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"Back in December 1999," said Hulst, "we had made a demo called Marines. I showed it to Sony in London, and you have to understand back then that was a risky proposition -- since the only popular console FPS was GoldenEye. A lot has changed since then."

Given the market conditions when Hulst pitched the project to Sony, and the fact that Sony already had a promising sci-fi shooter slated for its platform, its decision to take a pass on the Marines project made sense.

On one hand, you had a small Dutch developer which had never produced a shooter before, and on the other hand was a well-known developer with a proven track record. Coming from the PC and Mac sphere, Bungie had extensive experience in making first person shooters (the Marathon series) and had two games pledged for the upcoming PS2 system.

One was a third person action game called Oni; the other one however is arguably the game that built the Xbox brand -- none other than Halo: Combat Evolved.

Bungie started out as one of the very few Mac game developers, but economic realities (the implosion of sales of Macintosh computers in the late '90s) forced it to branch out to Windows computers as well.

Halo was first considered for release on Mac, PC, and Dreamcast. As hype started to build around the upcoming release of the PlayStation 2, the Dreamcast version was shelved in favor of a console exclusivity deal with Sony for PS2 -- where Sony itself would act as publisher of the game.

Microsoft, however, was coming out with its Xbox and needed more talented developers to attract gamers to its first real entry into the console industry. Bungie was open for a buyout, and Sony lost the Halo franchise. It still got Oni via Rockstar, however.

Ironically, Halo: Combat Evolved -- the game that killed the Marines project for Sony -- was also the one that revived it. After the huge success Halo enjoyed on the Xbox, Sony realized it needed a high profile exclusive sci-fi shooter on the PS2. Guerrilla was contacted and the project got the greenlight -- and the budget it needed.