Remember how Left 4 Dead's characters looked long ago, before Valve snapped up creator Turtle Rock Studios? A rummage in Valve's archive has dug up the old models, and you can now play the early burly bearded incarnation of loveable biker Francis in Left 4 Dead 2. The other beta survivors may follow later too.

Valve has been working on improving the tools for L4D modders, rooting around in its archives to dig up and release model source files for weapons, infected and survivors. Which handily also uncovered early versions of the survivors too.

And now you can download the beta Francis for L4D2 through the Steam Workshop.

"We can't promise we can get all of the other older survivors working, but we are looking into resurrecting them for forthcoming updates," Valve added.

L4D's original survivor designs were pretty grim and grubby, before Francis discovered razors, when Zoe still wore pedal pushers, before Louis got a job in IT, and when Bill bristled with pouches and pockets. A big redesign was revealed at E3 2008, though.

"A lot of playtesting that made us realize that we need to be able to separate infected from the survivors and make it clearer," Valve's Chet Faliszek told us at the time.