Yep, it’s for real. Insert this bad boy in any Atari 2600 console, and it actually plays.

Granted, this ain’t your daddy’s Halo. It’s more like your great-grandfather’s. It’s not a side-scroller, it’s more of an adventure title, made up of fewer pixels than your standard Gravatar icon. Only 100 of these cartridges have been made, but don’t fret: you can also play it online, right now.

Created by former Microsoft gaming vice president Ed Fries as an experiment in programming for the downright ancient Atari 2600, Halo 2600 finds a sprite Master Chief moving and shooting a simple gun at Covenant enemies through a sparse forest, on up to 64 separate screens. Fries wanted to include a driveable Warthog, but had to scrap the idea because it took up too much memory on the game’s teeny-tiny 4 kilobyte memory card.

The game was unveiled at Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas just this weekend, and reportedly wowed the crowd. Try it out right now as a Flash game at halo2600.com.

I love this marriage of concepts and materials — parts of an analog clock fused with original Atari 2600 video game cartridges.

Sadly, if you’re after the game itself you’ll be disappointed to hear that the innards have been removed to make way for the clock mechanism.

Plenty of titles on offer including Ms Pac Man, Pole Position, ET, Donkey Kong, Demons to Diamonds, Swordquest Earthworld, Casino and Asteroids. $20 each.

“CantAffordEmCrafts” will also try to help with requests if you have your own cartridge, though not all of them are easy to fit.

Via