Way back in 2017, the general gaming public first learned of a Halo game made based on Mega Bloks thanks to an asset release by Past to Present Online. The original video can be seen here, and discusses, among other topics, how Mega Bloks merchandise with Halo characters first started to appear in 2009. At some point, the developer N-Space thought they had a strong idea for a game pitch and came up with Haggar. Many versions of this game were pitched, and by 2013, they had a prototype of a Mega Bloks game for the Xbox 360 with Halo characters. In 2017, Past to Present Online’s limited footage was all we really knew about the game.
But two weeks ago, Mint Blitz revealed in this video that this game is now available to play- in surprisingly complete form. Details on how to play Halo Mega Bloks can be found on Mint Blitz’s description, crediting Spark, Itchy.7, and Zoephie for the game’s restoration. Simple restoration of the game, however, can’t quite get at the real mystery here. Namely, how in the world does any game get a build quite so complete, and even fun, according to those who play it, and never even see any publicity?
Part of this may not be quite so mysterious. A game that was canceled in 2013 only just barely meets the minimum of retro. Indeed, that anyone was developing Xbox 360 games this late in the console’s life cycle is a little surprising. Those who were around then may remember, though, that the Xbox One wasn’t exactly doing great. This much certainly explains how Haggar was pitched and got enough resources to even make this playable build at all. A cuter Halo, in line with the Lego series of games that was popular at the time, is certainly an obvious idea for an outreach effort. Halo had power as a brand but because Halo games had a reputation as a violent first person shooter, the target audience for actual Halo games could only go so far.
Is Haggar actually a Halo game? By any reasonable definition pretty much. Same shield mechanics, same weapons, same enemies, even the same basic gameplay concept of outside pitched battles moving into more ominous sanctum locations. The gameplay is quite a bit faster though, with assets so simple even a couch co-op mode was doable. But Haggar had the perverse bad fortune of being both ahead and behind its time. The very simplicity of the design made Haggar look antiquated compared to the AAA projects Microsoft and 343 Industries were trying to push in the industry at the time, and cute Halo simply sounds like a contradiction in terms that may have alienated older fans while parents familiar with the name would have kept their kids away in any case.
The words “may have” are doing a lot of work there, since as can plainly be seen by the success of titles like Fortnite in the present day, this simply isn’t true at all. N-Space did the best they could to salvage the project, and its very solid engine, when the Halo branding didn’t work out. Five years ago, Obscure Gamers released this video featuring gameplay footage of Backyard Heroes which is, on direct comparison with Haggar, clearly the same game with a different skin. Dating to September of 2013, N-Space tried and failed to come up with several working pitches for this game and just never had any luck getting any of them to stick.
A big part of the historical appeal of retro gaming is just wondering what might have been. The Halo Mega Bloks title appears in retrospect to us now as being a big missed opportunity for Microsoft and 343 Industries, and may well stand as a testament to the hubris of their insisting on maintaining the original 2001 Original Xbox branding despite dubious success and diminishing returns. For the rest of us, or at least, those of us who know how to run the Xenia emulator, the restoration of Haggar remains remarkably playable even aside from its peculiar and obscure place in gaming history.
