Walking into EB Games and Gamestop all decked out in Halo 2 and thousands of copies leaving the store. It was everywhere! It was a great feeling and great time. I can still smell my buddy’s house going down to the basement to fire up Halo 2 for the first time. Halo 2 and Halo 3 are still the greatest video game launches of all time and I don’t think we’ll ever get that again.
Wish i could of been born earlier to join you mate, did midnight launch for Reach and Halo 4. I dont think ill ever feel the same way i did about 3 back in 2008-2012
I’ve always been a PlayStation guy for the most part(I do own a Series-S though), but the Xbox 360 was easily better than PS at the time. Pretty much every game that released on both consoles ran way better on the 360. I always bought a game on the 360 over PS 95% of the time.
@@TheABElia Original Xbox and the 360 were both good. I wouldn't say better than Playstation but they put up a good fight, especially the 360. The other 2 however... 😅
@@Manic_Panic The original Xbox was better than the PS2. It didn't have the most game but every third part games ran better and look better. At the time the original Xbox was competing with PC, it just wasn't the most popular console. Digital foundry retro also have a couple original Xbox vs PC comparison with splinter cell , half life etc..
Specs-wise, Series X is more powerful, and 2 of the 4 exclusives (yes, exclusives, the rest of the system's games are third-party) it has actually lives up to it (even if Starfield can be enjoyed in spite of that), but with many XBOX games releasing cross-platform with their Windows equivalents, it's evident that Microsoft (and SONY, to an extent) has been slowly moving XBOX out of the console game and demoting it to a third-party studio. Now, if we're talking Minecraft, DOOM, or Call of Duty, that's fine, because those franchises are cross-platform to begin with (all of them starting off as PC games and working their way up from there), but Starfield and Hi-Fi Rush are new franchises for XBOX, and the first IPs Bethesda made since their acquisition by, you guessed it, Microsoft, and Halo is XBOX's flagship franchise, so having these games go on other platforms removes the system's agency in the grand scheme of the Console Wars.@@Manic_Panic
Still never understood why Microsoft didn't make an Xbox 360 version of Halo 2 as a 360 launch title in 2005. That would've been a total system seller with a game that was already complete. All they would have done was put in a 1080p and 720p mode and allowed you to play on Xbox Live against people with the Original Xbox Halo 2 version.
We have to remember that Microsoft put Bungie under a severe deadline, originally was going to come out in 2003, but had to get delayed because the E3 demo had to be completely thrown away and was not usable as an engine to be used for retail. Microsoft allowed a released in late 2004 but no later than that, so Bungie only had a year and a half to completely remake Halo 2. Bungie completely burnt themselves out getting Halo 2 out the door because of this development hell Microsoft put them under, so at the time there was no way or had the resources to as you say to make an Xbox 360 version (or delay Halo 2 to the Xbox 360 launch), only one version was made until the PC port in 2007 with Windows Vista. Microsoft wanted to promote the "new" Xbox Live networking in a big way with Halo 2 was why during that time a year before the 360 came out. By that point, Bungie was already planning out Halo 3 and because of how Halo 2 went, there was no way in hell they would ever go back to Halo 2 and work on that again. Plus during this time, remasters were not much of a thing yet, game devs usually only made for consoles, just the one version for one console and that was it and moved onto the next project.
@@JDotLocThese used to be somewhat standard features at that time, the PS3 for example launched with full PS2 and PS1 backwards compatibility. About half of the OG Xbox library is compatible with the 360, should have been more but all of the best games are on there.
because back then game studios didnt just rehash year old games like they do now, thank god. yes there were a handful back then but now its like "when are you publishing remake of assassins creed odyssey its so epic game but i cant play it because the graphics have aged like 2 years?"
One cool trivia about that E3 event that I remember some of the OG devs talked about not too long ago was that the demo was buggy as fuck and the path it was following plus everything that happened was very strict because otherwise it was just going to crash and I think they also mentioned that the xbox they used for it was actually overclocked way up and had much more RAM just to be stable in the showcase. I'm glad everything went buttery smooth and while I didn't get to live that, its always wholesome seeing so many OG Halo fans talking about it
it would genuinely be so damn cool if there was a RAM upgrade modification for PS2. bring Gran Turismo 3 and 4 up to their full potential on official hardware lol
Sadly the PS2 is a nightmare to work on compared to the original Xbox, I mean sony had that weird 128 bit cpu, while microsoft used a standard Pentium III CPU.
Love the og Xbox. I have 3 of them. Two soft modded and one hard. They are emulation beast. This looks interesting. Pretty cool the Xbox still getting love.
While this is impressive in its own way, playing The Master Chief collection at 720p and 60fps on the portable Steam Deck is what really makes me feel like technology has come a long way. Especially considering it has online cross play with my Xbox friends!
i do have a couple of SATA drives that work fine with 40 pin (40 wire) IDE cables, it is hit and miss with each console. i replaced one of my xbox ide cables with a FFC cable setup i custom made, works like a charm and due to flexibility the length is a lot shorter than a regular cable thereby reducing the level of crosstalk (using a 40 wire format). I also made a little adapter so i can easily swap over from DVD to slave HDD. it was really annoying trying to swap them over so you could transfer the key to the new HDD
I would love to see an original Xbox overclocked on other great games to push better performance and picture for titles like 007 Agent Under Fire, Nightfire & Everything or Nothing, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (Director’s Cut), Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1 & 2, Silent Hill 2 & 4, DOAX, SSX Tricky, etc.
You don't overclock an Xbox, it has no means of manipulating the voltage, clock rate, etc of the CPU; if you want a faster Xbox you need to install a modchip or custom bios via TSOP flash. Then you get someone who knows what they're doing and has the tools, or you can try and DIY it but it's insanely difficult, but after the bios/modchip you can desolder the original 733MHz Pentium III CPU and you can install either a 1GHz, 1.2GHz, or 1.4GHz CPU; you can also double the RAM by soldering more or; "Prehistoricman" has created an incredible mod where you can quadruple the original amount of RAM on the Xbox, but it's not ready for prime time just yet so I'd just do the CPU and wait to upgrade the RAM. If you install a faster CPU you will get better results in several games that felt heavy/stuttery/laggy. It also helps with load times, you'll likely want to pull the original 10GB HDD out and put in a modern 2TB SSD or something while you're in there. Then you can boot all your games off the HDD and it'll double or triple load speeds even without a new CPU. I installed a simple 80GB HDD a decade ago in mine and replaced the data cable (IDE) with a ATA 100 (it was ATA 66) which improved load speeds by 50% on top of the about double the speed from HDD vs DVD.
I've been playing Halo 2 online with my OG Xbox and man it really is surprising just how damn good it looks/runs. From the matchmaking, to the visuals and physics/gameplay, it was such a cut above anything else I can remember for a console shooter
Thanks, I wanted to do more down the line. There are a bunch of OG Xbox games that got 720p patches that are not available anywhere else, might look into that for the next one.
@@railasvuo kid I'm over 40 years old, my joints are eat up with arthritis, and I have snapped my tendons from when I was younger playing sports, so that's not going to happen.
Nothing beats a modded XBOX and an RGH 360. Bar none. Want to argue me? Let's go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With you briefly touching on MCC as a way to play Halo 2. The biggest reason people use insignia whether through an OG Xbox or Xemu, is it gets everyone more or less on the same playing field. If you prefer playing Halo with a controller, matching into someone on MCC on pc who uses MnK may as well be Mint Blitz compared to you.
I recently got an original Xbox and the HDMI adapter. Just got Insignia as well, and love going back to play the original Halo 2. I think I’ll wait until version 1.5, but even at 480p this seems like it’ll be an improvement.
@@no-barknoonan1335 people forget that xbox was a force to be reckoned with all the way up until xb1 was announced. they were still releasing banger after banger in the early 2010s
@@no-barknoonan1335 I still don't know why they made the kinect microphone turned on by default. That heavily ruined game chats. Why do so many people play xbox with their whole family in the room.
I had rumors of this I didn't even know it was complete. It's crazy what people do on the console this guy sent me a wide-screen patch for PSO these people are heros
Great video, just one quick question: what version Xbox do you have that the GPU could not be Overclocked? I always thought that the GPU remained the exact same through every Xbox revision. Also, is there a HUD fix for the 480p mode? I've always noticed that the HUD is stretched even if the game is played in widescreen. I'd love to try this on my Xbox since I have 128MB of RAM. I doubt you're getting much of a speed gain from your SSD since the BUS transfer speeds don't even allow for the full capabilities of the fastest HDD's, but the 80-pin IDE cable does make a huge difference and that just reminded me that I need to upgrade mine with one.
Helldivers 2 obliterated any engagement I had with Infinite. I’ve been playing on my ps5 so much that I unsubbed from gamepass. If Microsoft can’t make Halo great again they will never get to where they want to be.
Im confused as to what is plugged into the controller port on the title picture. Is this just for a wireless controller or for a USB stick? Also, do you have a playlist that goes through your OG Xbox mods? Thanks, appreciate the work you do!
Would love to see these patches revive some of the Xbox Catalog most affected by poor FPS. Unreal Championship would be incredible with boosted fps and quality
This is pretty cool but it's easier for most people to just play Halo 2 on the Xbox One where you can play it at 1080p 60fps on Xbox One or 4K 60fps on an Xbox One X and OHHH 4K 120fps on Xbox Series X!
@@poopedcheetah2 well duh all the games from the Halo Master Chief Collection are ported from the Xbox 360 genius, except for Halo 2 Anniversary in the remastered graphics mode, those are actual early Xbox One graphics and still hold up, but all the games in the collection run at 4K at 120fps on the Xbox Series X much better than the Xbox 360 could've dreamed of.
i actually dont like how awful textures look higher res so id just take the og 480i and play it on a crt or use that fixed 480p mode on a high quality scaler idk i appreciate them for making the load times better and fixing the aspect ratio a tonne i didnt expect any of this to be possible and its neat.
I'd definitely buy a old Xbox modded with 128 ram however for me racing games would have to be significantly improved maybe the original forza motorsport or nfs classics midnight club etc but if that was possible I'd so buy 1
I actually have a 128MB Xbox and haven't played Halo 2 yet, so I'll definitely be checking that out... Except I'll probably wait till it gets patched for v1.5 so I can play online too.
Yeah the AI being able to drive around was definitely a big deal then and getting the dual wielding on Halo was a nice change from the first but even GoldenEye back on the 64 had dual wielding although now that I think about it I'm not sure about the dual wielding of different weapons which definitely was a bigger bonus If played right
Halo was more organic in the balance of dual welding- you'd drop the gun to remove it. The holy Trinity of shooters in the N64 era: goldeneye, turok 2 and perfect dark all had you carrying all weapons like it was equipment- turok 2 even had lore for it- the Satchel he carried gave him the ability to carry tons of requirement..... Not even Zelda explained away how link could carry all his gear....
I know this is a pipe dream, but could you imagine something like this for the early HD consoles like 360/PS3? Maybe finally get rid of that disgusting screentearing in some games.
I'll take the fixed crosshair in the MCC over something (frankly amazing and an awesome project still) like this. I cannot play Bungie games in their native state from Halo 2 to Destiny 1. The lowered crosshair is mind-breaking for me since I play other FPS games and I got a fucked lil brain
I thought they were a bit overrated back then but I played them in 2019 on MCC I can see why they were so loved. Same with FF7 and i can't stand JRPGs.
Halo 2's super crammed development schedule makes it even more impressive. They had to cut levels out of the game to get it out the door in time for Microsoft's executives demands.
480i, not 480p was technically NTSC standard definition (640x480 being the proper 4:3 aspect ratio for NTSC TVs of the era). 480p has twice the data of 480i, and can be seen as a 'transitional' or intermediary resolution, bridging 480i and 720p. It wasn't uncommon to have a display that could do 480i60 but only 480p30, which makes sense when you realize the crt beam literally had to go over 2x as many lines per frame. 720p was always called HD and 1080p is "Full" HD (FHD), 2160p/4k is "ultra" HD aka UHD. But in no world was 640x480 called HD, maybe "extended" or "enhanced" definition? But it was never a broadcast standard in the US, we went from 480i straight to 720p then 1080p (sometimes 1080i as an intermediary since it was the same bandwidth as 720p so used the same infrastructure) Also, 480p/480i wasn't "stretched" or incorrect unless running on a widescreen display, which was relatively uncommon, tho increasing in popularity as the decade progressed. IIRC 720x480 was generally a target for anamorphic widescreen on DVDs, where 2:1 movies could get squashed down to a 3:2 aspect ratio to then be stretched back out to 16:9 or whatever aspect ratio the screen ended up having. The correct 16:9 480 res would be 852x480, but I don't think that was ever a source resolution or even supported by displays, anamorphic widescreen (720:480 or even more squashed 640x480) was the norm for the era.
The original Xbox breaks I’m done with it I have 8 of them 3 of them that broke I gave away to someone who knows how to repair them they said it depends what games your playing on it that can break it I believe that cause even the PS2 broke I have a feeling it’s games like marvel Vs capcom 2 that broke the console
I don’t understand I just played halo two on my original Xbox and when I’m watching your gameplay, none of that’s in my game his elbow wasn’t clean across the screen
I softmodded my halo 2 in the hay days, they has tons of guns mods, levels and additions for multiplayer still puts the base game to shame, some were pretty bad tho
Spawnwave: Using to say that perfomance is better then grapics Also Spawnwave: increasing the resolution of an 480p Game to 720p, just out of curiosity (which runs poorly perfomancewise even with overclocking) And now everyone wonders why the Industry focus so hard on resolutions and graphics, because "the game run smooth 60fps" don't sell if the Game looks like last gen. Thats why we still have Games with 30fps even if the Standard should be 60fps by now.
Does anyone know if you can play the original Xbox Halo Combat Evolved & Halo 2 on a Xbox One, Xbox One S, Xbox One X & Xbox Series X(all I own) vs doing this. There is just something I love about the original textures, graphics & lighting. Playing the Xbox 360 Halo Anniversary Edition just wasn't the same as playing Halo CE on the original hardware. Info & thoughts greatly appreciated. 😁😆
I dont think the original halo ce or 2 runs on the One or Series consoles. I have a One S, X and Series X. Only Anniversary, 3, 3 ODST, 4 and the other 360 halo games. Probably never ported them because of MCC. Halo 2 Anniversary is part of MCC.
@mpholicx2 Thanks for the answer. I was hoping they were. My original Xbox & 360 are in storage. I have MCC but haven't really played it since it came out with all the bugs/glitches & constant updates. So that made me think why not just play the originals on the newer systems. I guess I'll get all that out of storage. I might do this trick on Halo 2 & see how it looks & feels to play!
Port this HD version onto the Switch. Edit: I also have a PS5 and Series X but lmao man y’all some triggered cry babies over the Switch and ports and it’s underpowered glory.
