A developer has successfully managed to run the original Halo: Combat Evolved in a web browser. While technically impressive, this achievement likely poses copyright compliance risks.
Developer Mitchell Hynes recently shared this on the X platform: Web-based Halo and its actual performance is surprisingly excellent. Simply open the website, wait for the browser to load all necessary resources, and you can start playing immediately, with full support for mouse and keyboard controls.
The project is built upon Bnunu's decompilation efforts, as the team has been reverse-engineering this game for some time. This program combines a branch version from the Cybersecurity team, supporting up to 128 players simultaneously and running on Windows, Linux, and Android systems.
According to the developer, the site briefly went offline due to massive traffic from X platform, being automatically flagged as a "suspicious phishing site," but access has since been restored. Within just five hours, nearly 20,000 games were started by players from 115 countries on this web-based project.
It's worth noting that news of the site has spread beyond X platform and is now circulating in the Halo subreddit on Reddit, with players creating rooms to battle each other.
A Reddit user commented, "LMAO this is so cool. I got several kills back and forth just using my trackpad. Gotta get back to work now, but it's really exciting to have such an easy way to play with everyone."
The only issue with the multiplayer mode seems to be the lack of matchmaking. Clicking on multiplayer generates a room link that you can share with others to invite them to play. As expected, the servers use a peer-to-peer architecture, so the host's internet connection should remain stable.
From my personal experience, the game runs better than expected. Level loading takes a bit of time, which I assume is due to my poor internet connection today—but the gameplay itself is smooth, and the sound effects are quite good.
My only concern is that this essentially allows players to enjoy this classic game for free, while Microsoft just launched Halo: Combat Evolved last month. It's hard to imagine Microsoft being happy about players being able to play their game for free so quickly. However, enjoy it while you still can.