I was nine years old when I saw this exact clip on PCGameWorld, way back in 1999. Back then, I thought Halo was going to be like Tribes, only better. Huge maps, multiplayer matches with upwards of 32 players. What we got instead was a game that would come to define an entire generation of console shooters. I was at the launch event of Reach in Seattle and talked with some of the 343 guys about this, too. They were flabbergasted that I played Tribes, Half-Life and Homeworld when I was nine.
actually the original concept for halo would have been a lot more revolutionary than what we got. MS getting it actually reduced its scope drastically.
+104752981098380071985 For a while, it did. MYST and Quake 3 Arena came out on Mac first, so did Marathon, Myth, and some older games that my PC friends kept wanting to play on my Mac at the time like Escape Velocity, Dark Castle and others. It had some really awesome games that never showed up on PC actually
lolslayer yeah. so I finally caved and ordered a falcon northwest tiki with a titan X pascal card. 😂 i just wish i didn't have to deal with windows. it's too bad SteamOS looks DOA.
"Halo is the name of this game." Its so bizarre hearing Halo being introduced for the first time considering how its one of the most recognizable gaming franchises of all time now.
He means graphics wise because a lot of companies like Ubisoft like to downgrade games graphics from demos, for example look at The Divisions first gameplay announcement and compare its graphics to the final released version.
I dreamed of driving my Warthog off into an endless horizon, and it simply never came to be. But you have to admit, what we did end up getting was pretty damned good.
20 years ago. It wasn’t a trailer, it was being rendered as it displayed. Whether it was a good game or not had yet to be determined but it definitely accomplished what it intended to do. This reveal blew everyone away at the time. Microsoft knew that this is the killer title that would make the XBox a success if they had it, so they whipped out their checkbook and made an offer that Bungie couldn’t refuse. Smart move for them.
They didn't. By the time Microsoft bought Bungie, Halo was a proof-of-concept game that was barely playable, didn't even seem remotely similar to Halo beyond character design and music. Sure, they took a risk with the purchase, but they released the funny box with a Shrek game, it's pretty clear this was just a very lucky blind-gamble. Hell, by the point you're seeing this, the theme being played was literally just made 3 days earlier, they had no idea what the fuck the game was.
Halo wasn’t the game that we know that was released for the Xbox. It was a much different conceptualized game. At the very first stage in 1997, it was real time strategy game for PC and around the time of this trailer, it was being conceived as a third person shooter. Then Microsoft acquired a deal with bungie and turned it into a first person shooter for the Xbox. It was all Microsoft’s vision that turned Halo into what made it a success and what we know it today
When the Halo theme came in, I got chills. That was the first time anyone outside of Bungie had ever heard one of the most iconic songs of a generation.
Actually, if you play the RTS game Myth: The Fallen Lords, then you'll hear some of the Halo music. Bungie created Myth back in the mid to late 90s. I loved playing Myth and I thought it was funny that I somehow already knew some of the music to Halo. It wasn't until after Halo 2 and before Halo 3 that I finally figured it out that Bungie made both and had just recycled the music.
@@bargaintuesday812 by the legend Marty O'Donnell who not only composed, but also was the one singing to. But I think he meant first time that the public heard of the music.
This game was released when I was 19yrs old. I'm currently 41 yrs old and am currently playing halo master chief collection halo 1. Still feels as good as it did back then. What an achievement! Superb game
@GoingPostalSince1997 no I sold my xbox shortly after this comment. Truth be told I thought it was a very weak console, all it had was old games to play and no good exclusives. Found it to be a very boring console. Ps5 and switch are leagues ahead in terms of good games
Imagine hearing this epic song back in 1999 and not knowing this would be the theme song for one of the iconic gaming franchises and the anthem for gamers everywhere.
I was 13 back then, and just one of many who were drooling over this video. We knew it was going to be big because there had been nothing like it. What ended up actually being released was not what we were promised by this and subsequent initial videos leading up to Microsoft's acquisition of Bungie and the subsequent engine re-write for the Xbox that completely ditched the open rolling terrain that was at the core of what we were so excited about. It was going to be an open-world shooter, and what we got with Halo: Combat Evolved was just another linear corridor shooter dressed up to look outdoorsy. It was soul-crushing. AND we had to buy a stupid CONSOLE just to play the piece of garbage.
I wouldn’t say combat evolved (or the rest of the series) is garbage, but I would say it’d be very interesting to see how it was going to originally be. Luckily it seems like the PC version of Master Chief Collection is scratching that itch of ours.
I remember this too and I think this the the first time I've seen it again in since 1999. The game seemed unbelieveable at the time. The transitions from inside to outside, being able to get into any vehicle, and the enviroment seemed endless. Games at that time you were always acutely aware that your space was limited, but Halo seems to blow that away. It took so long to finally play that for those between years I thought that preview was a dream and that the game didnt really exsist.
It's amazing that at one time. Halo was technically nothing. It wasn't the star wars of fps games. No epic lore. No legacy. Just a small game that had no clue of its potential
Yeah but Doom doesn't have a big lore that spans across games, shows, novels and comics. Doom is like the Flash Gordon or Citizen Kane of FPS. Doom no doubt was a hit but Halo Revolutionized FPS and made it viable on console and set trends such as online multiplayer on console. Much like how Star Wars revolutionized special effects and Sci-Fi at the movies.
Bakamatsu My dude, nobody outside the xbox community even cares about Halo lmao. Wolfenstein is the ball, Doom got the ball rolling and the rest of the good fps joined in. Elitists like you aren't welcome, good games are good, and thats it.
No, apparently it was made only few days leading to this demo. The demo was still barren of any sound effects and thus Martin O’Donnell made a music specifically for this demo. Little did he knew his small composition would change everything.
I remember a few years ago I tried to search online for a version of halo ce's alpha development. Now, it's time to actually do so. Thank you Bungie, for not having deleted all the files. Thank you 343i.
"also made an xbox version" The PC version was released 23 months later. Halo 2 was announced 1 year *before* Halo 1 got on PC. Halo 2 gameplay footages were visible at the E3 2003, 5 months before Halo 1 got on PC. Halo was planned to be a PC/Mac game, just like all the previous Bundie games, but Microsoft bought it to turn it into its killer-app for the Xbox. Tons of planned features were removed, because of the hardware limitations (64 MB of RAM... the average computer had 128 mb in 2002).
They rebuilt the entire game engine from scratch for the Xbox, went from a rolling hills dynamic LOD terrain mesh renderer with an indoor environment rendering part to a fully BSP engine like the Quake engine(s). You can dig through the old Bungie devlogs. There's a year gap in there when they had to go dark and rebuild the engine but then when they start posting again it's all talk about things that were never going to be in the PC/Mac version.
Bungie was definitely putting their A game at the time! The only thing that I saw the need to change was that awful Master Chief voice. But it was awesome how he came in like a bad ass at the last moment.
First game I played as a child I will never forget it and the halo theme song reminds me so much of the past when I was a kid makes me tear up sometimes lol
I remember this. The game totally blew the mind of me and my friends when unveiled. It was supposed to be released for both PC and MAC and made huge promises. Developers talked about real physic smoke from guns, open-world gameplay with coop and a well-crafted sci-fi world. For that time it looked too good to be true, and of course it was. In my opinion Halo became an important fps for consoles, but compromised with much of its ambition in the process.
My God, 12 years later, and I still can't believe this game. That trailer gave me shivers, and still 12 years later, it got me excited. Way to go bungie, you made a kick ass game.
It’s a shame Apple didn’t continue with gaming. It kinda feels like when Microsoft brought Bungie, it was the end of gaming for Mac. It’s funny when you consider Mac had great FPS titles like Pathways into Darkness and Marathon. I would love to see those two games get a continuation exclusively on MacOS.
@@barrybend7189 M1 Max has the same number crunching potential as a combo desktop Ryzen 5 5800X and RTX 3070 Ti. It can easily chew through native games, on a laptop, with a total power draw of 110 watts. It's *better* than gaming hardware currently is.
@@barrybend7189 Currently, Asahi Linux with some software like Hugo (a website builder) gets about twice the performance as macOS does -- and that's on top of having to use the CPU to render the desktop while they work on the GPU driver.
I remember when I watched this clip over and over again as a teenager just wishing to own the game one day. It was released late and not on Mac and not multiplayer and so I never owned it but I knew it would be a huge hit.
Halo was way ahead of its time at MacWorld '99. It left a lasting impression. I've gotten into pretty heated arguments with people before about the decisions Bungie made when Halo became the Xbox's flagship title. The first Halo was practically remade from scratch in a little under a year before the launch of the Xbox, IIRC. I complained that it didn't quite have the rolling hills and mystique that the preview footage garnered. Yes, the levels were big, but enclosed. One canyon after another.
Apple and Activision must have been pissed and regretted not buying Bungie at the time. Apple could have bought them and Activision made an offer but they went with Xbox. If Activision had bought it, it probably would have sold more being multiplatform. Imagine Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 on PS2. Sound weird just saying it.
Ice Kold Killa Given how Activision publishes CoD, I'd hate that for Halo. It takes time to develop and publish a game - It would have been a damn shame if the series was milked every year at the expense of narrative.
Anyone else here really wish you could go back in time and experience halo: ce again for the first time? I do, amazing memories. I miss the good days :)
Was the music in the original demo? It sounds replaced, and O'Donnel was only hired the week before they got bought by Microsoft, which means if they had this music in time for the demo they probably already knew it was never coming to Mac.
@@KalleNoble spartans vs aliens on an unknown ancient world? Banshies, energy swords, assult riffle, grenades, worthog,k all there. Fuck are you blind AND dumb?
Looking back on this trailer is so weird. Most of the animations are the same as the release product, but the "Spartans" don't act as machinelike or as professional. That taunt to bait out the sangheili is almost cartoonish. I think they're supposed to be more normal soldiers who simply have more advanced armor at this point in the game's development. Also, I can see how the aesthetics gradually evolved from existing concepts into the game's own distinct art style: The pistol looks more generic, and the sangheili have a far more xenomorph-esque look to them. Also, how Bungie envisioned the sangheili at this point in development is clearly different: A canon sangheili most likely would never surrender like that, they'd have grappled with the "Spartans" instead.
Can you imagine the first time hearing that music? Mustve been wierd seeing it for the first time anyone has outside of apple and bungie and then it becomming so immensly popular, and being that popular 10+ years later
ahhhh this takes me back!!! original halo was seriously probably the best game ever released on the original Xbox. I actually like halo more than assassins creed or any of the call of duty games and everything in between in regards to "action games". not to say those games aren't good. hell no they're awesome but my personal favorite bar none is original halo. the graphics today are still pretty amazing too!
Fun fact: At the time, the Macintosh couldnt play the music or something, so Marty set up a big orchestra and played it live while the video was playing, the music was all live, so mistakes wouldve happened
I saw this, and when the final product came out couldn't believe how polished and refined it had became. Spent a large chunk of my student loan on an xbox and a copy of halo CE
OKAY So, for those who don't remember or weren't yet born, this was 1999, and Halo was expected for Mac (only) in 2000. Instead of that, Microsoft bought Bungie so that Halo would be their flagship game for the original Xbox in 2001. Halo would later be ported to Windows and Mac in 2003. Bungie somehow survived by purchasing their independence in 2007, working a deal with Activision that they again survived, back to independence in 2019.
