Ed Fries, the once vice president of Microsoft's game publishing division – and the man who had his hand in signing Bungie Software as a Microsoft first-party developer – has returned to his old-school roots with a brand new game: Halo 2600 for the Atari 2600, which premiered at the Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas this weekend.
Fries no longer works for Microsoft, but he has a long history in gaming: he was responsible for programming several games for the Atari 800 computer system more than 20 years ago. Halo 2600 is his first attempt at creating a game for the Atari Video Computer System, a console released much earlier than the 800, and considered a beast to program for due to its heavy restrictions and limitations.
The game started as a simple pet project to learn the system: Fries programmed a Master Chief sprite, had him move and shoot. But instead of calling it a day, he pressed on to make it a full-fledged game using the same limitations of most Atari 2600 games: create it using just 4 kilobytes of data. The game was to have a level that featured a driveable Warthog, but not only did it push the size of the game over the 4K limit, according to Fries it also wasn't that much fun to play. So he scrapped it.
Halo 2600 has a very "Adventure" feel to it: players control Master Chief in a non-scrolling exploration design. There are 64 "rooms" to explore with a variety of enemies to shoot, including a final boss – but first you have to find your gun. Energy barriers can impede your progress, but once you track down a key or take down enemies the wall will disappear and you can move on.
The final product was made available at the Classic Gaming Expo. Only about a hundred cartridges were made for this event – complete with a wonderful retro-modern label designed by Mike Mika from Other Ocean Interactive.
Halo 2600 is, obviously, not considered series canon, but the cartridge itself is quite the collectible and a cool homage to a fantastic series. The game can be played on any Atari 2600, and it's also been made available for online play at
http://www.codemystics.com/halo2600/
Thanks mate! 