... where it all began!
James "psycho" Mantas started monthly Halo 2 tournaments while managing the Fort Collins location in April 2023. Colorado Evolved hosted the biggest public Halo 2 Monthly LANs in the world, monthly, in the cozy Cove event space there!
Halo fans of all skill levels were welcome, and the group quickly attracted several key members like Pinesauce, OGT Dark Lord, MJHammer, DSJ, and tons more, resulting in a tight-knit community of passionate people who all loved Halo near Fort Collins... and had a knack for finding TVs, Xbox consoles, and wires. The rest is history!
colorado will never be the same.
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
January - April 2026
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, originally used on the Official Xbox Magazine demo discs, 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 a brand-new but long-needed MLG game type installer, promotional videos introducing this site and the culture, and the original Halo game
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 finally 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 a clear demand in the local community for a more sponsor-friendly, high-stakes competitive event featuring Halo 3 at LocalHost and use Colorado Evolved to try and jumpstart their own spinoff group targeting Halo 3 via Master Chief Collection on PC, marking another major milestone in the revival of classic Halo and cementing Colorado's place as the nucleus of the fan-made Halo Renaissance
James starts collecting and softmodding Xbox 360s using the relatively-new BadAvatar hack and loading them all up with every Halo game ever released, tons of archival Halo special features, soundtracks for the original trilogy, and a new version of Hoplite, turning each new 360 in the COE fleet into a veritable Halo museum for Halocon and beyond, plus a few non-Halo games like Battlefront just for fun
Where will the Chief take us next?
