Colorado Evolved Lore

COE halo 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

October 25 2025

November 3 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 and therefore salvaging 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 the legend Marty O'Donnell, and subsequently 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 the thriving but isolated Colorado LAN scene, while 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 onto the fleet's loadout and test it before the Return of the King pilot event at LocalHost Denver

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

Colorado Evolved expands into Halo 3 on Master Chief Collection for Rise from the Dead at LocalHost Denver. The event is a milestone success, with over 35 attendees playing H3 (some for almost 12 hours) while the final Halo Infinite HCS took place and the day after the announcement of Halo: Campaign Evolved, a single-player-only remake of Halo CE, for the first time debuting on Playstation 5. As COE watched the LVT stream during the pizza break, Halo Studios announces a new Halo Fest in Seattle in December of 2026, leaving a huge lane for Halocon in Denver in November 2026

A few COE admin see an demand in the local community for a more sponsor-friendly, high-stakes competitive event featuring Halo 3 at LocalHost and use Colorado Evolved to jumpstart their own spinoff group, marking another major milestone in the revival of classic Halo and cementing Colorado's place as the nucleus of the fan-made Halo Renaissance

... 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!