Level 100, appropriately named "The Lucky Shot" Soldier hat, which I started to use right away and since then. A couple years later (one or two I think), I met with the server admin again, he recognized me by my nickname and was happy to see that I kept the hat with me after so long.

Excellent narration. No tautology, no unfunny jokes, and it's well-informed. Hard to come up with any quibbles. Only wish it had more maps I don't recognize.

idle_4chan feels like the most soulless attempt at recreating the unique charm of Xenon's 2000s style I've ever seen.

This is literally a dream of mine came ture, an insightful and detailed video covering all the maps we as TF2 players been loving for years, thank you for doing God's work here!

Fun fact about maker of TF2Ware, Mecha The Slag. He went out and founded Gears for Breakfast and made his debut game The Hat in Time. He even used to own bunch of servers called SLAG gaming, that would pick random game modes with every map, dodgeball, fort building, prophunt, bomberman etc.

I'm surprised at how many of these i know, but i gotta say, as the tiers kept getting higher and i started seeing more and more maps i had never seen previously, the video just kept getting more interesting, great work

Very late because I just now saw this video, but a *lot* of the weird maps that are hard to track down their sources originated from TF2Maps annual April Fools day events. I hosted a contest for them for a few years, but they've been a tradition where mappers make the craziest stuff they can to amuse each other, often only being released in a single zip file as a pre-download for everyone, and then we would join our servers and experience them all together. I can also tell you that koth_yup originally replaced all noises with engineer lines, which likely broke since it was released and is why it's just silent now. I bet the console is spamming "file not found" errors for it. I play trainsawlaser and wubwubwub often on my home server wrapping up our weekly map tests :) Thanks for putting this together though. As someone who has played a LOT of these when they were new, and even made a few of them, it is a fun nostalgia trip.

I’m astounded that 9.6.12 map is that obscure, yet I remember playing on it once or twice when I was server hopping. The middle tan building with the conveyer belt at the time I played on the server, had people walking over and using it for their strange farming. While looking down the windowless corridor I oddly remembered walking through and peek out the window or a sniper nesting there. I even remember that Zelda temple having the three items on the pedestal, sorry i don’t play Zelda but I know the relics are placed there. It’s crazy, it reminded me when I a like a few months into tf2, before I got into trading, before I met so may of my TF2 friends I’ve added, I literally played this map on a laptop, before I got a computer. It’s obscurity made me reminisce young teenager me just playing the game for fun, it’s quite unsettling but I’ll treat as a fond memory rather a saddening glimpse of my youth.

Unmentioned is the machine_attacks series of maps, basically a narrative-driven MVM campaign that used to be so much fun to play as you truly felt like you were in a journey with a team accross lands. I remembered spending my weekend hours in these maps at its height of popularity somewhere in the early-2010s. I never understood why map makers never explored the concept again. It really had a lot of potential to boost the game's PvE component.

So many great maps that were left to rot. The ones suitable for the public eye and that can be found should be brought back for everyone to enjoy! Thanks for all of this, you madlad. Hope the video gets a ton of views in the future!

I remember this old server that isn't around anymore for some reason (sadly) that I've barely been able to find any information about. It always had a map called cp_balloonrace, and the premise was that at the beginning of the match, two airships would slowly fill up with players and take off after a short intermission. The only way to win was to get your team's airship to the end. Every few minutes the airship would stop at a checkpoint where whichever team got the capture on that stop was able to leave, and then the other team had to get it once the other left. Eventually the race would end with one team getting to the finish line. It was the highlight of early 2010 TF2 for me, and brought me some amazing memories. It was one of very few community servers I regularly played on and I'll always fondly remember the loud music that always played at the start of each game. RIP to the GOAT of all community servers );

very well thought out and executed video, glad to have experienced it early.

I wish balloon race would become more popular me and my friends have been playing it for years and would like to again.

This has become one of my fav videos about TF2 of all time. The work and dedication that went into this is incredible, I really love the music choice throughout the whole video and being it about a deep dive into obscure community maps? love it! Absolute king may the algorithm bless this channel cuz man, you deserve it

I'm the guy that made the DYNF ports for the original Jailbreak maps. Back in 2013-ish I was hosting a community called Dynamic Fortress and I made ports of most of the popular maps to fix some of their optimization issues, bugs and to open up the playable space a bit since my community at the time was complaining. I asked for permission from the original mapper Theodore and he said It's okay since I was porting the maps to use the TF2Jail plugin I made at the time.

I am genuinely surprised by the quality of this video. The amount of work in it must have been great. Really takes me back to the old times when there was a general spark in the community's heart for niche maps. Very well done!

Someone needs to make a server for all of these maps to run on so everyone can experience this history. I would love to try some of these

Dude I was wondering where were you and now you come with a 2 hour long video? Absolute king

Criminally underrated video, thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. Thanks for making it!

I started playing in 2009, and I have personally played on about 90% of the maps you've shown. It was nostalgic to see into the past like this.

I swore there would be at least one MLP map, oh man those memories. Anyway, really enjoyed the video, felt a lot nostalgic for those times. Keep up the good work!

Was psyched to see balloon race on the list! A lot of fun revisiting old favourites and learning about some new ones too. Awesome vid.

I've played Xenon's Cyberpunk map in non source games.

Quite a few of these are in rotation on The Lazy Pub on Silly Sundays, where the usual more comp leaning rotation is replaced with goofy stuff like this

I remember I was one of the first few admins for Neonheight's servers. Seeing that title pop up again was a BLAST from the past! Neon's a good guy and it was awesome seeing the server really just come to life and being along for the entirety of the development of his maps. I still remember throwing a few ideas his way for what next to put into Trade_Minecraft and he would usually end up adding something even more creative than I'd have thought to the server (I remember when he added the breakaway floor to the obstacle course under the spawnroom blowing my mind.) but unfortunately I'd never get the spycrab room I asked for! There was one point that Neon was on a spree to get every single duel minigame he could on the server and because of that he's still ranked in the top 20 for most duel wins. Many a great memory was had on his servers and I even still have the "Permission for Obesity" Wedding ring he and I bought as a joke! It's amazing looking back now and seeing just how much those maps really stood the test of time and really shook up what other community devs were doing at the time and I'm happy to have been at least a small part of it! 😀

Great video. Random comment, but I doubt there was a group called 4chan Party Van that Xenon was part of. It was a common running joke on 4chan back in the day, with the Party Van being a swat team or the FBI. Thanks a ton for covering some of these maps, it's really awesome to see people talking about and hopefully archiving a lot of source-era material, especially as we get closer to source 2 being the norm.

neonheights' trade map was my favorite when i used to play it a lot back then. i was a big fan of the layout plus the night time aesthetic. it always felt so exhilarating when you found someone in the skybox or someone who found certain secrets where you'd ask "how'd you do that?" i remember that one big portal area that had 4 portals, one to the skybox the other to the aether dj area but i don't exactly remember the others.

How are all of your videos such bangers? Keep it up man!

This video is perfect and deserves far more attention. 2 whole hours of interesting content and absolutely amazing editing. Even the music is fantastic and makes the vibes impeccable. Its absolutely criminal the amounts of views this has. Keep up the fantastic work man this is incredible :)

Having played since 2010 and mostly in community servers, this video brought back a lot of memories I had forgotten having played most of the maps, thank you for that. Amazing video keep up the production

I was obsessed with TF2 in 2010, and I was a regular on the official Halolz server back then -- man, remember Halolz? A lot of these maps were in the rotation on that server and it was good to see them again today :D This video is a gem, thanks for making it.

oh my god, a 2 HOUR iceberg video for tf2? looks like i know what im doing with my free time next.

This is a great stroll down memory lane. Thanks for sticking with this project! Keep up the good work, wishing your channel luck and prosperity

This was a great video! Lot of nostalgia here from someone who has played TF2 since launch. Some other cool obscure maps I can think of that might be worth a follow-up video: pl_redship - Really unique payload map themed around the BLU team doing some kind of 'boarding action' onto a RED spaceship. Really interesting hyrbid gamemode - half the time BLU is moving the payload deeper into the ship, but there are also parts where BLU has to blow up components of the ship to progress. The map itself is one giant spaceship that BLU attacks from their own, starting on the hull then going deeper inside. Very tight close quarters map with some neat side paths and flank routes and a cool aesthetic. cp_blackmesa - Really, really old 5cp map set in a TF2-ized Black Mesa facility. I don't remember a lot about it, but it had a pretty interesting layout. I remember it being pretty stalemate-y as well. ctf_mandrillmaze - Joke map based on an old graphics card test (?). Basically one long windy path from one spawn to the other, where all the wall textures are the same picture of a Mandrill. pl_strider - Payload map where BLU is the combine, and the payload is a Strider they have to escort and protect from RED team. pl_cranetop - Super fun, super well made 3-stage payload map that nails the TF2 spytech aesthetic. Played it exactly once in a full server, have never heard a peep about it since. pl_downward - Upward, but it's upside down. Total mindfuck. You need the grappling hook to get around.

I am very glad you featured tc_meridian here. It's one of the most underrated maps in TF2's history given how good it is, both in detail and gameplay. I am surprised you haven't noticed that the map maker went the extra mile of creating a proper Intro Movie for it, along with the many little details around it.

This is one of the best tf2 chanels. Extremely informative essays, that make time pass by like a supercar. I don't understand why this guy only has 5k subscribers

This video needs subtitles for the Spanish TF2 community and more attention (This video is so good edited)

44:32 I think this is a pretty common occurrence for websites that don't pay for their domain any longer. I'm not sure what exactly causes it since they usually end up going to an entire different domain, but its pretty standard to try going back to some old website and having it redirect to weird ad-riddled websites of questionable legalities. On an unrelated note; seeing so many community maps (I'm more of a Halo player myself but we have a lot of those too) its always fascinated me how the community can take an otherwise pretty standardised genre formula like FPS or RTS and make entirely new ideas out of it. Surfing, Death-runs, Halo's fatkid mode, even something like the MOBA genre being spawned out of custom maps from Warcraft 3... as an upstarting game developer, I feel the most important thing to a game's longevity is enabling the players to create their own source of fun within the game, even if it goes against your initial ideas for what the game could or should do.

So, best guess on 2:03:42 is that it's a game of connect 4, fits with 9_6_12 being a mini game filled trade map prototype

Didn't have much of an idea about TF2 before watching this, but you sir have peaked my interest. Thank you for an extremely well put together and interesting video.

insane to see skating rink again, i never played it in tf2 but its the only map i ever played in TFC. so nostalgic

I'm currently 25 years old and have been playing TF2 for almost 12 years now (since march 12th 2011 according to my mercenary medal) so some of these maps are quite literally childhood memories for me, especially mario kart and balloon race. It's a shame the latter is almost impossible to find with players nowadays, I remember going to a friend before purchasing the game myself and playing with him on the map (yes, actually taking turns playing the game at my friend's house who invited me to play, I know that's crazy). Thanks for the video, you definitely poured tons of effort into it and it shows! Edit : oh yeah and the viking ship one too, I remember wanting the cool alien hat that some dude had and that's how I got into trading

I absolutely adore weird obscure maps

Really love the production you put into this. From one small creator to another, congrats on the success!

I played Surf_10x back in Counter Strike Source. The old screen shot of the 10x jail you showed was how the map was textured in CSS. This leads me to believe the map was ported over from that game. I did some quick google searches but all I could find was a mix version released in 2012.

Back in the day when i was just a kid playing tf2 on an old laptop I had over 30gb of pure maps, I lost them all when my laptoo died but this video reminded me of a lot of great maps that i played countless hours in. We really need a new update to reinvigorate the game

It's insane how many of these maps I've played over my 10 years in TF2. Memories and so much more here

5:35 I actually made the nodegraph for the guy who ported that map to gmod. Kinda just felt like mentioning that.

I remember playing balloon race a couple years ago, maybe 2 or 3 years at max.

I miss balloon_race so much. Me and my middle school friends used to populate servers back in the day, we'd be the first three to join and then watch 8 or more people tag along, it was great

i watched this entire video not realizing this was a small creator, you deserve WAY more attention

Holy shit I used to play most of the maps on tier 3 and 4 on (now defunct) argentinian server tundra in 2015 (btw wow that was 7 years ago). So many memories I feel like tearing up :´). Thank you so much for making this video!

Oh my god, I have been looking for Cyberpunk for SO long. I have old memories of it but completely forgot the name and gamemode. Thank you so much for this video.

That’s interesting that you remember a different Surf_10x map the most. While I saw and played on several other variants of surf_10x I would always go to surf_10x_reload and as far as I can remember that was the most popular version. Definitely a very nostalgic map and I remember very fondly the genuine attempts at team coordination to gain “control” over the jail area. Like actual strategising in a surf combat server lmao

Fun Fact: Muselk made a video years and years ago and Dml_Whoaaaa was one of the maps he played. He and the entitre rest of the server were unable to play it due to being unable to move and falling out of the spot then respawning.

man thanks for this video it brought me so much memories , also i forgot the name of that 2 ships map (ctf_viking) thankfully i came here and saw it!!

Love the video, entries and how you give a quick history behind the maps along with showcasing them. Awesome iceberg 🔥🔥

That was an outstanding project! Loved the video!

The fligu gigu thing is a 4chan meme on the /gif/ board

This really took me back to the good old days of this game. I used to see a lot of these maps on FacePunch back in the day. You’ve brought back a lot of great memories with this video.

God, cp_orange makes me so nostalgic for Day of Defeat. I remember playing seeing it in TF2 years ago and it was the thing that made me start playing DoD again. It makes me so happy that it’s still popular after all these years.

I know some obscure tf2 community maps that I'd like to bring up, and they are dr_adventure, trade_plaza_sg_v5 and achievement_draconic. I remember playing on those maps way back in the day and I tried searching for them now but haven't found any public download links. Another thing is I found a post on r/tf2 with a much bigger community maps iceberg so you should take a look at that if you're gonna make a sequel to this because the video was very interesting.

Honestly really surprised there's no slender fortress maps on here considering how popular that game mode is. Zombie escape too.

TF2 community servers are my lifeblood. Thanks for the vid

What an interesting video, dude. Some of these maps I still play today. That’s some huuuuge work you’ve gone through. My sincere respect, you did good!!!

Man this iceberg was a nostalgia trip and a half! Ironically I would say this video scratches the tip of the community map iceberg lol. If you were to make a sequel, I’d recommend Daimconne’s maps like trade_houseofchaos2 and trade_abstract2

I would’ve imagine a TF2 Map where you could enter Non-Openable Doors and Enter some rooms with Machine Stuffs and Explore outside the map.

this video was really nice, the music choices and style of narration are really relaxing, and the content covered was interesting to the last entry! I can definitely see myself coming back to it as a comfort video.

I am happy to have gotten this in my recommended videos. While I may not have been in the tf2 community for that long (only for over a year and a half at this time) I still thinks it's fun to see all sorts of maps people have created.

this is a really well made video! I really love it a lot, so so much content. at 12:08 i wanted to say some stuff about mge, mge_training_v8_beta4b isn't the mge map with the most content, but it is the mge map thats been around the longest and has the most popularity. Also the map creator's name is pronounced layng, not lanje

nike you did not just edit a 2 hour video. i refuse to believe it. great vid tho.

I believe the weird island on 9_6_12 is a loose reference to the Baar Dau asteroid from Morrowind, seeing as other games are referenced on the map

The music choice, along with the editing somehow makes me feel nostalgic despite never watching this video in my life. I absolutely loved it, thank you!

There is a server that I stumbled upon recently. It’s called “The C*m Zone” and it runs a map called heavy_warehouse_v115. Haven’t been able to find the map anywhere online, just on this server.

the server I used to frequent in 2011-12 (ponyville if anyone else played there) had people vote for whale_race, toy_fort, or koth_megaman probably around 60% of the time and people actually HATED them, mostly for how overplayed they were but also I remember complaints about toy_fort being too chokey, there was a lot of negativity around them and it's sort of sweet to hear about them again some 10 years after I last played them and finally see some positivity

The fact that I know almost all of these is very telling for me.

This appeared in my recommends and I'm glad I clicked on it. What an absolutely fantastic video this is. It's a deep dive into both popular and obscure community maps of the glory days of TF2 and seeing a lot of these maps gave me a massive blast of nostalgia. But what surprised me the most was seeing one of MY old maps in here. It warms my heart knowing how impactful my maps were on people, even after all these years.

This was a very enjoyable and well made video! It also gave me a hit of nostalgia too. Keep up the good work!

I still haven't finished this, but this has probably been one of my favorite videos on this platform as I have so many memories with friends on community servers and maps that I honestly have forgotten about. It's nice to remember those times :) Gonna edit this message if I see a {SuN} server mentioned. I was big into that and played it until it shutdown and then a small revival into dying again (Might have yet another revival in the coming years from Bolt) lmao

ach_villain_city, actually quite often runs on the Brazillian server i play, there are normally more than 10 people playing at a time and it basically becomes a deathmatch or hangout server

Actually an amazing video. I am glad to have played a lot of these maps through out the years. You deserve a lot more attention.

instead of the dogbread falling into a pit, either end should have a patter or something, but then it would make more sence to have the team pushing bringing it to their base instead...

I have to say, why is plr_highertower not in tier 1? Everyone knows highertower, it is one the most common maps on the community listings it appears in many many videos and I’d argue is more well known and popular than mge.

If you want to do a follow up iceberg, one formerly well known map you missed is cp_bestinclass_v2

I love decompiling strange tf2 / csgo maps and picking them apart. Figuring out how puzzles and etc were constructed is just fun and interesting :DDD

This was a amazing video to watch! Great work!!

tf2

Watched up until the anime, disliked, commented, now im gonna close the video.

A note on Ashville it was remade recently by the slender mapper Rorek. It was more than a simple time of day change, if fixed many of the original map's bugs and inconsistencies.

This is one of the most comfy videos I've seen in a while. Thank you for making it.

hey 9_6_12 can be 2009, june, 12 or september 6, 2012 or june 6 2012.

There’s a little map that’s really good that most people don’t know. It definitely deserves more love and is way too obscure. The map is called 2fort(weird name I know I know).

the big floting stone on the 9_6_12 map looks like it's a reference to morrowind,because it looks a lot like the stone in the vivec city

This is such an amazing production, thank you

One of my classmates sent me a message at 1 in the morning asking what I was doing in your video at 6:49.

You have a cute voice

This is an incredibly well done video. Keep up the great work!

Didnt even know you existed, im so glad i got recommended this, your editing is very good!

Tf2 youtubers and community content creators rly be out here, giving the game exponentially more love than valve is I hope someday that won't be the case, in the good way