Can you remember seeing the Halo DS images back in the '00s? There's been a lot of chatter about it over the years, with n-Space saying that it was a demo they had been working on for a couple of months, Matt Casamassina of IGN actually playing the demo, and Bungie saying that it was probably just something that a dev team was going to pitch to them that was never an official release.
Was it a reskin/mod of GoldenEye 007: Rogue Agent for the DS? It certainly looked as though it could have been, but once we'd seen it, we all wanted it to be real. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - rumours of games live in our brains rent-free for years afterwards. Just look at me with Cabbage for the 64DD, a game I still think about even after getting all of my thoughts about it into a massive article!
Gamer and Halo Modder Steve Roth has been working on a playable version of the DS version of Halo to finally put things on the right track. Steve has kept as close to the unsolicited demo as possible, using the bottom screen as the motion tracker in the footage shown by Nostalgic Aubrey, who has been given early access to the project to talk about on his YouTube channel.
Steve has put together the game so far from what information they can find about the original demo. It's been made on the GoldeneEye DS engine, and AI has been used a little to help in the Rogue Agent recompiling process. Steve then used all of his expertise acquired over an illustrious Halo modding career to add Halo 2 assets to the game and create a working version of the game.
The bottom screen is also used for checking out available weaponry, statistics, and selecting different menu options. And while the graphics on the top screen are far from the graphics we remember from playing the game on the Xbox back in the day, it does look exactly like the Halo DS version we saw Casamassina playing all those years ago, so much so that I feel like there's been a fold in time and we've plucked something from an alternate timeline.
I don't have any information on when this game might be finished, how many other maps there might be, or when you'll be able to play it as of yet. All we have is the playthrough footage above, but it's a start. A long-lost (or never started) demo from the '00s is finally coming to fruition, and I'm very excited to get it on my DS or the AYN Thor to check it out in the not-too-distant future!
