Patient fans rewarded with a Halo

By Shaun Inguanzo
FANS of the long awaited video game Halo 3 queued eagerly outside Fountain Gate’s Westfield Shopping Centre for a midnight launch of the highly anticipated product this week.
The cold night failed to deter at least 50 people, mainly teenagers, from waiting outside the lower level food court doors from 10pm onwards.
When security unlocked the doors just after 10.30pm, the crowd had grown to around 70 people, who flocked the video game specialty store, EB Games.
Upon its midnight launch, the crowd had grown to in excess of 80 people.
Bound by a strict, worldwide embargo that prohibited sales of the game until 12am on Tuesday 25 September, EB Games allowed customers to finish pre-paying their games and gave them each a ticket displaying their place in the line.
At 12am, EB Games staff opened the doors to complete the sale of Halo 3 to its most diehard fans from the City of Casey and surrounding areas.
The game was sold in three varieties, each with a degree of rarity. For a standard price of $100, fans could purchase a regular edition. For $120, they could buy a limited edition, which came packaged in a tin case along with collectable booklets and an extra DVD.
And for the whopping price of $250, a rare ‘Legendary’ edition, named after the game’s hardest difficulty level, came packaged in a large black box and included a life-size helmet and visor as worn by the game’s cyborg hero, Master Chief.
Some fans, such as Berwick’s Avon Perera, said they had waited three years for the third instalment in the popular shoot ’em up video game franchise, owned by computer giant Microsoft.
“The last one (Halo 2) ended in a cliff hanger,” Mr Perera said.
The new game came with a hefty price tag for Mr Perera, who spent $1000 for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console.
This year’s incarnation of Halo is the first on the new platform, whereas the previous two games were available on the older Xbox console.
“I didn’t have an Xbox 360,” he explained.
Mr Perera, with four other friends at the launch, said he was looking forward to the multi-player aspect of the game, which allows gamers to compete against each other, or cooperatively by using an Internet connection.
Xbox Australia director David McLean said in a statement that Halo 3 was a unique video game that rivalled other forms of entertainment in the popularity stakes.
“Excitement couldn’t be higher for Halo 3. An astonishing one-in-four Xbox 360 owners have pre-ordered the game in Australia and we’re expecting Halo 3 to set new sales records for not just video games but the entertainment industry at large,” he said.