Halo Formula One and Ninja Warrior are taking the community by storm

A decade or two ago, Halo’s Forge mode was revolutionary, especially for console games. The creation-focused sandbox tool allowed players to build and share custom maps and modes. Given its main competitors at the time, Call of Duty and Gears of War, had nothing of the sort, it was a huge pull for the sci-fi shooter. Nothing would beat getting home from school and jumping straight on with your mates to play Infected, Duck Hunt, or Grifball.

Forge has been a mainstay in the Halo series ever since (disregarding the fact Halo Infinite didn’t have it at launch before eventually adding it in 2022), although community creations rarely make waves outside the Halo bubble. Which is why, when an Instagram reel showed up in my algorithm of the Monaco Formula One circuit recreated in Halo, complete with racers on Mongooses hurtling through the Nouvelle Chicane, I was intrigued.

Under the handle “haloformula,” this is an Instagram account with more than 11,000 followers dedicated to a competitive racing league within Halo, featuring numerous recreations of real-world racing circuits. And this isn’t just a casual thing amongst friends: this is a sanctioned league under the HaloTracks governing body.

In an interview via Instagram messages, “Bruhndan,” the social media manager for haloformula (and “halonascar” too, although that one isn’t quite as popular), explained to me that over the last two seasons of HT Formula M (HaloTracks Formula Mongoose), the league has seen 35 drivers take part. Within the last six months, the Discord server has quadrupled in size, from around 300 to 1,200 members.

The founder of HT Formula M, vVJoshnessVv, revealed that HT Formula M has been around for 16 years, although it used to be known as HT Le Mans. Back then, multiclass racing was the format: the Mongoose, Warthog, Ghost, and Prowler were all used, and the tracks were much more “rudimentary” because they were “built on Halo 3’s existing terrain, rather than prepared racing surfaces.” With the release of Halo Reach, the team moved to the Formula One approach to circuits, especially since Reach’s Forge mode was much more advanced.

For the casual viewer, though, you’d be forgiven for thinking racing in Halo is quite shallow. After all, how deep can the driving mechanics in a non-driving-focused game actually be? HaloTracks founder Le Hefe explained that while driving in Halo appears simple, it takes time to master:

“Halo vehicles are governed by a surprisingly deep physics model… For example, Halo Reach’s Mongoose has a high gear ratio with a poor low end. It struggles to rebuild momentum, so every mistake turns into compounded time loss. Halo vehicles are also notoriously loose. The rear end is almost never planted and the suspension is soft. Racers are constantly fighting to keep the vehicle pointed straight and reducing body roll. You don’t get a steering wheel or pedals to control these. Everything is done with your thumbs (or a mouse). It’s a real challenge when you lose the circulation in your thumbs.”
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Not only that, HT Formula M uses a custom game type, courtesy of HaloTracks co-owner Hatter is Mad. This transforms it into something much closer to real Formula One, because it introduces fuel depletion, track limits, pit lane speed limits, and drafting. “It’s impressive to watch the race leaders fight, they’re doing things with the Mongoose that we didn’t think were possible even just a few years ago,” Le Hefe revealed.

Formula One-inspired racing isn’t the only competitive community initiative happening in Halo’s Forge mode, however. Halo Ninja Warrior, inspired by the athletic fitness obstacle course show of the same name, is run entirely by Samuel Burns, aka Smokey Massacre. Boasting over 26,000 Instagram followers and almost 3,000 YouTube subscribers at the time of writing, Burns explained to me via Instagram message that he does “all the obstacle creation, hosting, commentating, and video editing.”

There are plenty of similarities to be drawn between Halo Ninja Warrior and HT Formula M, and while the accuracy of the circuit recreations is nothing short of incredible in the latter, the visual spectacle of the courses designed in the former is tremendous. Watching a Spartan complete a course is a little jarring when they seemingly leap off of an invisible platform due to Halo’s physics, but the courses themselves — from moving climbing walls to rolling balls — are impressively creative. Not to mention how alike they are to real Ninja Warrior courses, from the obstacles themselves to the colorful, striking aesthetic.

Much like the HT Formula M Instagram page and its countless videos of iconic circuits and on-track action, the Halo Ninja Warrior one is laden with clips of individual runners attempting the various courses. The thumbnails are slick, showing the runner’s name and their skin, and the videos themselves have timers counting down. Burns’ commentary is the cherry on top, making it truly feel like an extreme sport.

You’ll learn a lot about the competitors through the comments and video descriptions, too. Flameosaurus, for example, hasn’t reached stage three of Halo Ninja Warrior since tournament 19. In the video, he’s competing in tournament 31. Meanwhile, Revalis had the best newcomer run in tournament 30, and 31 was his opportunity to prove it wasn’t a fluke.

A lot of love goes into the courses. Burns told me that designing the course can take months. “It requires forging all of the obstacles, then adding designs and aesthetics to make the map feel more engaging,” he explained. Then comes the testing phase, which entails making sure every single obstacle is the exact difficulty he’s aiming for.

Finally, running the tournament itself also takes a couple of months, because 100 individual competitors need to run the course, and Burns needs to edit the videos, record the commentary, make the graphics, and so on. “I will usually be editing one tournament while also forging and testing the next,” he said.

It’s similar to what it takes to build a Formula One track in Halo. Building a rough draft of the track only takes an hour or so, claims Le Hefe, all thanks to a community tool called the Mjolnir Blender Forge Tool. However, “making it race properly with the Mongoose takes hours of polish; I don’t think about aesthetics until the track is raceable.”

The Halo Formula team are also focused on building an extensive suite of tools for competitors outside of the races themselves in the form of “web-based platforms that help racers track their Halo racing careers and offer a space for racetrack creators to share their work,” explained Le Hefe. “Hatter is Mad has been a critical part of that infrastructure; he deserves as many flowers as we can give him. The community already owes him a huge debt.”

You can apply to take part in both Halo Formula and Halo Ninja Warrior. For the former, Bruhndan explained they’re “always looking for new drivers,” and a new amateur series has recently started on HaloTracks. They’re also hoping to start long-form content in the future, covering the history of racing in Halo.

Meanwhile, Burns’ plan for the future of Halo Ninja Warrior is to continue building the community. He explained that right now, getting 100 competitors for each tournament involves a lot of outreach on his behalf, but he wants to reach the point where all the competitors are people who are actively looking to compete. Check out both the Halo Formula and Halo Ninja Warrior Instagram pages for more details on how to take part.