Map trivia
Mirage started as de_cpl_mill, a community-made map for CPL competitions in 1.6. Valve adopted and refined it, eventually re-skinning it as Mirage in CS:GO. The layout (A site / B site / palace / apps) is unchanged from the original.
Map trivia
Dust 2 has been in CS for over 20 years
de_dust2 was added to Counter-Strike in March 2001. It's gone through visual remasters but the layout hasn't fundamentally changed in two decades. Every callout you use today was named in CS 1.6.
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Map trivia
Mirage is the most-played CS map of all time
Across CS:GO and CS2, de_mirage has the highest combined hours played of any official competitive map. It's also the map most pros warm up on — three-bombsite simplicity makes it the gold standard for benchmarking.
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Map trivia
Inferno's banana is the most-fought corridor in pro CS
Banana — the curved hallway from T-side ramp into B site — has been studied with more demos than any other single corridor in CS. Smoke timings, molotov lineups, and "split CT" pushes are all banana-meta artifacts.
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Map trivia
Nuke is the only active-duty map with two stacked bombsites
A site sits on top, B site directly below. Vents connect outside to lower B; ramp connects A and B. The vertical layout is unique — every other competitive CS map sites are at the same elevation.
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