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The ever-elusive Halo DS game has been a Holy Grail of Lost Media ever since its appearance on IGN’s YouTube channel over a decade ago. Now, years after the project has faded into obscurity, the title has not only been confirmed real, but new information has been revealed from developers at N-Space.
As expected, the Halo DS project was in development at N-Space, a studio that was known for creating DS adaptations of popular first-person shooters. However, the early build of the iconic Xbox shooter’s move to Niintendo’s handheld was way more than a simple Halo skin.
Halo DS finally confirmed real
Reported by Did You Know Gaming, former N-Space developers confirmed the project was in development for around three months. The game not only composed of a 6-player multiplayer mode with Halo 2 maps like Zanzibar, but also a campaign with functional Covenant enemies.
“It was much more than a [Goldeneye] mod,” an anonymous developer told the channel. “[There was] a lot of effort and care taken to craft something that looked, sounded and felt like Halo.”
While it’s long been theorised that this project was a tech demo killed by Microsoft and Bungie, N-Space VFX artist James J. Inziello revealed that it was actually killed by Nintendo.
“The sad part about this game was that it was almost greenlit,” Inziello explained. “But about a month after it got approved on the Microsoft/Bungie side, it was Nintendo that shut it down. There was speculation that they were unwilling to front some advertising money on a first party development side, just as they had originally done with Geist.”
Inziello theorised that Nintendo was “still a bit annoyed” at helping the studio finish Geist, a GameCube FPS game that failed to be a big hit. Nevertheless, the team believes that the Halo DS project “would have sold in the [millions] as a portable online multiplayer in 2006”.
As for the quality of the game, devs that worked on the project admitted that the DS wasn’t “the ideal system for FPS” games, but it could’ve been a fun time. The same devs would eventually work on the Halo Mega Bloks game, which we played and loved, but that was also cancelled.
For more Halo coverage, read about the hackers who have found a way to actually drive the Halo Ring in Combat Evolved. If you’re more into the Nintendo side, check out the latest Switch 2 news here.
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