Halo Shows Up on Nintendo 64 in a New Split Screen Port Built From Combat Evolved Code

A very unlikely retro collision has arrived. Halo 64 has launched as a Nintendo 64 take on Halo: Combat Evolved multiplayer, trading the Xbox original's look for unmistakably angular N64-era visuals. The release is aimed at players who want local multiplayer on Nintendo 64 hardware or through a PC-based build process, but it comes with a catch: you need your own copy of the original Xbox game to convert the files.

What changed

This new release is not a full port of Halo: Combat Evolved's campaign. Instead, Halo 64 focuses on multiplayer, with support for up to four players in local split screen. Players can battle each other in modes including Slayer, Team Slayer, Slayer Pro, Capture the Flag and King of the Hill, and the project includes 13 maps converted from the Xbox game's files.

Those maps keep Halo staples like vehicles, weapons and teleporters. Bots are also included, with four difficulty settings. There is also a Firefight option where Grunts, Jackals and Elites arrive in waves across the multiplayer maps. Firefight supports one to four players, uses shared lives and offers four difficulty levels.

The package also carries over core presentation elements from Halo, including its HUD for shields, health, ammo, motion sensor, messages and scores, along with weapon and vehicle audio and the main menu music. A pause screen brings up a scoreboard that can show every player and bot, up to 12 total, with score, kills and deaths.

Who it affects and what it takes to run

Halo 64 is available free through the developer's GitHub, and the build can be handled on Linux or Windows. It is not a simple download-and-play setup, though. Players need their own original Xbox copy of Halo: Combat Evolved so the game files can be converted legally, and the release notes say some technical skill is required to patch and prepare it.

For anyone hoping to use original Nintendo 64 hardware, an Expansion Pak is required. The project says it uses Halo's decompiled code from the halo-ce-universal project, including systems such as objects, physics, collision, weapons, game types, first-person weapons, HUD elements and pathfinding, compiled for the N64's VR4300. It also adds a new renderer, menu, HUD drawing and sound built with libdragon and tiny3d.

Control options include four presets, standard, bumper jumper, GoldenEye and north, plus crouch options, inverted look, swapped fire and grenade inputs, and separate look speeds for the analog stick and C buttons. Rumble Pak support is included, and settings and controls can be saved to cartridge EEPROM. The project also says Claude was used in the game's development.