Halo 1/2 spruced up for 360

By Tom Bramwell Published 10 November, 2005

Prog-scan, widescreen, FSAA.

Bungie's confirmed suspicions that Halo and Halo 2 will be slightly shinier than the average Xbox game running on Xbox 360 - if indeed the average Xbox game does run on Xbox 360, although that's a separate issue.

In an update to mark Halo 2's one-year anniversary on November 9th, Bungie revealed that both games will work out of the box on 360 and that both will feature widescreen support, 720p (progressive-scan) support, and full-scene anti-aliasing to smooth over those jagged edges.

Says Bungie: "we didn't redo any of the old textures or geometry - this is simply the game you already own, running at a higher resolution. The results are not miraculous, but for owners of HDTVs (or VGA monitors with the appropriate cable) they are sweet."

Bungie also ran some comparison shots of the improvements, which you can find lower down the update.

Halo fans will want to check out the page for other reasons too, as it features a big look back at Halo's path to market.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (35) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • doc-yipee #1 6 years ago

    But does Halo work on 360 pods?

  • Carlo #2 6 years ago

    Cut & paste maps?

  • Zomoniac #3 6 years ago

    The pods come with a great big board that plugs into it, which I think is the 'brains' of the system, so to be honest I'm not even sure if it reads normal games. My local Game is hopefully getting one today or tomorrow, and my girlfriend works there and they don't mind me hanging around instore after they've locked up while they cash up, which should give me about 45 minutes alone with it, so I'll give it a go if they don't mind.

  • tengu #4 6 years ago

    And the backwards compatability list is... where? And the final launch line up for that matter.

  • Blerk #5 6 years ago

    Ah, the well-known 'vaseline effect', like the PS2's PSOne compatibility thingy. Let's hope it works better on Halo than it does on most PSOne games.

  • lennon #6 6 years ago

    For the launch line up just check J Allards gamercard as he seems to be playing the games as he gets them.

  • Carlo #7 6 years ago

    Where are all the MS fanboy comments this morning?

    They all having a lie-in?

  • Talha #8 6 years ago

    They have fled en masse from EG since it reports X360 news as it is.

    For the record, I can be classified as an MS fanboy myself, but I am not in the habit of shooting the messenger when the news relating to my soon to be delivered X360 is not good.

  • Beano #9 6 years ago

    Halo is not in proper widescreen (see the squeezed screenshot) but it's still nice to see both Halo and Halo 2 will support 720p ;)

  • paulf #10 6 years ago

    from the screenshots i dont look all that great - but it will be good to try out anyway

  • Bitkari #11 6 years ago

    Halo 1/2 spruced up for 360

    Yes, I'd agree that it has been half spruced up.

  • peterfll #12 6 years ago

    For those buying a 360 this is a free bonus even if the overall improvement is only slight.. so why complain?

  • Talha #13 6 years ago

    @peterfll : You are right there are no grounds to complain. it is just that the way these two titles are being touted up right now, you'd think (1) the real launch titles are not much cop and (2) backwards compatibility will be much limited compared to our expectations.

  • Mirkan #14 6 years ago

    But what we REALLY wanna know is about the texture pop up. No fix at all? That'd be the real suckage. :(

  • peterfll #15 6 years ago

    My expectations for backward compatibility and launch titles are now quite low I have to say. I will be buying an 360 for sure, but I will wait until the first reviews are in on the launch titles first, and base my decision for buying earlier or later on those.

    I was watching Gamer.tv last night and their footage of Call Of Duty 2 looked like it could have been pulled from the current Xbox. Not especially impressive.......

  • Sko #16 6 years ago

    "So this means that for backwards compatibility the team that created the game will have to compile a new version for the Xbox360."

    The most worrying thing is thanks to the state of the industry, the companies that created your personal favourite games might not still be around to do it...

  • Mirkan #17 6 years ago

    "Play Halo2 from the hard drive of a modded xbox and the texture pop doesn't occur."

    Yeah? You sure about that? I thought it was a RAM issue.

  • Furbs #18 6 years ago

    How do you use italics in the comments? The tag doesnt work does it?

  • Zomoniac #19 6 years ago

    Use < i > to open and < / i > to close, without the spaces obviously. Like this.

  • Mirkan #20 6 years ago

    I see, Fluffy, thanks for clearing that up. :)

    I'd sort of hoped that what caused the pop up was a bottleneck in the RAM, and that more RAM would sort the problem by itself. Somehow I doubt the drive speed increase is significant enough to rid the game of the pop up problem.

    It's really a shame because the game is close to perfect without it. As perfect as conservative, conventional sequels get of course. :)

  • Talha #21 6 years ago

    @Fluffy: You are a homicidal maniac and deserve to be imprisoned. Since when shooting stuff became cool? It is such a sick concept, and the gaming industry, along with sickos like you, is a partner in crime for promoting it.

    I play Half Life 2 with a mod that allows me to blow flowers at the Combine soldiers and they sleep due to the scent. That's more like it!!!!

  • Talha #22 6 years ago

    I am such a pacifist that I fulfill all my shooting fantasies on my PC, so I won't have to vent it out on the street.

  • smelly #23 6 years ago

    So did they manage to spruce it up into being a GOOD game then?
    Edited by 1 at 10/11/05 @ 12:35

  • Dizzy #24 6 years ago

    Woot!

    Another reason to get that 360
    Edited by 1 at 10/11/05 @ 12:37

  • lennon #25 6 years ago

    Rumour is that Half Life 2 will operate in a similar way as well on the 360. We shall see.

  • Dizzy #26 6 years ago

    > Rumour is that Half Life 2 will operate in a similar way as well on the 360.

    Ohhh cool if true. Maybe more games will do this... awesome.

  • Feanor #27 6 years ago

    "I was watching Gamer.tv last night and their footage of Call Of Duty 2 looked like it could have been pulled from the current Xbox. Not especially impressive......."

    Maybe they were showing Call of Duty 2: Big Red One because I played Call of Duty 2 on a 360 pod and it looks a lot better than any Xbox shooter.

  • BeepCleep #28 6 years ago

    What bothers me with all this backwards compatible stuff is that some people are selling the damn thing on the basis that it is! HMV, on their pre-order packs, are saying that it works with all your existing Xbox games. Are they allowed to do this, given that the official line is that it won't be 100%?

  • redd #29 6 years ago

    so from reading the comments it almost seems as this is a bad thing... erm...

  • Speedwolf #30 6 years ago

    Will EG go over it again and give it a 9 this time?
    /doesn't hold breath

  • Jmog #31 6 years ago

    I didn't think they compiled the game again for the 360. It looks to me like the emulator can render the game in a higher res with optional AA, that's all.

    Well, they actually said that this is what we're going too see if we pop in our original copies of Halo 1 and 2. I don't understand why anyone would consider it to only be a feature of recompiled versions.

    ...unless of course they haven't read the actual Bungie article that this news post deals with. Shocking :-)

  • Xerx3s #32 6 years ago

    "Where are all the MS fanboy comments this morning?

    They all having a lie-in?"

    7 Million. Speaks for itself.

  • tengu #33 6 years ago

    8 million. Speaks through ventriloquism :)

  • 3william56 #34 6 years ago

    I'm missing something here: how is the new code supplied? Do you have to buy a disc (like anyone's going to pay for an old game - hardly backwards compatible)? Or download it from the net (those without boredband can whistle). How's it work?

  • Speedwolf #35 6 years ago

    It's all done with the shipped emulator afaik.
    You don;t need to download or install anything. They've (Bungie) already said that Halo 1 and 2 wil work on the 360 straight out of the box.