Colorado Evolved Lore

halo 2 renaissance timeline

April 2023

June 2023

February 19, 2024

March 17, 2024

November 2024

January - March 2025

April 2025

May - July 2025

July 7 2025

August 8 2025

August 24 2025

James (psychomantas) is managing at Games Ahoy in Fort Collins and begins hosting monthly Halo 2 tournaments alone using 4 refurbished Xbox consoles and the Multiplayer Map Pack, soon gaining many friends and scouting co-runners PineSauce, OGT Dark Lord, and Melee veteran DSJ

James starts the Colorado Evolved Discord server, calling it Halo 2 @ Games Ahoy

Markus Gaasedelen uses shutterbug's ENDGAME exploit to build Rocky5, making softmodding any broken Xbox a piece of cake

Insignia adds support for Halo 2, offering a near-perfect replication of Xbox Live H2 circa 2004 with functional matchmaking, leveling up to 50, and custom games for OG Xbox

MJHammer, PineSauce, OGT Dark Lord, Havel, and psychomantas drive to Las Vegas to the LVL 50 Las Vegas Open, meet multiple MLG legends, the NorCal Halo group, and Marty O'Donnell, and compete as 4 DEAD; they see how the event is set up on dedicated hosts, with Mixamps and Xedusas, and are inspired to bring the same production quality back to Colorado... James dreams up Halocon

James, inspired by LVL 50, blows his tax return on as many broken Xbox consoles as he can find, starts repairing and softmodding all of them, cuts and adds custom Colorado Evolved stickers to the new fleet, and begins learning how to "hack" XUnleash and Halo 2 with help from the community

James debuts "COE 2.0" at the 2-Year LANniversary, featuring a custom UX Skin, a slim version of Halo 2 loaded to HDD on each battlestation, and two special Xbox consoles running modded versions of Halo 2 as dedicated servers, dubbing it 4DEDi after our team name at LVL 50

James learns how to modify CDX software from Harcroft and starts working on an end-all Halo 2 Loader that lets you turn dedicated host on and off, eventually adding features like the Ultimate Game Type Installer, promotional Halo2.Live and Halo 1: NHE

James launches Hoplite, making the Halo 2 Renaissance available to everyone who loves Halo and cracking the casing on the Chief for good

Revurt ports Halo 2 Vista's extra maps to Xbox Halo 2 and calls it Halo 2 Vista Revurted! James has just enough time to implement Revurted into Hoplite and test it before the Return of the King pilot event at LocalHost Denver

James and the crew organizes and streams a test event, "Return of the King," at LocalHost in Denver to officially debut Hoplite on more battlestations than ever for all future LANs and takes another big step toward Halocon

... where it all began!

James "psycho" Mantas started monthly Halo 2 tournaments while managing at the Fort Collins location in April 2023. Colorado Evolved hosted the biggest public Halo 2 Monthly LANs in the world, once a month, in the cozy Cove event space there! Halo fans of all skill levels were welcome, and the group quickly attracted several passionate key members like Pinesauce, OGT Dark Lord, MJHammer, DSJ, and more, resulting in a tight-knit community of passionate people who all loved Halo, trusted each other, lived near Fort Collins, and had a knack for finding TVs, Xbox consoles, and wires. The rest is history!