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Halo/Xbox @ Tweeter Day Post-Mortem
Posted By: Lophan <lophan@bungie.org>Date: 2/12/02 8:36 p.m.

Halo/Xbox @ Tweeter Day Post-Mortem
by Lophan - Feb. 10th, 2002

The day started off early (more so for some than others) as people got in their cars with their printed directions in search of the Tweeter store off Route-1 in Springfield, PA for Philly Halo Anonymous' Inaugural Event. I left my house at around 10:30 and promptly received a call on my cell from Miguel who had made a wrong turn on his trek down south, but after a few minutes he was back on track. He did say that we were in need of a hub, however. Luckily, there was a Best Buy right across the street, er... highway, so after a life-sized game of Human Frogger, we had our hub and we were on our way.

Miguel and I met up with tyger27 (Chris, the engineer of this event) and his friend on the Tweeter staff that lobbied for us with his manager. By 11:30, we were inside the store and setting up the LAN. Tweeter, besides having pretty much every brand name of high-end television ever made, gave us the back right corner of the store with four 50+inch HDTVs right in a row. Frankly, it was a beautiful sight :) We had brought along our component video connectors for the high-definition output so we could enjoy Halo in its fully glory as it was originally intended: the sharpness and brightness of the picture was unrivaled. Chris (tyger27), Miguel (Freewill) and I had to test out the network, so we threw on a couple of Slayer games for warm up (how altruistic of us!).

Slowly but surely, people began to arrive. The largest group was made up of the Linden War Factory (LWF) team, which included infinitwar (a.k.a. Frank Castle), Stuffman!, DarkAngel, and one particularly talented player whose screen name currently escapes me. These four were well-practiced as they have a full network set-up at home and have some very effective CTF strategies to go along with their very able FFA abilities.

Other attendees included CS1, metronome, mettle, prophet, and a whole bunch of other onlookers (if I have forgotten your name, email me and I'll make the appropriate changes). Regular customers who were shopping for big screen TVs were amazed, and in some cases, horrified, at the carnage they were witnessing. Explosions galore and cries of "Ohhhh, Headshot!" were the standard fare of the day.

Some highlights:


  • The obligatory "Crazy King FFA on Longest". As usual, the carnage report was very bloody with all of action at close-quarters. Once again, the combination of the inviso-powerup and the shotgun makes for a messy floor :P
  • New custom game settings: LWF turned us on to "Rainbow6" style: team-play, no-shields, 50% health, one-life, human weapons only... it gets your heart pounding from the instant the game starts. As they say: "You've only got one life to live."
  • A 2-hour marathon 6x6 CTF blood-match on Blood Gulch: 1 flag, no shields, Scorpions only, human weapons, 15 seconds respawn, 30 second "friendly-fire" penalty. This one was stalemated in the early going, but the advantage was clearly with the Blue-team, made up primarily of the Linden War Factory group. You can tell they play this a lot at home: very well coordinated rushes on the enemy base and solid defense translated to a 3-1 victory.
  • Team Rally on Blood Gulch: this setting is always good when you have 6 Warthogs darting around the map. You know that eventually there'll be a head-on collision with one 'Hog getting launched into the air with some poor sap still in it.
  • Other attendees brought 3 extra Xboxes, but we never hooked them up because we were having too much fun on the LAN!

And now, a quick rundown of the attendees/marines:


  • CS1 was always the guy who would toss a grenade at your feet and rush you at the same time, causing you to hesitate and get blown to bits.
  • Frank Castle was just as effective and a dead-eye with the pistol.
  • Dark Angel, in addition to her wit, is dangerous beyond her years.
  • mettle always seemed to be in the spot you least expected (like, for instance, in those blind corners when you're running out of his base with the flag... damn shotguns!).
  • And lastly tyger27 (Chris) and that bloody sniper rifle (and that damn laugh of his)!

All good things, unfortunately, must come to an end. At around 4:30pm, the squad from LWF had to pack-up and head back to North Jersey, and took with them the knowledge that they represented quite well on their day-trip to Springfield. With the loss of four players, we were down to about eight or so, so we played a few quick pick-up games of Slayer, Crazy King, Oddball, and Rally. Everyone had their moment in the sun (including me :P ).

By 5:40pm, we wrapped up the final game and proceeded to clean house. All told, we played Halo for 6+ hours non-stop with as many as 15 players at one time. It was certainly the biggest game I have ever been a part of.

Major thanks go out to tyger27, whose organization skills and connections made it possible for this event to see the light of day. Also, Miguel, for his "event expertise" that we tapped into multiple times throughout the event... as well as his seemingly never-ending supply of ethernet cable :P

And finally, a very special thanks also goes out to the staff at Tweeter, from the manager to tyger27's friend to the everyday staff, who indulged us and helped out in any way they could (even by standing in for a LAN game or two :P ). On account of the excellent behavior and respect that the attendees showed, the manager invited us back in six months if we were willing, and I can say that YES! We are VERY willing!

Two pictures from the event can be seen at http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/halo.forum.pl?read=93788. Hopefully, more will roll in as the days go by, but I think we were so busy playing Halo that we forgot to document properly ::smacks head::

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