Halo National Tournament

By Matt Soell
July 19, 2002

You knew all those hours spent playing Halo with your friends had a practical purpose, but you couldn't articulate it to others. They laughed at you, and your friends in your Seventh Column chapter, and said you'd never amount to anything. Now, however, they must eat their words. Because only those with hours of intense practice under their belts have honed their skills to become worthy competitors in the Halo National Championship Tournament.

A collaborative effort between Bungie, Microsoft, Electronics Boutique and iGames, the Halo National Championship tournament will feature hundreds of Halo players across the country in a furious series of battles. The unworthy will fall away, while the mighty move on from local battles to regional semi-finals. Sixteen regional finalists will travel to Redmond, Washington to compete in the final showdown.

And what's the point of all this? What are you fighting for? Well, there's a huge plasma-screen TV for starters. There's also a Bose home theater system and an Xbox with a copy of every first-party Xbox game (including Halo) up for grabs. The only question is who has the sack to take them. Any one of the above prizes would make your Seventh Column chapter's LAN parties even more fun than they already are. And of course there's the hard-to-quantify satisfaction that comes with beating the life out of other competitors and rising to the top of the ladder. If we were a credit card company, we might call such a feeling "priceless."

We expect this will be a brutal series of games, and we're looking forward to checking out the finals. We'd like to extend special encouragement to all members of the Seventh Column, some of whom are among the best Halo players in the country. It would be nice to see the Seventh Column represented on the Winner's platform when the smoke clears. But whether you're a long-time Seventh Columnist or a newbie who's been too busy kicking ass in Halo to enlist, we hope you'll sign up and represent your community in this tournament.

You can register for the tournament and get further details at the Electronics Boutique site. There's also a brief article at Xbox.com which includes a link to a promotional video for the tournament.