Halo Zero is a fan-made 2D side-scrolling shoot ‘em up inspired by Bungie’s popular FPS series. The game is based on Halo’s Battle of Reach, which took place before the events in 2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved. Halo Zero is an 100% unofficial fan game, and it was originally released on PC back in 2005, so at 20 years old, you could well view Halo Zero as a retro game in its own right, and not just a retro reinterpretation of a modern franchise!

You may be wondering why we’re telling you about a 20-year-old fan game in the first place! Well, Halo Zero is making a comeback on a number of 16-bit retro formats, as the homebrew developer Earok currently has unofficial ports of the game in the works for the Commodore Amiga, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, and the Neo Geo CD, and he released a single level demo and its source code, based on an early build of his Halo Zero ports, for each of the formats, on Christmas Day, so if you’re a fan of any of these classic 16-bit formats, you can download yourself a late Christmas present by downloading the Halo Zero demo and even the source code, should you be interested, now, from the game’s itch.io page.