Halo was at one point a candidate for a kid-friendly adaptation undertaken by N-Space with a Mega Bloks license, according to this video by Andrew Borman of PtoPOnline.
Borman, thanks to an "anonymous contributor," unearthed a prototype of the Halo Mega Bloks game for Xbox 360, codenamed "Haggar." He dates it to September or November 2013, around the time when N-Space would have been wrapping it up. The studio went belly-up in early 2016, and before that was mainly known for its ports of big-AAA titles to the Nintendo DS or Wii.
“Haggar” had a polished campaign level to show off and promised multiplayer co-op and siege modes, Borman says.
For those wondering why Lego, which has a hugely successful video games line adapting IPs from all corners of video gaming, didn’t get a crack at this, Borman points out a basic fact: Halo uses realistic guns, and Lego's licensors are pretty keen on their characters not using any. The weapons menu of “Haggar” shows many familiar names in the player’s armory.
Apparently Microsoft still was interested enough in a cartoonish version of Halo to let Mega Bloks and N-Space have a rip. But the project died out with the advent of the Xbox One and Microsoft's shift of attention to that console.
Who knows what this idea would have become. Not every seed finds purchase. The video still is a peek at the fickle priorities of major brands, and studios and creators caught in between.
Update: Bonnie Ross, the head of 343 Industries, the makers of Halo, posted a statement on Monday acknowledging the “Haggar” build that made it into the wild.
Over the past few days, footage has recently made the rounds of an exploratory Xbox 360 project we worked on several years ago, known as “Haggar.” Since then, we’ve received a lot of great feedback from the community. Haggar was something we prototyped with our friends at Mega Bloks that focused on the elements of action, exploration and user creativity found within the Halo universe. Haggar had a lot of fun ideas and invention behind it, but ultimately didn’t progress beyond the early prototyping levels that are shown in the recent video. This is just one example of several similar projects we have evaluated throughout the years – a process that we continue exploring on an ongoing basis.
