title: Help!

text: A few songs that were recorded and intended for the album and film were not used. Lennon and McCartney wrote "If You've Got Trouble" for Ringo Starr to sing, but the Beatles were not satisfied with the song and it was abandoned, and Starr sang "Act Naturally" instead. "That Means a Lot" was written for the film, but again, the Beatles were displeased with their recordings of the song and it was given to P.J. Proby who released it as a single. Lennon said "Yes It Is" was "me trying a rewrite of 'This Boy', but it didn't work"; it was released as the B-side of "Ticket to Ride" and was also issued on "Beatles VI". "You Like Me Too Much" and "Tell Me What You See" were turned down for use in the film by its director, Richard Lester, although they did appear on the album (and also on "Beatles VI").


title: Help!

text: In June 1965, at the end of the "Help!" sessions, the song "Wait" was recorded for the album, but was left unfinished. The Beatles resurrected the track and completed it for inclusion on "Rubber Soul" in November, when a final song was needed to complete that album.


title: Help!

text: The album cover shows the Beatles with their arms positioned to spell out a word in flag semaphore. According to cover photographer Robert Freeman, "I had the idea of semaphore spelling out the letters 'HELP'. But when we came to do the shot, the arrangement of the arms with those letters didn't look good. So we decided to improvise and ended up with the best graphic positioning of the arms."


title: Help!

text: On the UK Parlophone release, the letters formed by the Beatles appear to be "NUJV", whilst the slightly re-arranged US release on Capitol Records appeared to indicate the letters "NVUJ", with McCartney's left hand pointing to the Capitol logo. The Capitol LP was issued in a "deluxe" gatefold sleeve with several photos from the film and was priced $1 more than standard Capitol releases at the time.


title: Help!

text: There have been four CD releases of "Help!" The first was on 30 April 1987, using the 14-song UK track line-up. Having been available only as an import in the US in the past, the original 14-track UK version replaced the original US version with its release on LP and cassette as well on 21 July 1987. As with the CD release of the 1965 "Rubber Soul" album, the "Help!" CD featured a contemporary stereo digital remix of the album prepared by Martin in 1986. Martin had expressed concern to EMI over the original 1965 stereo mix, claiming it sounded "very woolly, and not at all what I thought should be a good issue". Martin went back to the original four-track tapes and remixed them for stereo. One of the most notable changes is the echo added to "Dizzy Miss Lizzy", something that was not evident on the original mix of the LP.


title: Help!

text: When the album was originally released on CD in Canada, pressings were imported from other countries, and used the 1987 remix. However, when the Disque Améric and Cinram plants in Canada started pressing the album, the original 1965 stereo mix was used by mistake. This was the only source for the 1965 stereo mix in its entirety until the release of the mono box set in 2009.


title: Help!

text: The 2009 remastered stereo CD was released on 9 September. It was "created from the original stereo digital master tapes from Martin's CD mixes made in 1986". The original 1965 stereo mix was included as a bonus on the mono CD contained in "The Beatles in Mono" boxed set.


title: Help!

text: The 1965 stereo mix was reissued again on the "Help!" CD contained in the Beatles collection "The Japan Box" released in 2014.


title: Help!

text: "Help!" was another worldwide commercial success for the Beatles.<ref name="Halpin/LTW"></ref> Derek Johnson of the "NME" said that the LP "maintains the Beatles' usual high standards" and was a "gay, infectious romp which doesn't let up in pace or sparkle from start to finish – with the exception of one slow track". Despite the band's introduction of new instrumentation into their sound, particularly a string quartet on "Yesterday", the reviewer also wrote of the album: "It's typical Beatles material, and offers very few surprises. But then, who wants surprises from the Beatles?" While typical of the light and snappy pop music reviews at the time, according to music journalist Michael Halpin, these comments angered McCartney, who, like his bandmates, believed that artists should constantly develop through their work.


title: Help!

text: In the United States, where the mainstream press had long focused on the Beatlemania phenomenon and had derided the group's music, as well as rock 'n' roll generally, the summer of 1965 coincided with the first examples of artistic recognition for the Beatles from the country's cultural mainstream. Among these endorsements, Richard Freed of "The New York Times" likened the band's songs to works from the European art music tradition. Adding to what he described as the Beatles' impact on "serious music", Freed cited musicologists and composers such as Leonard Bernstein and Abram Chasins as admirers of the group's work. Along with several nominations for "Yesterday", "Help!" was nominated in the category of Album of the Year at the 1966 Grammys Awards. The nomination marked the first time that a rock band had been recognised in this category.


title: Help!

text: In his review of the Beatles' 1987 CD releases, for "Rolling Stone" magazine, Steve Pond remarked on the "unstoppable momentum" evident in the band's pre-"Rubber Soul" albums and recommended "Help!" "for the relatively quiet and understated way in which they consolidated their strengths". Writing in 2004 edition of "The Rolling Stone Album Guide", Rob Sheffield says that the US version of "Help!" was "utterly ruined" through the replacement of the Beatles songs with the soundtrack music, and that, as a result, the album remained relatively overlooked. He describes the full album as "a big step forward" and "the first chapter in the astounding creative takeoff the Beatles were just beginning".


title: Help!

text: Mark Kemp of "Paste" considers it to be the equal of "A Hard Day's Night" and cites "Help!", "Ticket to Ride" and "Act Naturally" as highlights, along with Harrison's return as a songwriter. Kemp identifies "Yesterday" as "the album's masterpiece" and a song that "set the stage for one of the most groundbreaking and innovative periods in The Beatles' career, not to mention pop music in general". Neil McCormick of "The Daily Telegraph" says that the album evokes "a band in transition, shifting slightly uncomfortably from the pop thrills of Beatlemania to something more mature", with Lennon's writing increasingly autobiographical and the group's sound growing more sophisticated. McCormick concludes: ""Help!" may not be their greatest album, but it contains some of their greatest early songs."


title: Help!

text: In 2000, "Help!" was voted 119th in the third edition of Colin Larkin's book "All Time Top 1000 Albums". In 2006, it was recognised as one of the "Most Significant Rock Albums" in the "Greenwood Encyclopedia of Rock History". Two years before then, Tor Milde, music critic for the Norwegian newspaper "Verdens Gang", ranked it at number 20 on his list of "The 100 Best Pop and Rock Albums of All Time". In 2003, "Rolling Stone" ranked "Help!" number 332 on their list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", raising the ranking to number 331 in the 2012 update and then number 266 in the 2020 list. Based on the album's appearances in professional rankings and listings, the aggregate website Acclaimed Music lists "Help!" as the 10th most acclaimed album of 1965, the 92nd most acclaimed album of the 1960s and the 601st most acclaimed album in history.


title: Help!

text: The North American version, the band's eighth Capitol Records album and tenth overall, includes the songs in the film plus selections from the film's orchestral score composed and conducted by Ken Thorne, which contains one of the first uses of the Indian sitar on a rock/pop album, and its very first use on a Beatles record. "Ticket to Ride" is the only song on the American release in Duophonic stereo (also known as "fake stereo") reprocessed from the mono mix. Likewise, the mono version of the album uses a folded-down stereo mix of "Help!" instead of the true mono version used on the single, which features a different vocal track. "Help!" is available on CD as part of "The Capitol Albums, Volume 2" box set. This CD contains both the stereo and mono fold-down versions as heard on the American LP release. A second CD release of this album, which contains the seven songs in true mono mixes, was issued in 2014 individually and as part of the Beatles' "The U.S. Albums" box set.


title: Help!

text: All of the non-film tracks from side two of the Parlophone album were spread out through three American albums. Three were already issued on the previously released "Beatles VI": "You Like Me Too Much", "Tell Me What You See" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy". "I've Just Seen A Face" and "It's Only Love" were placed on the Capitol "Rubber Soul", with its follow-up album "Yesterday and Today" receiving the remaining two tracks: "Yesterday" and "Act Naturally".


title: Help!

text: The American version of "Help!" reached the number one spot on the "Billboard" Top LPs chart for nine weeks starting on 11 September 1965.


title: Help!

text: In the US, the album sold 1,314,457 copies by 31 December 1965 and 1,594,032 copies by the end of the decade.


title: Help!

text: The songs included in the soundtrack of the film "Help!" (tracks 1–7) were mixed into 5.1 surround sound for the film's 2007 DVD release.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: The Last Temptation of Christ is a 1988 epic religious drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by Paul Schrader with uncredited rewrites from Scorsese and Jay Cocks, it is an adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis' controversial 1955 novel of the same name. The film, starring Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Barbara Hershey, Andre Gregory, Harry Dean Stanton and David Bowie, was shot entirely in Morocco.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: The film depicts the life of Jesus Christ and his struggle with various forms of temptation including fear, doubt, depression, reluctance and lust. The book and the film depict Christ being tempted by imagining himself engaged in sexual activities, which has caused outrage from some Christians. It includes a disclaimer stating "This film is not based on the Gospels, but upon the fictional exploration of the eternal spiritual conflict."


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: Like the novel it was based on, the film generated controversy at the time of its release from Christian religious groups, who took issue with its departures from the gospel narratives. It received positive reviews from critics and some religious leaders, and Scorsese received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director. Hershey's performance as Mary Magdalene earned her a nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. Peter Gabriel's music score also received acclaim, including a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score. Dafoe's performance was praised, with some thinking he should have been nominated for Best Actor. In stark contrast, Keitel's performance was not well received and he was nominated for Worst Supporting Actor at the Golden Raspberry Awards.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: Jesus of Nazareth, a carpenter in Roman-occupied Judea, is torn between his own desires and his knowledge of God's plan for him. His friend Judas Iscariot is sent to kill him for collaborating with the Romans to crucify Jewish rebels, but suspects that Jesus is the Messiah and asks him to lead a liberation war against the Romans. While Jesus assures him that his message is love of mankind, Judas warns him not to harm the rebellion.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: Jesus starts preaching after saving prostitute Mary Magdalene from a stoning and being baptized by John the Baptist. He acquires disciples, some who want freedom from the Romans while Jesus maintains people should tend to matters of the spirit. Jesus goes into the desert to test his connection to God, where he resists temptation by Satan. Returning from the desert, Jesus is nursed back to health by Martha and Mary of Bethany, who encourage him to marry and have children.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: After performing miracles, including raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus's ministry reaches Jerusalem, where he chases out money lenders from the temple. He begins bleeding from his hands, which he recognizes as a sign that he must die on the cross to bring salvation to mankind and instructs Judas to give him to the Romans. Jesus convenes his disciples for Passover seder, whereupon Judas leads a contingent of soldiers to arrest Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Pontius Pilate tells Jesus that he must be put to death as he represents a threat to the Roman Empire; he is subsequently flogged, mocked and taken to be crucified.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: While on the cross, a young lady who claims to be Jesus's guardian angel tells him that, while he is the Son of God, he is not the Messiah and that God is pleased with him and wants him to be happy. She brings him down off the cross and, invisible to others, takes him to Mary Magdalene, whom he marries. They live a happy life when she abruptly dies and Jesus is consoled by his angel, going on to start a family with Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus. As an older man, Jesus encounters the apostle Paul preaching about the Messiah and tries to tell him that he is the man about whom Paul has been preaching. Paul repudiates him, saying that even if Jesus had not died on the cross, his message was the truth, and nothing would stop him from proclaiming that. Jesus debates him, stating that salvation cannot be founded on lies.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: Near the end of his life, with Jerusalem in the throes of rebellion, an elderly dying Jesus calls his former disciples to his bed. When Judas comes he reveals Jesus's guardian angel is actually Satan, who tricked him into believing he did not have to give himself up to save the world. Crawling back through the burning city, Jesus reaches the site of his crucifixion and begs God to let him fulfill his purpose, stating "I "want" to be the Messiah!" Jesus then finds himself once more on the cross, having overcome the "last temptation" of escaping death, being married and raising a family, and the ensuing disaster that would have consequently encompassed mankind. Jesus cries out "It is accomplished!" and dies.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: Scorsese had wanted to make a film version of Jesus' life since childhood. While he was directing Barbara Hershey in the 1972 film "Boxcar Bertha", she gave him a copy of the Kazantzakis novel. Scorsese optioned the novel in the late 1970s, and he gave it to Paul Schrader to adapt. "The Last Temptation of Christ" was originally to be Scorsese's follow-up to "The King of Comedy"; production was slated to begin in 1983 for Paramount, with a budget of about $14 million and shot on location in Israel. The original cast included Aidan Quinn as Jesus, Sting as Pontius Pilate, Ray Davies as Judas Iscariot, and Vanity as Mary Magdalene. Management at Paramount and its then parent company, Gulf+Western grew uneasy due to the ballooning budget for the picture and protest letters received from religious groups. The project went into turnaround and was finally canceled in December 1983. Scorsese went on to make "After Hours" instead.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: In 1986, Universal Studios became interested in the project. Scorsese offered to shoot the film in 58 days for $7 million, and Universal eventually greenlighted the production as Scorsese agreed to direct a more mainstream film for the studio in the future (it eventually resulted in "Cape Fear"). Critic and screenwriter Jay Cocks worked with Scorsese to revise Schrader's script. Aidan Quinn passed on the role of Jesus, and Scorsese recast Willem Dafoe in the part. Sting also passed on the role of Pilate, with the role being recast with David Bowie. Principal photography began in October 1987. The location shoot in Morocco (a first for Scorsese) was difficult, and the difficulties were compounded by the hurried schedule. "We worked in a state of emergency," Scorsese recalled. Scenes had to be improvised and worked out on the set with little deliberation, leading Scorsese to develop a minimalist aesthetic for the film. Shooting wrapped by December 25, 1987.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: The film's musical soundtrack, composed by Peter Gabriel, received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Original Score - Motion Picture in 1988 and was released on CD with the title "Passion", which won a Grammy in 1990 for Best New Age Album. The film's score itself helped to popularize world music. Gabriel subsequently compiled an album called "Passion – Sources", including additional material by various musicians that inspired him in composing the soundtrack, or which he sampled for the soundtrack. The original scores brought together many international artists including Pakistani Musician and vocalist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Egyptian Kanun player Abdul Aziz, Turkish Ney flute player Kudsi Ergüner,  Armenian Doudouk players Antranik Askarian and Vatche Housepian.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: The film opened on August 12, 1988. The film was later screened as a part of the Venice International Film Festival on September 7, 1988. In response to the film's acceptance as a part of the film festival's lineup, director Franco Zeffirelli removed his film "Young Toscanini" from the program.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: Although "The Last Temptation of Christ" was released on VHS and Laserdisc, many video rental stores, including the then-dominant Blockbuster Video, declined to carry it for rental as a result of the film's controversial reception. In 1997, the Criterion Collection issued a special edition of "The Last Temptation of Christ" on Laserdisc, which Criterion re-issued on DVD in 2000 and on Blu-ray disc in Region A in March 2012 and Region B in April 2019.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: "The Last Temptation of Christ" opened in 123 theaters on August 12, 1988 in the United States and Canada, and grossed $401,211 in its opening weekend. At the end of its run, it had grossed $8,373,585 in the United States and Canada. Internationally it grossed $25.4 million for a worldwide total of $33.8 million.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 82% of 103 film critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The consensus states, "Contrary to accusations of irreverence, "The Last Temptation of Christ"s biggest sins are actually languid pacing and some tinny dialogue -- but Martin Scorsese's passion for the subject shines through in an oft-transcendent rumination on faith." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 80 based on 18 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: In a four-out-of-four star review for the "Chicago Sun-Times", Roger Ebert, who later included the film in his list of "Great Movies", wrote that Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader "paid Christ the compliment of taking him and his message seriously, and they have made a film that does not turn him into a garish, emasculated image from a religious postcard. Here he is flesh and blood, struggling, questioning, asking himself and his father which is the right way, and finally, after great suffering, earning the right to say, on the cross, 'It is accomplished.'" Gene Siskel from the "Chicago Tribune" said "Dafoe manages to draw us into the mystery, anguish and joy of the holy life. This is anything but another one of those boring biblical costume epics. There is genuine challenge and hope in this movie."


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: A review associated with Catholic News Service asserts that "The Last Temptation of Christ" "fails because of artistic inadequacy rather than anti-religious bias." "Halliwell's Film Guide" awarded it one star from a possible four, describing it as "beautifully shot and strikingly acted, but wordy and too long". Alan Jones awarded it four stars out of five for "Radio Times", calling it "a challenging essay on the life of Jesus" and "neither blasphemous nor offensive", though he felt it was "slightly too long, and Scorsese does pull some punches in deference to the subject matter", but described these as "minor criticisms" and concluded that it was a "sincere work".


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: On October 22, 1988, an Integralist Catholic group set fire to the Saint Michel cinema in Paris while it was showing the film. Shortly after midnight, an incendiary device ignited under a seat in the less supervised underground room, where a different film was being shown. The incendiary device consisted of a charge of potassium chlorate, triggered by a vial containing sulphuric acid. The attack injured thirteen people, four of whom were severely burned, and severely damaged the cinema.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: In Roger Ebert's book "Scorsese by Ebert", the critic wrote of the reaction to "The Last Temptation of Christ", "...Scorsese was targeted by death threats and the jeremiads of TV evangelists". The threats were significant enough that Scorsese had to use bodyguards during public appearances for a few years.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: Because of the film's departures from the gospel narratives—and especially a brief scene wherein Jesus and Mary Magdalene consummate their marriage—several Christian groups organized vocal protests and boycotts of the film prior to and upon its release. One protest, organized by a religious Californian radio station, gathered 600 protesters to picket the headquarters of Universal Studios' then parent company MCA. One of the protestors dressed up as MCA's Chairman Lew Wasserman and pretended to drive nails through Jesus' hands into a wooden cross. Evangelist Bill Bright offered to buy the film's negative from Universal in order to destroy it. The protests were effective in convincing several theater chains not to screen the film. One of those chains, General Cinemas, later apologized to Scorsese for doing so.


title: The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

text: Mother Angelica, a Catholic nun and founder of Eternal Word Television Network, described "Last Temptation" as "the most blasphemous ridicule of the Eucharist that's ever been perpetrated in this world" and "a holocaust movie that has the power to destroy souls eternally." In some countries, including Greece, South Africa, Turkey, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina, the film was banned or censored for several years. As of July 2010, the film continues to be banned in the Philippines and Singapore. In February 2020, Netflix revealed the film to be one of the five titles that have been removed from the Singapore version of Netflix at the demand of the Singapore government's Infocomm Media Development Authority.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Coke is a grey, hard, and porous coal-based fuel with a high carbon content and few impurities, made by heating coal or oil in the absence of air—a destructive distillation process. It is an important industrial product, used mainly in iron ore smelting, but also as a fuel in stoves and forges when air pollution is a concern.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: The unqualified term "coke" usually refers to the product derived from low-ash and low-sulphur bituminous coal by a process called coking. A similar product called petroleum coke, or pet coke, is obtained from crude oil in oil refineries. Coke may also be formed naturally by geologic processes.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Historical sources dating to the 4th century describe the production of coke in ancient China. The Chinese first used coke for heating and cooking no later than the ninth century. By the first decades of the eleventh century, Chinese ironworkers in the Yellow River valley began to fuel their furnaces with coke, solving their fuel problem in that tree-sparse region.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: China is the largest producer and exporter of coke today. China produces 60% of the world's coke. Concerns about air pollution have motivated technological changes in the coke industry by elimination of outdated coking technologies that are not energy-efficient.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: In 1589, a patent was granted to Thomas Proctor and William Peterson for making iron and steel and melting lead with "earth-coal, sea-coal, turf, and peat". The patent contains a distinct allusion to the preparation of coal by "cooking". In 1590, a patent was granted to the Dean of York to "purify pit-coal and free it from its offensive smell". In 1620, a patent was granted to a company composed of William St. John and other knights, mentioning the use of coke in smelting ores and manufacturing metals. In 1627, a patent was granted to Sir John Hacket and Octavius de Strada for a method of rendering sea-coal and pit-coal as useful as charcoal for burning in houses, without offence by smell or smoke.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: In 1603, Hugh Plat suggested that coal might be charred in a manner analogous to the way charcoal is produced from wood. This process was not employed until 1642, when coke was used for roasting malt in Derbyshire; previously, brewers had used wood, as uncoked coal cannot be used in brewing because its sulphurous fumes would impart a foul taste to the beer. It was considered an improvement in quality, and brought about an "alteration which all England admired"—the coke process allowed for a lighter roast of the malt, leading to the creation of what by the end of the 17th century was called pale ale.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: In 1709, Abraham Darby I established a coke-fired blast furnace to produce cast iron. Coke's superior crushing strength allowed blast furnaces to become taller and larger. The ensuing availability of inexpensive iron was one of the factors leading to the Industrial Revolution. Before this time, iron-making used large quantities of charcoal, produced by burning wood. As the coppicing of forests became unable to meet the demand, the substitution of coke for charcoal became common in Great Britain, and coke was manufactured by burning coal in heaps on the ground so that only the outer layer burned, leaving the interior of the pile in a carbonized state. In the late 18th century, brick beehive ovens were developed, which allowed more control over the burning process.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: In 1768, John Wilkinson built a more practical oven for converting coal into coke. Wilkinson improved the process by building the coal heaps around a low central chimney built of loose bricks and with openings for the combustion gases to enter, resulting in a higher yield of better coke. With greater skill in the firing, covering and quenching of the heaps, yields were increased from about 33% to 65% by the middle of the 19th century. The Scottish iron industry expanded rapidly in the second quarter of the 19th century, through the adoption of the hot-blast process in its coalfields.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: In 1802, a battery of beehive ovens was set up near Sheffield, to coke the Silkstone coal seam for use in crucible steel melting. By 1870, there were 14,000 beehive ovens in operation on the West Durham coalfields, producing 4,000,000 long tons of coke per year. As a measure of the expansion of coke making, the requirements of the iron industry in Britain were about 1,000,000 tons per year in the early 1850s, rising to about 7,000,000 tons by 1880. Of these, about 5,000,000 tons were produced in Durham county, 1,000,000 tons in the South Wales coalfield, and 1,000,000 tons in Yorkshire and Derbyshire.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: In the first years of steam locomotives, coke was the normal fuel. This resulted from an early piece of environmental legislation; any proposed locomotive had to "consume its own smoke". This was not technically possible to achieve until the firebox arch came into use, but burning coke, with its low smoke emissions, was considered to meet the requirement. This rule was quietly dropped, and cheaper coal became the normal fuel, as railways gained acceptance among the public. The smoke plume produced by a travelling locomotive seems now to be a mark of a steam railway, and so preserved for posterity.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: So-called "gas works" produced coke by heating coal in enclosed chambers. The flammable gas that was given off was stored in gas holders, to be used domestically and industrially for cooking, heating and lighting. The gas was commonly known as "town gas" since underground networks of pipes ran through most towns. It was replaced by "natural gas" (initially from the North Sea oil and gas fields) in the decade after 1967. Other byproducts of coke production included tar and ammonia, while the coke was used instead of coal in cooking ranges and to provide heat in domestic premises before the advent of central heating.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: In the US, the first use of coke in an iron furnace occurred around 1817 at Isaac Meason's Plumsock puddling furnace and rolling mill in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. In the late 19th century, the coalfields of western Pennsylvania provided a rich source of raw material for coking. In 1885, the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company constructed the world's longest string of coke ovens in Walston, Pennsylvania, with 475 ovens over a length of 2 km (1.25 miles). Their output reached 22,000 tons per month. The Minersville Coke Ovens in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Between 1870 and 1905, the number of beehive ovens in the US skyrocketed from about 200 to almost 31,000, which produced nearly 18,000,000 tons of coke in the Pittsburgh area alone. One observer boasted that if loaded into a train, "the year's production would make up a train so long that the engine in front of it would go to San Francisco and come back to Connellsville before the caboose had gotten started out of the Connellsville yards!" The number of beehive ovens in Pittsburgh peaked in 1910 at almost 48,000.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Although it made a top-quality fuel, coking poisoned the surrounding landscape. After 1900, the serious environmental damage of beehive coking attracted national notice, although the damage had plagued the district for decades. "The smoke and gas from some ovens destroy all vegetation around the small mining communities", noted W. J. Lauck of the U.S. Immigration Commission in 1911. Passing through the region on train, University of Wisconsin president Charles Van Hise saw "long rows of beehive ovens from which flame is bursting and dense clouds of smoke issuing, making the sky dark. By night the scene is rendered indescribably vivid by these numerous burning pits. The beehive ovens make the entire region of coke manufacture one of dulled sky: cheerless and unhealthful."


title: Coke (fuel)

text: The industrial production of coke from coal is called coking. The coal is baked in an airless kiln, a "coke furnace" or "coking oven", at temperatures as high as but usually around . This process vaporises or decomposes organic substances in the coal, driving off volatile products, including water, in the form of coal-gas and coal-tar. Coke is the non-volatile residue of the decomposition, the cemented-together carbon and mineral residue of the original coal particles in the form of a hard and somewhat glassy solid.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Some facilities have "by-product" coking ovens in which the volatile decomposition products are collected, purified and separated for use in other industries, as fuel or chemical feedstocks. Otherwise the volatile byproducts are burned to heat the coking ovens. This is an older method, but is still being used for new construction.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Bituminous coal must meet a set of criteria for use as coking coal, determined by particular coal assay techniques. These include moisture content, ash content, sulphur content, volatile content, tar, and plasticity. This blending is targeted at producing a coke of appropriate strength (generally measured by coke strength after reaction), while losing an appropriate amount of mass. Other blending considerations include ensuring the coke doesn't swell too much during production and destroy the coke oven through excessive wall pressures.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: The greater the volatile matter in coal, the more by-product can be produced. It is generally considered that levels of 26–29% of volatile matter in the coal blend are good for coking purposes. Thus different types of coal are proportionally blended to reach acceptable levels of volatility before the coking process begins. If the range of coal types is too great, the resulting coke is of widely varying strength and ash content, and is usually unsaleable, although in some cases it may be sold as an ordinary heating fuel. As the coke has lost its volatile matter, it cannot be coked again.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Coking coal is different from thermal coal, but arises from the same basic coal-forming process. Coking coal has different macerals from thermal coal, i.e. different forms of the compressed and fossilized vegetative matter that comprise the coal. The different macerals arise from different mixtures of the plant species, and variations of the conditions under which the coal has formed. Coking coal is graded according to its ash percentage-by-weight after burning:


title: Coke (fuel)

text: The "hearth" process of coke-making, using lump coal, was akin to that of charcoal-burning; instead of a heap of prepared wood, covered with twigs, leaves and earth, there was a heap of coals, covered with coke dust. The hearth process continued to be used in many areas during the first half of the 19th century, but two events greatly lessened its importance. These were the invention of the hot blast in iron-smelting and the introduction of the beehive coke oven. The use of a blast of hot air, instead of cold air, in the smelting furnace was first introduced by Neilson in Scotland in 1828.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: A fire brick chamber shaped like a dome is used, commonly known as a beehive oven. It is typically wide and high. The roof has a hole for charging the coal or other kindling from the top. The discharging hole is provided in the circumference of the lower part of the wall. In a coke oven battery, a number of ovens are built in a row with common walls between neighboring ovens. A battery consisted of a great many ovens, sometimes hundreds, in a row.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Coal is introduced from the top to produce an even layer of about deep. Air is supplied initially to ignite the coal. Carbonization starts and produces volatile matter, which burns inside the partially closed side door. Carbonization proceeds from top to bottom and is completed in two to three days. Heat is supplied by the burning volatile matter so no by-products are recovered. The exhaust gases are allowed to escape to the atmosphere. The hot coke is quenched with water and discharged, manually through the side door. The walls and roof retain enough heat to initiate carbonization of the next charge.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: When coal was burned in a coke oven, the impurities of the coal not already driven off as gases accumulated to form slag, which was effectively a conglomeration of the removed impurities. Since it was not the desired coke product, slag was initially nothing more than an unwanted by-product and was discarded. Later, however, it was found to have many beneficial uses and has since been used as an ingredient in brick-making, mixed cement, granule-covered shingles, and even as a fertilizer.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: People can be exposed to coke oven emissions in the workplace by inhalation, skin contact, or eye contact. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set the legal limit for coke oven emissions exposure in the workplace as 0.150 mg/m benzene-soluble fraction over an eight-hour workday. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a recommended exposure limit (REL) of 0.2 mg/m benzene-soluble fraction over an eight-hour workday.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Coke is used as a fuel and as a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. The carbon monoxide produced by combustion of coke reduces iron oxide (hematite) to produce iron:


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Coke was used in Australia in the 1960s and early 1970s for house heating, and was incentivized for home use in the UK (so as to displace coal) after the 1956 Clean Air Act, which was passed in response to the Great Smog of London in 1952.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Since smoke-producing constituents are driven off during the coking of coal, coke forms a desirable fuel for stoves and furnaces in which conditions are not suitable for the complete burning of bituminous coal itself. Coke may be combusted producing little or no smoke, while bituminous coal would produce much smoke. Coke was widely used as a smokeless fuel substitute for coal in domestic heating following the creation of "smokeless zones" in the United Kingdom.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Highland Park distillery in Orkney roasts malted barley for use in their Scotch whisky in kilns burning a mixture of coke and peat.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Wastewater from coking is highly toxic and carcinogenic. It contains phenolic, aromatic, heterocyclic, and polycyclic organics, and inorganics including cyanides, sulfides, ammonium and ammonia. Various methods for its treatment have been studied in recent years. The white rot fungus "Phanerochaete chrysosporium" can remove up to 80% of phenols from coking waste water.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: The bulk specific gravity of coke is typically around 0.77. It is highly porous. Both the chemical composition and physical properties are important to the usefulness of coke in blast furnaces. In terms of composition, low ash and sulphur content are desirable. Other important characteristics are the M10, M25, and M40 test crush indexes, which convey the strength of coke during transportation into the blast furnaces; depending on blast furnaces size, finely crushed coke pieces must not be allowed into the blast furnaces because they would impede the flow of gas through the charge of iron and coke. A related characteristic is the Coke Strength After Reaction (CSR) index; it represents coke's ability to withstand the violent conditions inside the blast furnace before turning into fine particles. Pieces of coke are denoted with the following terminology: “bell coke” (30 - 80 mm), “nut coke” (10 - 30 mm), “coke breeze” (< 10 mm).


title: Coke (fuel)

text: The water content in coke is practically zero at the end of the coking process, but it is often water quenched so that it can be transported to the blast furnaces. The porous structure of coke absorbs some water, usually 3–6% of its mass. In more modern coke plants an advanced method of coke cooling uses air quenching.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Bituminous coal must meet a set of criteria for use as coking coal, determined by particular coal assay techniques.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: The solid residue remaining from refinement of petroleum by the "cracking" process is also a form of coke. Petroleum coke has many uses besides being a fuel, such as the manufacture of dry cells and of electrolytic and welding electrodes.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Fluid coking is a process which converts heavy residual crude into lighter products such as naphtha, kerosene, heating oil, and hydrocarbon gases. The "fluid" term refers to the fact that solid coke particles behave as a fluid solid in the continuous fluid coking process versus the older batch delayed-coking process where a solid mass of coke builds up in the coke drum over time.


title: Coke (fuel)

text: Due to a lack of oil or high-quality coals in East Germany, scientists developed a process to turn low-quality lignite into coke called high temperature lignite coke.


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: , abbreviated as , is a 2018 Japanese science fiction monster romance anime television series co-produced by A-1 Pictures and Trigger and animated by Trigger and CloverWorks that premiered in January 2018. The series was announced at Trigger's Anime Expo 2017 panel in July 2017. A manga adaptation by Kentaro Yabuki and another four-panel comic strip manga began serialization in January 2018.


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: "Darling in the Franxx" is set in a dystopian future where children are artificially created and indoctrinated solely to defend the remnants of civilization. The story follows a squad of ten pilots, particularly focusing on the partnership between Hiro, a former prodigy, and Zero Two, a hybrid human and elite pilot who aspires to become entirely human.


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: The animation began international distribution simultaneously upon its domestic release. The streaming service Crunchyroll internationally simulcast the series, with Aniplus Asia simulcasting the series in Southeast Asia. Service partner Funimation began the dubbed release of the series in February 2018.


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: "Darling in the Franxx" takes place in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future where the remnants of human civilization have abandoned the surface. Adults and children exist in contrasting environments from each other. Adults live in technologically advanced cities within Plantations and are immortal, but procreation and relationships among them have become obsolete and undesirable. Artificially-created children, termed "parasites", are deprived of individuality and are educated only for piloting Franxx in pairs to defend humanity. The children are kept in isolation from adult society in environments nicknamed "birdcages", which emulate that of a bygone era so that they can develop the emotional responses required to pilot Franxx.


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: In the early 21st century, the progress of human civilization was accelerated by ground-breaking discoveries in mining technology, allowing the extraction of magma energy for a new low-cost, all-encompassing energy source. Scientists contributing to the breakthrough form "APE", an organization that would significantly influence world politics and the global economy as a result of their discoveries. After discovering human immortality, much of mankind opted to become immortal despite the side effect of losing their reproductive functions. A cult of personality surrounds Papa, the chairman of the APE, which all humans come to worship akin to a god. Now governing the remnants of civilization, APE leads humanity to abandon Earth's now desolate surface for the relative safety of mobile fortress-cities known as Plantations.


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: Pushed to the brink of extinction in a post-apocalyptic world, humanity is under constant threat from giant creatures known as , which are subdivided into at least four categories based on their size: "Conrad", "Mohorovičić", "Gutenberg" and "(Super) Lehmann". Pushed to the brink of annihilation, parasites are raised to pilot giant mecha known as in boy-girl pairs. A male parasite is termed a "stamen", and a female parasite is referred to as a "pistil" (the male and female reproductive parts of a flower, respectively). Parasites are artificially created and have short lifespans.


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: A team of ten parasites is assigned to the experimental Squad 13 of Plantation 13. One of them, Hiro (Code:016), is a former pilot-candidate prodigy who can no longer synchronize with his partner, and they both fail to complete the training program. While skipping his squad's graduation ceremony, Hiro encounters Zero Two (Code:002), an elite Franxx pilot with klaxosaur blood, red horns, and an infamous reputation as the "Partner Killer". It is rumored that Zero Two's partners are killed after pairing with her by the third time. Shortly after, a Klaxosaur attacks, disrupting Hiro's graduation ceremony and leaving Zero Two's partner killed in action. Despite the rumors, Hiro volunteers to become her new partner, or as Zero Two calls him, her "darling".


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: Atsushi Nishigori directed the 24-episode anime series with Nishigori and Naotaka Hayashi handling series composition, Masayoshi Tanaka designing the characters, Shigeto Koyama acting as a mechanical designer, Hiroyuki Imaishi serving as action animation director and Asami Tachibana composing the music. The opening theme song, titled "Kiss of Death", was performed by Mika Nakashima and produced by Hyde, while the ending themes titled (ep. 1–6), (ep 7), "Beautiful World" (ep 8-12, 14), (ep 13), "Escape" (ep 16-20), and "Darling" (ep. 21–23) were performed by XX:me (read as "Kiss Me"), a unit consisting of the series' main female castmembers, Zero Two, Ichigo, Miku, Kokoro, and Ikuno. Crunchyroll simulcast the series, while Funimation has licensed the series, and it was streamed with an English dub. Aniplus Asia simulcast the series in Southeast Asia.


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: A manga adaptation written by Code:000, illustrated by Kentaro Yabuki and another four-panel comic strip spinoff manga by Mato started their serialization on the "Shōnen Jump+" website on January 14, 2018. The manga adaptation from volume 4 onwards differs significantly from the original anime. As of May 2, 2018, the manga has sold 400,000 copies in Japan.


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: On July 1, 2021, Seven Seas Entertainment announced they licensed the manga for North American publication.


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: Mato's four-panel spinoff manga ended on July 11, 2018, and was compiled into a full-color physical book released on October 4, 2018.


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: The series' soundtrack is composed by Asami Tachibana and published by Aniplex. The first disc containing 21 tracks is enclosed with the first home video release volume of the anime which was released on April 25, 2018. The second disc also containing 21 tracks is enclosed with the fourth home video release volume which was released on July 25, 2018. The third disc containing 22 tracks is enclosed with the fifth home video release volume which was released on August 29, 2018. All three soundtrack volumes were released digitally on various online music stores on March 27, 2019.


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: Reception to "Darling in the Franxx" in English-language media was mixed. Some reviews praised the large focus of the series on its coming-of-age and romance elements. Other themes with a more mixed or negative reception involved the heavy sexual innuendos of teenagers, the lack of plot development regarding the alien species VIRM, and the plot twists of the second half of the series, and the rushed pacing of the storyline following episode 15. Eric Van Allen of "Kotaku" described the series as having "moments of brilliance" with solid work on the early mech fights and the character of Zero Two, but disliked the plot developments in the second half of the series and the ending. Kyle Rogacion of "Goomba Stomp" called the series "an endearing character-driven coming-of-age story" but criticized it for having by the end "eschewed everything that made it great and settled for the easy way out". "Random Curiosity" voiced a more positive opinion to its ending, stating the series will be "well-remembered for seasons to come" and "kept us all fixated and eagerly anticipating every episode set to air".


title: Darling in the Franxx

text: At Newtype Anime Awards 2018, Shigeto Koyama was awarded Best Mechanical Design, with Zero Two and the series itself being runners-up for Best Female Character and Best TV Anime, respectively.


title: Übermensch

text: The (; "Overhuman") is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1883 book, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (), Nietzsche has his character Zarathustra posit the as a goal for humanity to set for itself. The represents a shift from otherworldly Christian values and manifests the grounded human ideal.


title: Übermensch

text: In 1896, Alexander Tille made the first English translation of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", rendering as "Beyond-Man". In 1909, Thomas Common translated it as "Superman", following the terminology of George Bernard Shaw's 1903 stage play "Man and Superman". Walter Kaufmann lambasted this translation in the 1950s for two reasons: first, the failure of the English prefix "super" to capture the nuance of the German (though in Latin, its meaning of "above" or "beyond" is closer to the German); and second, for promoting misidentification of Nietzsche's concept with the comic-book character Superman. Kaufmann and others preferred to translate as "overman". A translation like "superior humans" might better fit the concept of Nietzsche as he unfolds his narrative. Scholars continue to employ both terms, some simply opting to reproduce the German word.


title: Übermensch

text: The German prefix can have connotations of superiority, transcendence, excessiveness, or intensity, depending on the words to which it is attached. "Mensch" refers to a human being, not a male specifically as it is still sometimes erroneously believed. The adjective means super-human: beyond human strength or out of proportion to humanity.


title: Übermensch

text: Nietzsche introduces the concept of the in contrast to his understanding of the other-worldliness of Christianity: Zarathustra proclaims the will of the to give meaning to life on earth, and admonishes his audience to ignore those who promise other-worldly fulfillment to draw them away from the earth. The turn away from the earth is prompted, he says, by a dissatisfaction with life that causes the sufferer to imagine another world which will fulfill his revenge. The grasps the earthly world with relish and gratitude.


title: Übermensch

text: Zarathustra declares that the Christian escape from this world also required the invention of an immortal soul separate from the earthly body. This led to the abnegation and mortification of the body, or asceticism. Zarathustra further links the to the body and to interpreting the soul as simply an aspect of the body.


title: Übermensch

text: Zarathustra ties the to the death of God. While the concept of God was the ultimate expression of other-worldly values and their underlying instincts, belief in God nevertheless did give meaning to life for a time. "God is dead" means that the idea of God can no longer provide values. Nietzsche refers to this crucial paradigm shift as a reevaluation of values. According to Nietzsche, the moral doctrine of Catholicism had become outdated. With the sole source of values exhausted, the danger of nihilism looms.


title: Übermensch

text: Zarathustra presents the as the creator of new values to banish nihilism. If the acts to create new values within the moral vacuum of nihilism, there is nothing that this creative act would not justify. Alternatively, in the absence of this creation, there are no grounds upon which to criticize nor justify any action, including the particular values created and the means by which they are promulgated.


title: Übermensch

text: In order to avoid a relapse into Platonic idealism or asceticism, the creation of these new values cannot be motivated by the same instincts that gave birth to those tables of values. Instead, they must be motivated by a love of this world and of life. Whereas Nietzsche diagnosed the Christian value system as a reaction against life and hence destructive in a sense, the new values which the will be responsible for will be life-affirming and creative (see Nietzschean affirmation). Through realizing this new set of values, the is perfect because they have mastered all human obstacles.


title: Übermensch

text: Zarathustra first announces the as a goal humanity can set for itself. All human life would be given meaning by how it advanced a new generation of human beings. The aspiration of a woman would be to give birth to an , for example; her relationships with men would be judged by this standard.


title: Übermensch

text: Zarathustra contrasts the with the degenerate last man of egalitarian modernity, an alternative goal which humanity might set for itself. The last man appears only in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", and is presented as a smothering of aspiration antithetical to the spirit of the .


title: Übermensch

text: According to Rüdiger Safranski, some commentators associate the with a program of eugenics. This is most pronounced when considered in the aspect of a goal that humanity sets for itself. The reduction of all psychology to physiology implies, to some, that human beings can be bred for cultural traits. This interpretation of Nietzsche's doctrine focuses more on the future of humanity than on a single cataclysmic individual. There is no consensus regarding how this aspect of the relates to the creation of new values.


title: Übermensch

text: For Rüdiger Safranski, the represents a higher biological type reached through artificial selection and at the same time is also an ideal for anyone who is creative and strong enough to master the whole spectrum of human potential, good and "evil", to become an "artist-tyrant". In "Ecce Homo", Nietzsche vehemently denied any idealistic, democratic or humanitarian interpretation of the : "The word [designates] a type of supreme achievement, as opposed to 'modern' men, 'good' men, Christians, and other nihilists ... When I whispered into the ears of some people that they were better off looking for a Cesare Borgia than a Parsifal, they did not believe their ears." Safranski argues that the combination of ruthless warrior pride and artistic brilliance that defined the Italian Renaissance embodied the sense of the for Nietzsche. According to Safranski, Nietzsche intended the ultra-aristocratic figure of the to serve as a Machiavellian bogeyman of the modern Western middle class and its pseudo-Christian egalitarian value system.


title: Übermensch

text: The shares a place of prominence in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" with another of Nietzsche's key concepts: the eternal recurrence of the same. Several interpretations for this fact have been offered.


title: Übermensch

text: Laurence Lampert suggests that the eternal recurrence replaces the as the object of serious aspiration. This is in part due to the fact that even the can appear like an other-worldly hope. The lies in the future – no historical figures have ever been – and so still represents a sort of eschatological redemption in some future time.


title: Übermensch

text: Stanley Rosen, on the other hand, suggests that the doctrine of eternal return is an esoteric ruse meant to save the concept of the from the charge of Idealism. Rather than positing an as-yet unexperienced perfection, Nietzsche would be the prophet of something that has occurred a countless number of times in the past.


title: Übermensch

text: Others maintain that willing the eternal recurrence of the same is a necessary step if the is to create new values, untainted by the spirit of gravity or asceticism. Values involve a rank-ordering of things, and so are inseparable from approval and disapproval; yet it was dissatisfaction that prompted men to seek refuge in other-worldliness and embrace other-worldly values. Therefore, it could seem that the , in being devoted to any values at all, would necessarily fail to create values that did not share some bit of asceticism. Willing the eternal recurrence is presented as accepting the existence of the low while still recognizing it as the low, and thus as overcoming the spirit of gravity or asceticism.


title: Übermensch

text: Still others suggest that one must have the strength of the in order to will the eternal recurrence of the same; that is, only the will have the strength to fully accept all of his past life, including his failures and misdeeds, and to truly will their eternal return. This action nearly kills Zarathustra, for example, and most human beings cannot avoid other-worldliness because they really are sick, not because of any choice they made.


title: Übermensch

text: The term was used frequently by Hitler and the Nazi regime to describe their idea of a biologically superior Aryan or Germanic master race; a racial version of Nietzsche's became a philosophical foundation for National Socialist ideas. The Nazi notion of the master race also spawned the idea of "inferior humans" ("Untermenschen") who should be dominated and enslaved; this term does not originate with Nietzsche, who was critical of both antisemitism and German nationalism. In his final years, Nietzsche began to believe that he was in fact Polish, not German, and was quoted as saying, "I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood". In defiance of nationalist doctrines, he claimed that he and Germany were great only because of "Polish blood in their veins", and that he would "[have] all anti-semites shot." Nietzsche died long before Hitler's reign, and it was partly Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche who manipulated her brother's words to accommodate the worldview of herself and her husband, Bernhard Förster, a prominent German nationalist and antisemite. Förster founded the "Deutscher Volksverein" (German People's League) in 1881 with Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg.


title: Übermensch

text: The influential American anarchist Emma Goldman, in the preface of her famous collection "Anarchism and Other Essays", defends both Nietzsche and Max Stirner from attacks within anarchism when she says


title: Übermensch

text: Sunshine says that the "Spanish anarchists also mixed their class politics with Nietzschean inspiration." Murray Bookchin, in "The Spanish Anarchists", describes prominent Catalan CNT member Salvador Seguí as "an admirer of Nietzschean individualism, of the to whom 'all is permitted. Bookchin, in his 1973 introduction to Sam Dolgoff's "The Anarchist Collectives", even describes the reconstruction of society by the workers as a Nietzschean project. Bookchin says that


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Halo: Combat Evolved is a 2001 first-person shooter game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released as a launch game for Microsoft's Xbox video game console on November 15, 2001. The game was ported to Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X in 2003. It was later released as a downloadable Xbox Original for the Xbox 360. "Halo" is set in the twenty-sixth century, with the player assuming the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier. The Chief is accompanied by Cortana, an artificial intelligence. Players battle aliens as they attempt to uncover the secrets of the eponymous Halo, a ring-shaped artificial world.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Bungie began the development of what would eventually become "Halo" "CE" in 1997. Initially, the game was a real-time strategy game that morphed into a third-person shooter before becoming a first-person shooter. During development, Microsoft acquired Bungie and turned "Halo" into a launch game for its first video game console, the Xbox. "Halo" was a critical and commercial success and is often praised as one of the greatest video games ever made. The game's popularity led to labels such as ""Halo" clone" and ""Halo" killer", applied to games either similar to or anticipated to be better than it. Its sequel, "Halo 2", was released for the original Xbox in 2004, and the game spawned a multi-billion-dollar multimedia franchise that incorporates games, books, toys, and films.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: The game inspired and was used in the fan-created "Red vs. Blue" video series, which is credited as one of the first major successes of machinima (the technique of using real-time 3D engines, often from video games, to create animated films). More than six million copies had been sold worldwide by November 2005. A remake of the game's campaign, "", was released for Xbox 360 by 343 Industries on the 10th anniversary of the original game's launch. "Anniversary" was re-released alongside the original competitive multiplayer as part of "" in 2014.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: "Halo: Combat Evolved" is a first-person shooter (FPS) game in which players primarily experience gameplay in a 3D environment from a first-person view. The player can move around and look up, down, left, or right. The game features vehicles, ranging from armored 4×4s and tanks to alien hovercraft and aircraft, many of which can be controlled by the player. The game switches to a third-person perspective during vehicle use for pilots and mounted gun operators; passengers maintain a first-person view. The game's heads-up display includes a "motion tracker" that registers moving allies, moving or firing enemies, and vehicles, in a certain radius of the player.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: The player character is equipped with an energy shield that nullifies damage from weapons fire and forceful impacts. The shield's charge appears as a blue bar in the corner of the game's heads-up display, and it automatically recharges if no damage is sustained for a brief period. When the shield is fully depleted, the player becomes highly vulnerable, and further damage reduces the hit points of their health meter. When this health meter reaches zero, the character dies and the game reloads from a saved checkpoint. Health can be replenished through the collection of health packs scattered around the game's levels.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: "Halo"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s arsenal consists of weapons from science fiction. The game has been praised for giving each weapon a unique purpose, thus making each useful in different scenarios. For example, plasma weapons need time to cool if fired too rapidly, but do not need be reloaded and must be discarded upon depletion of their batteries, whereas conventional firearms cannot overheat, but require reloading and ammunition. In contrast to the large weapon inventories of contemporary FPS games, "Halo" players may carry only two weapons at once, calling for players to make tactical decisions when managing firearms.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: "Halo" departs from traditional FPS conventions by not forcing the player character to holster its firearm before deploying grenades or melee-range blunt instruments; instead, both attacks can be utilized while a gun is still equipped, supplanting or supplementing small-arms fire. Like the game's other weapons, the two types of grenades differ; the fragmentation grenade bounces and detonates quickly, whereas the plasma grenade adheres to targets before exploding.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: The game's main enemy force is the Covenant, a group of alien species allied by belief in a common religion. Their forces include Elites, fierce warriors protected by recharging energy shields similar to the player's own; Grunts, which are short, cowardly creatures who are usually led by Elites in battle, and often flee in terror instead of fighting in the absence of a leading Elite; Jackals, originally space pirates, who wear a highly durable energy shield on one arm and a form of handgun on the other; and Hunters, large, powerful creatures composed of small worm-like colonies with thick armor plates that cover the majority of their bodies and a large assault cannon that fires explosive rounds of green plasma. A secondary enemy is the Flood, a parasitic alien life form that appears in several variants. Another enemy is the Sentinels, aerial robots designed by an extinct race called the Forerunners to protect their structures and prevent Flood outbreaks. Sentinels are able to hover around in enclosed spaces and produce an energy shield when under attack. They lack durability, but use powerful laser weapons and are immune to infection by the Flood.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: The artificial intelligence in "Halo" has been favorably received. The player is often aided by United Nations Space Command (UNSC) Marines, who offer ground support, such as manning gun turrets or riding shotgun while the player is driving a vehicle.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: A split screen mode allows two players to cooperatively play through "Halo"s campaign. The game also includes five competitive multiplayer modes, which all can be customized, for between two and 16 players; up to four players may play split-screen on one Xbox, and further players can join using a "System Link" feature that allows up to four Xbox consoles to be connected together into a local area network. "Halo" lacks artificially intelligent game bots, and was released before the launch of the Xbox Live online multiplayer service; therefore LAN parties are needed to reach the game's 16-player limit, a setup that was a first for a console game, but was often deemed impractical by critics. Aside from this limitation, "Halo"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s multiplayer components were generally well received, and it is widely considered one of the best multiplayer games of all time.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Although the Xbox version of "Halo" lacks official support for online multiplayer play, third-party packet tunneling software provide unofficial ways around this limitation. The Windows and Macintosh ports of "Halo" support online matches involving up to 16 players and include multiplayer maps, not in the original Xbox release. However, co-operative play was removed from the ports because it would have required large amounts of recoding to implement. In April 2014, it was announced that GameSpy's servers and matchmaking, on which "Halo PC" relied, would be shut down by May 31 of the same year. A team of fans and Bungie employees announced they would produce a patch for the game to keep its multiplayer servers online. The patch was released on May 16, 2014.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: "Halo: Combat Evolved" takes place in a 26th-century science fiction setting. Faster-than-light travel called slip-space allows the human race to colonize planets other than Earth. The planet Reach serves as an interstellar hub of scientific and military activity. The United Nations Space Command (UNSC) develops a secret program to create augmented supersoldiers known as Spartans. More than twenty years before the beginning of the game, a technologically advanced collective of alien races called the Covenant begins a religious war against humanity, declaring them an affront to their gods. Humanity's military experiences a series of crushing defeats; although the Spartans are effective against the Covenant, they are too few in number to turn the tide. In 2552, Covenant forces attack and destroy the colony. The starship "Pillar of Autumn" escapes the planet with the Spartan Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 on board. The ship initiates a jump to slip-space, hoping to lead the enemy away from Earth.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: The game begins as the "Pillar of Autumn" exits slip-space and its crew discovers a large ringworld structure of unknown origin. The Covenant pursues the "Autumn" and attacks. With the ship heavily damaged, the "Autumn"'s captain, Jacob Keyes, entrusts the ship's artificial intelligence (AI) known as Cortana to Master Chief in order to prevent the Covenant from discovering the location of Earth. Keyes orders the crew to abandon the "Autumn" and pilots the ship to a crash-landing on the ringworld.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: On the ring's surface, Master Chief and Cortana rescue scattered survivors and help organize a counter-offensive against the Covenant. Learning that Keyes has been captured by the Covenant, Master Chief and a small contingent of soldiers rescue him from the Covenant cruiser "Truth and Reconciliation". Keyes reveals that the Covenant call the ringworld "Halo" and that they believe it to be a weapon. Intent on stopping the Covenant from using Halo, Keyes searches for a potential weapons cache, while Master Chief and Cortana mount an assault on the ringworld's control room. Cortana enters Halo's computer systems and, after discovering something horrifying, sends Master Chief to find and stop Keyes from continuing his search and uncovering what lies within the ring.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Searching for the captain, Master Chief encounters a new enemy, the parasitic Flood. The release of the Flood prompts Halo's caretaker, the AI 343 Guilty Spark, to enlist Master Chief's help in activating Halo's defenses. After Master Chief retrieves the ring's activation index, 343 Guilty Spark transports him back to Halo's control room. Cortana intervenes before Master Chief can activate the ring; she has discovered the purpose of the installation is to destroy all sentient life in the galaxy, starving the Flood of potential hosts. When Cortana refuses to surrender Halo's activation index, 343 Guilty Spark attacks her and Master Chief.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: To stop Halo's activation, Master Chief and Cortana decide to destroy the installation. Needing Keyes’ neural implants to destroy the "Autumn" and Halo with it, Master Chief returns to the "Truth and Reconciliation". He finds that Keyes has been assimilated by the Flood, and retrieves the neural implant from the captain's remains. Master Chief and Cortana destabilize the "Autumn"s reactors, narrowly escaping the ensuing detonation in a fighter. Cortana justifies their actions to destroy the Covenant fleet and stop the Flood threat and believes the fight is finished, but Master Chief states they are only getting started. In a post-credits scene, 343 Guilty Spark is seen floating in space, having survived the ring's destruction.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: "Halo" was initially conceived as an indirect successor to Bungie's previous first-person shooter games, "Marathon" and "". According to company co-founder Alex Seropian, certain motifs of both "Halo" and the "Marathon" series, such as their similar protagonists and representation of artificial intelligence, stemmed from a common stylistic archetype. After the 1995 release of "Durandal", Bungie began to consider ideas for their subsequent game. Undecided about further entries in the "Marathon" series, the team was willing to try something new. One of the ideas that the team then began to develop was that of a first-person shooter game described by co-founder Jason Jones as "the natural extension of "Marathon", which would have turned out to be something along the lines of "Quake"".


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Concurrently, the team explored the concept of a vehicular combat game that featured tank battles in a futuristic setting, internally dubbed "The Giant Bloody War Game". Jones started the design of a 3D engine that could generate height-mapped graphics to visualize elevated surfaces, and he eventually suggested that Bungie use the technology to realize the "tank combat" idea. The team was enthusiastic about that prospect and proceeded to cancel their first-person shooter project–to commit to the creation of "The Giant Bloody War Game". However, Jones struggled to implement a physics model to simulate vehicles in the game, which led Bungie to change their plans and develop the real-time strategy game (RTS) "", released in 1997.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Around this time, Bungie comprised around 15 people working in south Chicago, Illinois. After "Myth" was completed and Bungie decided on a sequel, "", Jones delegated its development to the company's other designers and resumed his work on the technology that had not been applied to the 1997 title. A group of three Bungie staffers began to develop an RTS with a focus on science fiction, realistic physics simulations and three-dimensional terrain. Early versions used the "Myth" engine and isometric perspective. The project had the initial working title "Armor", but was changed for being "boring" and for the project's dramatic changes from what was first envisioned. It was switched to "Monkey Nuts", then "Blam!" after Jones could not bring himself to tell his mother the original name.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Experimenting with ways of controlling units, Bungie added a mode that attached the camera to individual units. The vantage point continually moved closer to the units as the developers realized it would be more fun for players to drive the vehicles themselves, rather than have the computer do it. "And controlling [the vehicle], just that double tactile nature of load a dude in, get a dude out, hands on the steering wheel—it was like, this "shouldn't" be an RTS game," recalled Seropian. By mid-1998 the game had become a third-person shooter.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Peter Tamte, Bungie's then-executive vice president, used his contacts from his former position at Apple to get lead writer Joseph Staten and project lead Jason Jones an audience with CEO Steve Jobs. Jobs, impressed, agreed to debut the game to the world at the 1999 Macworld Conference & Expo. Anticipation built for the unknown Bungie game after favorable reviews from industry journalists under non-disclosure agreements at Electronic Entertainment Expo 1999.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Days before the Macworld announcement, "Blam!" still had no permanent title; possible names included "The Santa Machine", "Solipsis", "The Crystal Palace", "Hard Vacuum", "Star Maker", and "Star Shield". Bungie hired a branding firm that came up with the name "Covenant", but Bungie artist Paul Russell suggested alternatives, including "Halo". Though some did not like the name—likening it to something religious, or a women's shampoo—designer Marcus Lehto said, "it described enough about what our intent was for this universe in a way that created this sense of mystery." On July 21, 1999, during the Macworld Conference & Expo, Jobs announced that "Halo" would be released for MacOS and Windows simultaneously.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: The game's premise at this point involved a human transport starship that crash-lands on a mysterious ringworld. Early versions of the Covenant arrive to loot what they can, and war erupts between them and the humans. Unable to match the technologically advanced alien race, the humans resort to guerrilla warfare. At this point, Bungie promised an open-world game with terrain that reacted and deformed from explosions, persistent environment details such as spent shell casings, and variable weather, none of which made it into the final product. These early versions featured "Halo"-specific fauna, later dropped following design difficulties and the creatures' detraction from the surprise appearance of the Flood. The Master Chief was simply known as the cyborg. When "Halo" was shown at E3 in June 2000, it was still a third-person shooter.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Bungie's financial situation during "Halo"s development was precarious. Ahead of ""s release, Bungie was surviving on "Myth" sales and had missed release dates. A glitch that caused "Myth II" to wipe the contents of the directory it was installed to was only discovered after 200,000 copies had already been produced for the December 1998 launch. Bungie recalled the copies and issued a fix, costing the company $800,000. As a result, Bungie sold a share of the company and publishing rights to Take-Two Interactive.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Still facing financial difficulties, Bungie's Tamte contacted Ed Fries, the head of Microsoft Game Studios, about a possible acquisition. Fries was working on developing the software lineup for Microsoft's first game console, the Xbox. Fries negotiated an agreement with Take-Two Interactive wherein Microsoft gained Bungie and the rights to "Halo", while Take-Two kept the "Myth" and "Oni" properties. Jones and Seropian pitched the purchase to the rest of Bungie as the way they could shape the future of a new game console. Microsoft announced its acquisition of Bungie on June 19, 2000. "Halo" was now to be the tentpole launch game for the Xbox.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: In less than a year, Bungie had to turn "Halo" from a loose collection of gameplay and plot ideas into a shipping product on an unproven console. To make players feel more connected to the action, Jason Jones pushed to turn the game's perspective from third-person to first-person. A key concern was making sure the game played well on the Xbox's gamepad; at the time, first-person shooters on consoles were rare. Spearheading the effort, designer Jaime Griesemer wrote code to discern player intent and assist the player's movement and aiming without being obvious. The game buffered player inputs so that the result was the "desired" player movement, rather than the movement players were actually making.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Other Bungie projects were scrapped, and their teams absorbed into "Halo" in the rush to complete it. Griesemer said that after the Bungie team moved to the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, he was so busy he did not unpack his belongings for six months. The designers prototyped encounters and enemy AI on a sandbox level, "B30". The success of gameplay on this small chunk of the game energized the team, and B30 became "The Silent Cartographer", the fourth mission.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: To make the release date, Bungie made drastic cuts to the game's features and scope. The open-world plans were scrapped, and it became clear the lengthy planned campaign was not feasible. One level was cut and replaced with an expositional cutscene. Staten described his role as putting "story duct tape" over gaps that appeared to smooth them over. To save time, Lehto suggested reusing campaign levels; glowing directional arrows were added after playtesters got lost backtracking. Microsoft game writers Eric Trautmann and Brannon Boren performed last-minute rewrites to the script. An online multiplayer component was dropped because Xbox Live would not be ready. Only four months before release, it was decided that the multiplayer was still not fun, so it was scrapped and rebuilt from scratch, using team members who moved from the defunct Bungie West team after completing "Oni". Some personnel took to sleeping in the office for the last few months to make sure the game made its deadline.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Bungie's social culture—and the rush to complete the game—meant that team members provided input and feedback across disciplines. Aspects such as level design demanded collaboration between the designers creating the environments for players to explore, and the artists who developed those environments' aesthetics. Initially artists Robert McLees and Lehto were the only artists working on what would become "Halo". Bungie hired Shi Kai Wang as an additional artist to refine Lehto's designs. The aliens making up the Covenant began with varied exploratory designs that coalesced once each enemy's role in the gameplay was defined.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Spearheaded by Paul Russell, the game's visual design changed in response to the changing gameplay and story. The artists made efforts to distinguish each faction in the game by their architecture, technology, and weaponry. The UNSC's original curved look was made blockier to distinguish it from the Covenant; likewise human weapons remained projectile-based to provide a contrast to the Covenant's energy weapons, and their vehicles based on animals, with the Warthog being inspired by Lehto's love of off-roading. The interiors of "Pillar of Autumn" drew significant influence from the production design of the film "Aliens". Organic, curvilinear forms along with a color palette of greens and purples were used for the Covenant, while the Forerunner came to be defined by their angular constructions; the interiors originally drew on Aztec patterns and the work of Louis Sullivan, before becoming more refined just five months from the game's completion.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Composer Martin O'Donnell and his company TotalAudio were tasked with creating the music for "Halo"s MacWorld debut. Staten told O'Donnell that the music should give a feeling of ancient mystery. O'Donnell decided Gregorian chant would be appropriate, and performed the vocals alongside his composing partner Michael Salvatori and additional singers. Because he did not know how long the presentation would be, O'Donnell created "smushy" opening and closing sections that could be expanded or cut as the time required to back up a rhythmic middle section. The music was recorded in Chicago and sent to New York for the show the same night the piece was finished.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Shortly before Bungie was bought by Microsoft, O'Donnell joined Bungie as a staff member, while Salvatori remained at TotalAudio. O'Donnell designed the music so that it "could be dissembled and remixed in such a way that would give [him] multiple, interchangeable loops that could be randomly recombined in order to keep the piece interesting as well as a variable-length". Development involved the creation of "alternative middle sections that could be transitioned to if the game called for such a change (i.e. less or more intense)."


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: O'Donnell sat with the level designers to walk through the levels, constructing music that would adapt to the gameplay rather than be static; "The level designer would tell me what he hoped a player would feel at certain points or after accomplishing certain tasks." Based on this information, O'Donnell would develop cues the designer could script into the level, and then he and the designer would play through the mission to see if the audio worked. He made sparse use of music because he believes that "[music] is best used in a game to quicken the emotional state of the player and it works best when used least," and that "[if] music is constantly playing it tends to become sonic wallpaper and loses its impact when it is needed to truly enhance some dramatic component of gameplay." The cutscenes came so late that O'Donnell had to score them in only three days.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Ed Fries described the period before the Xbox's launch as chaotic; "You've got to imagine this environment of panic combined with adrenaline, but money's mostly no object at the same time. So we were spending lots of it, trying to do all this crazy stuff," he recalled. After several planned video game tie-ins to Steven Spielberg's film "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" were scrapped it became clear that "Halo" had to serve as the tentpole title for the Xbox, a role which the game was never intended to fill.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: "Halo"s debut had been well-received, but its move to the unproven Xbox console caused press treatment to be colder than it was before. While a playable demonstration of the game at Gamestock 2001 was well-received, critics had mixed reactions to its exhibition at E3 2001, where the game was shown off in a very broken state, with poor frame rates and technical issues.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Even within Microsoft, "Halo" was divisive. After Bungie refused to change the "Halo" name to appease marketing research teams, the subtitle "Combat Evolved" was added to make it more descriptive and compete better with other military-themed games. Fries recalled analysts had suggested that "Halo" had the "wrong" color palette compared to competing console games; Fries never showed the results to Bungie.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: "", a prequel novel to "Halo: Combat Evolved", was released a few weeks before the game. Science fiction author Eric S. Nylund penned the novel in seven weeks. The novel was nearly killed halfway to completion; Nylund credits Trautmann with saving it. "The Fall of Reach" became a "Publishers Weekly" bestseller with almost two hundred thousand copies sold. The following novel, entitled "", is a tie-in to "Halo: Combat Evolved", describing not only the experiences of the Master Chief but also those of other characters on Installation 04. Written by William C. Dietz, this novel appeared on the "Publishers Weekly" bestsellers list during May 2003.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: On July 12, 2002, a "Halo" port for Windows was announced to be under development by Gearbox Software. Its showing at E3 2003 was positively received by some critics, with skepticism by others. It was released on September 30, 2003, and included support for online multiplayer play and featured sharper graphics, but had optimization issues that caused poor performance. "Halo" was later released for Mac OS X on December 11, 2003. On December 4, 2007, the game became available for the Xbox 360 via download from the Xbox Live Marketplace.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: While "Halo" was not an instant runaway success on release, it had a long tail sales rate and a very high attach rate for the Xbox; during the two months following "Halo"s release, the game sold alongside more than fifty percent of Xbox consoles. One million units had been sold roughly five months after release, a faster pace than that of any previous sixth-generation console game. The game sold three million copies worldwide by July 2003, and four million by January 2004. By July 2006, its Xbox version had sold 4.2 million copies and earned $170 million in the United States alone, while its computer version sold 670,000 copies and earned $22.2 million. "Next Generation" ranked it as the second highest-selling game launched for the PlayStation 2, Xbox or GameCube between January 2000 and July 2006 in that country.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: "Halo" received "universal acclaim", according to review aggregator Metacritic, based on reviews from 68 professional critics. Ste Curran's review for "Edge" praised the game as "the most important launch game for any console, ever" and commented, ""GoldenEye" was the standard for multiplayer console combat. It has been surpassed." GameSpot claimed that ""Halo"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s single-player game is worth picking up an Xbox for alone," concluding, "Not only is this easily the best of the Xbox launch games, but it's easily one of the best shooters ever, on any platform." IGN remarked similarly, calling "Halo" a "can't miss, no-brainer, sure thing, five star, triple A game." Gary Whitta of "Official Xbox Magazine" calling "Halo" as "a stunning achievement." AllGame editor Jonathan Licata praised Bungie for doing "a remarkable job with Halo, taking many successful elements from previous standouts in the genre to make one very playable game". Among the specific aspects that reviewers praised were the balance of weapons, the role of drivable vehicles, and the artificial intelligence of enemies.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: The Xbox Version of "Halo" received more than 40 awards. including numerous Game of the Year awards, From AIAS, "EGM", "Edge", and IGN. "GameSpot" named "Halo" the third-best console game of 2001, and it won the publication's annual "Best Xbox Game" and, among console games, "Best Shooting Game" awards. It was a runner-up in the "Best Sound" category. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts awarded "Halo" "Best Console Game" and "Rolling Stone" presented it with their "Best Original Soundtrack" award. "Halo" also won "The Electric Playground"s 2001 "Best Console Shooter" award, the "11th Annual GamePro Readers' Choice Awards" for "Best Combat Game of The Year",and Golden Joystick Awards for "Xbox Game of the Year" in 2002. as well as Spike Video Game Awards for "Best PC Game" in 2003.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: "Next Generation" reviewed the Xbox version of the game, rating it five stars out of five, and stated that "If you didn't think there was a reason to buy an Xbox, "Halo" will change your mind."


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: Although "Halo"s overall reception was largely positive, the game received criticism for its level design. GameSpy commented, "you'll trudge through countless hallways and control rooms that all look exactly the same, fighting identical-looking groups of enemies over and over and over...it is simply frustrating to see a game with such groundbreaking sequences too often degenerate [into] this kind of mindless, repetitive action." Similarly, an article on Game Studies.org remarked, "In the latter part of the game, the scenarios rely on repetition and quantity rather than innovativeness and quality." Eurogamer concluded, "Halo is very much a game of two halves. The first half is fast, exciting, beautifully designed and constantly full of surprises. The second half is festooned with gobsmacking plot twists and great cinematics but let down by repetitive paint by numbers level design." "Halo" was released prior to the launch of Xbox Live, and the lack of both online multiplayer and bots to simulate human players was criticized by GameSpy; in 2003 GameSpy included "Halo" in a list of "Top 25 Most Overrated Games of All Time."


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: "Halo"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s PC port received generally favorable reviews, garnering a score of 83% on Metacritic. GameSpot stated that it was "still an incredible action game ... [and] a true classic," awarding it 9.0 out of 10. It received a score of 8.2 out of 10 from IGN, who stated, "If you've played the game on the Xbox, there's not much for you here." Eurogamer called the game "a missed opportunity," but stated that the online multiplayer component was "a massive draw ... for "Halo" veterans."


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: "Halo" has been praised as one of the greatest video games of all time, and was ranked by IGN as the fourth-best first-person shooter made. The game's popularity led to labels such as ""Halo" clone" and ""Halo" killer", applied to games either similar to or anticipated to be better than it. In 2017, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted "Halo" to its World Video Game Hall of Fame.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: "Halo" is credited with modernizing the FPS genre. According to GameSpot, "Halo"s "numerous subtle innovations have been borrowed by countless other games since." The game is often cited as the main reason for the Xbox's success, and it began what is commonly regarded as the system's flagship franchise. Game designer Vox Day credited the game with using science-fiction environments to follow "Half-Life" in eschewing static levels and a similarity to dungeon crawls, which the FPS genre inherited from "Akalabeth". Day further wrote that "Halo" spurred a sustained trend of many other FPS console games. In July 2006, Next-Gen.biz published an article estimating "Halo" as the second-highest revenue-generating 21st century console video game in the United States, behind "". The game's popularity sparked the usage of terms like ""Halo" clone" and ""Halo" killer." The "Halo" engine has been used for the game "Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse".


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: "Halo" has been featured at both Major League Gaming and the World Cyber Games. The game's sequel, "Halo 2", made US$125 million with unit sales of 2.38 million on the first day of its release, earning it the distinction of the fastest-selling United States media product in history. Three years later, "Halo 3" shattered that record with the biggest opening day in entertainment history, taking in US$170 million in its first 24 hours.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: In addition, the game inspired and was used in the fan-created "Red vs. Blue" video series, which is credited as the "first big success" of machinima (the technique of using real-time 3D engines, often from video games, to create animated films).


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: On March 15, 2004, Gearbox Software released Halo: Custom Edition for Windows, which enabled players to use custom-made maps and game modifications via the "Halo" Editing Kit developed by Bungie. "Halo: Custom Edition" consists of multiplayer maps and requires an original copy of "Halo" for PC to install. Custom maps can be both single and multiplayer.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: During the Microsoft press conference at the 2011 E3 Expo, it was revealed that "Halo: Combat Evolved" would be remade by 343 Industries with an in-house game engine and would include achievements, Terminals, and Skulls. It was released for the Xbox 360 on November 15, 2011. The release date marks the 10th anniversary of the original game's release. The remastered version of the original game includes online multiplayer and cooperative play functionality. The remake is also the first "Halo" game to include Kinect support. The game is a mix of two game engines—the original Halo engine created by Bungie, which provides gameplay, and a new engine created by 343 Industries and Saber that is responsible for improved graphics—and the player is able to switch between the improved and classic modes of the game at any time. The game's multiplayer component uses the "" gameplay engine, tailored with a map playlist to mimic the original multiplayer, as opposed to including the original game's multiplayer mode.


title: Halo: Combat Evolved

text: The "Anniversary" version of the game is the version featured in "The Master Chief Collection" for Xbox One. The single-player game is identical to the Xbox 360 version, including the ability to swap between the updated "anniversary" graphics and the original game graphics. However, unlike the Xbox 360 release, the multiplayer component is the original multiplayer engine from "Combat Evolved" as opposed to "Halo: Reach" and is playable over Xbox Live.


title: Monty Python's Life of Brian

text: Monty Python's Life of Brian (also known as Life of Brian) is a 1979 British comedy film starring and written by the comedy group Monty Python (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin). It was directed by Jones. The film tells the story of Brian Cohen (played by Chapman), a young Jewish-Roman man who is born on the same day as—and next door to—Jesus, and is subsequently mistaken for the Messiah.


title: Monty Python's Life of Brian

text: Following the withdrawal of funding by EMI Films just days before production was scheduled to begin, long-time Python fan and former Beatle George Harrison arranged financing for "Life of Brian" through the formation of his company HandMade Films.


title: Monty Python's Life of Brian

text: The film's themes of religious satire were controversial at the time of its release, drawing accusations of blasphemy and protests from some religious groups. Thirty-nine local authorities in the United Kingdom either imposed an outright ban, or imposed an X (18 years) certificate. Some countries, including Ireland and Norway, banned its showing, and in a few of these, such as Italy, bans lasted decades. The filmmakers used the notoriety to promote the film, with posters in Sweden reading, "So funny, it was banned in Norway!"


title: Monty Python's Life of Brian

text: The film was a box office success, the fourth-highest-grossing film in the United Kingdom in 1979, and highest grossing of any British film in the United States that year. It has remained popular and has been named as the greatest comedy film of all time by several magazines and television networks, and it later received a 96% "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes with the consensus reading, "One of the more cutting-edge films of the 1970s, this religious farce from the classic comedy troupe is as poignant as it is funny and satirical." In a 2006 Channel 4 poll, "Life of Brian" was ranked first on their list of the 50 Greatest Comedy Films.


title: Monty Python's Life of Brian

text: Brian Cohen is born in a stable next door to the one in which Jesus is born, which initially confuses the three wise men who come to praise the future King of the Jews. Brian later grows up into an idealistic young man who resents the continuing Roman occupation of Judea. While listening to Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, Brian becomes infatuated with an attractive young rebel, Judith. His desire for her and hatred of the Romans, further exaggerated by his mother revealing Brian himself is half-Roman, inspire him to join the "People's Front of Judea" (PFJ), one of many fractious and bickering independence movements which spend more time fighting each other than they do the Romans.


title: Monty Python's Life of Brian

text: To prove himself, Brian is tasked by the PFJ to paint slogans on Roman governor Pilate's palace, but is interrupted by a Roman officer. The officer however, is more concerned with Brian's appalling grammar and, after correcting the slogan, orders him to write it repeatedly. The next morning, Brian has finished writing out the slogan one hundred times and is subsequently chased away by a separate patrol of legionaries, unaware that Brian's act of vandalism had actually been ordered by one of their own Centurions. Brian then participates in an abortive attempt by the PFJ to kidnap Pilate's wife but is captured by the palace guards.


title: Monty Python's Life of Brian

text: Escaping when the guards suffer paroxysms of laughter over Pilate's speech impediment, Brian winds up trying to blend in among prophets preaching in a busy plaza, repeating fragments of Jesus' sermons. He stops his sermon mid-sentence when some Roman soldiers depart, leaving his small but intrigued audience demanding to know more. Brian grows frantic when people start following him to the mountains, and there they declare him to be the messiah. After spending a night in with Judith, Brian, still naked, discovers an enormous crowd assembled outside his mother's house. Her attempts at dispersing the crowd are rebuffed, so she consents to Brian addressing them. He urges them to think for themselves, but they parrot his words as doctrine.