I was going to post this earlier in the month, but I am finding it very difficult to manage a full time job and my hobbies.
So anyway before Portal there was Narbacular Drop a Digipen student project that was seen by Valve, the students that made it where hired by ValVe and they then created Portal.
ND is nowhere near as good as Portal, but what ND lacks in quality it makes up in originality, it is interesting to see where the team came from and nice to have a good look at a student project that actually got someone a job.