Behold! Halo: Combat Evolved, the game that launched the Xbox in 2001, now runs inside a browser tab. The culprit is Combat Lab, an independent project by Mitchell Hynes, and this laboratory is serious: no emulator trying to imitate the console. Combat Lab is built from the decompilation of the game, the community effort that rebuilt the source code from the Xbox version.

The game is not included: the disc is yours

The most important part, dear lab assistants: the site does not distribute the game. The page itself says game data is not included and asks for a copy made from a disc you own. The image is processed locally, and the imported files stay in your browser. In other words, no original disc, no Halo.

This model matches other ports that respect whoever holds the rights: the new code comes from the community, the data still belongs to Microsoft, and every player brings their own copy.

Multiplayer in a tab and a native port

According to the project documentation, online rooms support up to 128 players, far beyond the local network matches that made the original Xbox version famous. The page lists multiplayer and campaign rooms with live player counters. The same codebase also has a native port that runs on Linux, Windows and Android, for anyone who would rather leave the browser.

Where this fits in preservation

Halo: Combat Evolved is still sold officially as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Xbox and PC, and that is the route for anyone who no longer owns the disc. Combat Lab shows something else: a 25-year-old game can get a new life on the web without anyone downloading a pirated copy. Captain Pixel already explained how Ported2Browser organizes these projects, and Quiver Launcher does something similar on PC with Nintendo 64 ports. More stories like this are in our Preservation section.

Source: Combat Lab (Mitchell Hynes).