Halo: Combat Evolved is being ported to Nintendo Wii with a 30fps target

Someone is trying to get Halo: Combat Evolved running natively on the Nintendo Wii. Yes, the Wii. Developer JojoXDK is working on a homebrew port of Bungie’s landmark shooter for Nintendo’s 2006 console, and the project has already reached the point where parts of the campaign are up and running. It’s not finished, and performance is still a problem, but the game is clearly doing more than simply booting. The target is the full Halo: Combat Evolved campaign at 30 frames per second. That’s proving difficult because the Wii handles memory, graphics and animation very differently from Microsoft’s original Xbox. Recent footage shows progress, though. The game runs better than it did in earlier demonstrations, and Wii Remote and Nunchuk controls are already working.

Halo is already running on Wii

The current build comes from a decompilation connected to Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, the Xbox 360 remaster released in 2011. That might sound like an odd place to start. Anniversary has technical roots in the PC version of Halo, which Gearbox Software released in 2003. It gives the developer a workable codebase, but it’s not necessarily the best match for the Wii’s hardware.

The plan is to move closer to a decompilation of the original Xbox version instead. That could help. The original Xbox release was built around tighter hardware limits, so its code may be easier to adapt to the Wii. It could also reduce memory use, which is one of the biggest headaches in the current version.

Earlier footage showed The Silent Cartographer running with some obvious performance problems. Newer demonstrations of Assault on the Control Room look much more usable. There’s also proper Wii control support. Motion aiming works with the Wii Remote, while the Nunchuk handles movement. It’s a much better fit than forcing the original Xbox control scheme onto Nintendo hardware.

The Wii CPU is doing too much work

On paper, comparing the Wii with the original Xbox can get misleading very quickly. The Wii has some advantages in memory, but Halo was designed around the Xbox’s specific hardware setup. Microsoft’s console had an internal hard drive, and developers could use that drive to cache game data. The Wii doesn’t have one.

That means the port has to rely on an SD card for some data handling, which changes how the game loads and manages assets. Graphics are another issue. The original Xbox used Nvidia-based graphics hardware with programmable shaders. Bungie leaned heavily on those features when building Halo’s visual effects.

The Wii works differently. Its graphics system came from the GameCube architecture and doesn’t support every technique Halo expects in the same way. Some effects have to be rewritten, simplified or moved elsewhere.

That creates another problem: CPU load. Halo’s character animation system uses skeletal animation with multiple influences on each model. The Wii’s GX graphics hardware can’t handle all of that work directly, so the processor has to take on more of it. And that processor is already busy. Interestingly, the GPU still appears to have some headroom. The CPU is the part being pushed hardest.

Some visual effects won’t make the jump intact

Even if the full campaign becomes playable, don’t expect the Wii version to look exactly like Halo on the original Xbox. Some effects will probably be missing or simplified. That doesn’t mean the Wii is simply too weak. The bigger issue is that the two consoles were designed very differently.

You can’t just lower the resolution, shrink the textures and call it done. Halo expects certain rendering features from the Xbox GPU. The Wii has its own way of doing things, so parts of the graphics pipeline need to be rewritten around Nintendo’s hardware. Memory is part of the same problem.

The current Anniversary-based build uses more memory than the developer would like. That can lead to texture swapping and other compromises. Moving closer to the original Xbox code could improve that situation and give the port more breathing room.

Halo: Combat Evolved put Xbox on the map

Halo: Combat Evolved launched with the original Xbox in November 2001. It quickly became the console’s defining game. Bungie’s shooter follows the Master Chief, a genetically enhanced soldier fighting the alien Covenant after landing on a huge artificial ringworld called Halo.

Then things get stranger. The campaign shifts when the player discovers the Flood and learns what the Halo installation was actually built to do. Halo also changed expectations for console shooters.

Its twin-stick controls felt natural on a gamepad. The rechargeable shield encouraged players to move in and out of combat. You could only carry two weapons, so choosing what to keep mattered. Vehicles were easy to use, and the game regularly opened up into large outdoor battles.

A lot of those ideas became standard later. Halo eventually reached PC in 2003 and returned in remastered form with Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary in 2011. It has since appeared in newer Halo collections as well.

There’s still no release date

The Wii port remains a work in progress. There’s no confirmed release date, and getting the complete campaign running at a stable 30fps is still the main goal. The planned switch away from the Anniversary-based code also means there’s plenty of technical work left.

Multiplayer could turn out to be easier to handle than the campaign, but the current focus is single-player. So this isn’t a finished Wii version of Halo yet.

What it is, though, is a working port that has already moved well beyond the concept stage. Halo can run on the Wii. The real challenge now is getting the whole game to run well enough that the hardware stops being the biggest obstacle.