Halo 3, The Biggest Video Release in History One by one, they lined up. Eagerness seeped from every pore and every vein. Eyes were wide with excitement and stances shifted back and forth from foot to foot in anticipation. One by one, adolescents and adults camped outside of the Game Stop video game retailer in the midst of Monterey’s Del Monte Shopping Center. The moment that they had been impatiently waiting for was almost here after nearly three impassibly long years. Halo 3 was just a few short hours from being released. The top-level video game is the third and supposed final installment of the Halo trilogy which was first established in the fall of 2001 by Bungie for Microsoft’s X-Box gaming console. Halo is a first-person shooter (FPS) game that centers on a war taking place in the twenty-fourth century between the unified forces of Earth and a variety of extraterrestrial races using the moniker “Covenant”. Game players are thrown into the role of John-117, a cybernetically enhanced human soldier more frequently referred to by his military ranking: Master Chief. The release of Halo 3 is the biggest video game release in history. Even against long-time video game franchises like Super Mario Bros. that have well over two dozen titles spread across seven different Nintendo gaming consoles, Bungie’s brainchild put up a strong fight. According to a Bungie representative interviewed on the cable gaming network, G-4, Bungie and Microsoft made 1.7 million dollars in game pre-sales in the United States alone prior to the game’s release on September 25. Halo’s popularity doesn’t just end in the three video game titles. There are apparel lines, action figures, and a set of four full-length novels that coincide with the first game, and lead up to and follow the second game. There is even a fourth title, Halo Wars which moves away from the FPS style into a strategy format. Halo 3 was released in three editions. The first is the basic, single-disc package. The second is the Deluxe Edition, which contains the game disc, and a bonus features disc. But the ultimate package was the Legendary Edition, which contained a copy of the Deluxe Edition, a limited edition poster of the Master Chief, and an even more limited edition poly-resin model of the Chief’s armored helmet with a display stand. But that wasn’t what the myriad fans outside of Game Stop were looking foreword to. “Shoot… it’s Halo. I want more Master Chief, and nothing else,” said CSUMB student Niko Rastrullo, a Junior studying for a degree in Telecommunications, Multimedia, and Applied Computing, two hours before the midnight release. Rastrullo wasn’t the only fan interested in the overall game play. “I’m just looking foreword to [Halo 3],” commented Carmel Valley firefighter Brian Ferasche. There were still others, like seventeen year-old Kevin Kleffman of Monterey, that were far more eager to experience all of the goodies that the Bungie designers had placed into this edition. “I’m looking foreword to the new weapons and the new storyline. I think it’s the final ending and they will actually ‘finish the fight’,” said Kleffman, quoting one of the game’s advertising slogan.” Waiting impatiently was not the only event happening in front of Game Stop. The company was also raffling off Halo related prizes like stylized X-Box controls, as well as hosting a Halo 3 tournament with a very lofty prize for the winner, who, by the time the tournament was over turned out to be fourteen year-old Justin Qualls of Carmel. “It was awesome,” said Qualls after having defeated dozens of other players including a sponsored professional gamer. “My years of playing paid off. I won the Halo 3 Legendary Set.” However, there were some people present at the release that didn’t share the same genial opinion. “I think it’s violent… I don’t like the violence; it bothers me,” said a mother who wanted to remain anonymous. Though there had been more positive feedback than negative, Halo is the most popular video game franchise in history and it is here to stay. Click here to see Halo video at Del Monte: Halo Video
Garrett Jones, Staff Reporter