First print — 0901 box, no Game of the Year star

Four tells. The first one is decisive; the rest confirm it across the room.

1. The back reads 0901 Part No. X08-54526. Microsoft dated its boxes. The part number printed low on the back opens with four digits that give the month and year the box itself was printed, so a run of prints reads in order once you line the codes up. 0901 is September 2001 — two months before the game reached shelves on 15 November 2001. Every later printing of this box carries a later code.

2. No gold star. The front has no Game of the Year starburst and the back has no review quotes. Halo won 2002 Game of the Year from IGN, EGM, OXM and the AIAS, and Microsoft put that on the box soon after — so a star means a reprint, and a plain cover means this print or the one just after it.

3. No yellow "Only on Xbox" line. That line was added across the top of the front on the Game of the Year covers, not on the launch box.

4. The artwork is the untouched version. A Halo wiki records two changes made for the Game of the Year cover: the Master Chief's index finger was moved onto the assault rifle, and the leftmost Banshee was shifted right so the new star would not cover it. The launch cover has the finger off the rifle and the Banshee further left.

Inside the case, everything is dated 2001. Instruction booklet 0901 Part No. X08-54602. A Master Chief insert, 0701 Part No. X08-29230 — July 2001. The disc carries the Warthog on the left of the label, 0901 Part No. X08-54601.

What does not help. Redump holds three USA disc states for this game: the plain Original, Rev 1 (labelled a reprint) and Rev 2 (Platinum Hits and Best of Platinum Hits). A community catalog of Halo disc dumps lines those up with its own version numbers 1.02, 1.08 and 1.09. The catch is that the printed disc part number X08-54601 sits on both the 1.02 and the 1.08 disc, so a loose disc cannot be placed by the number on it.

This is the launch copy: an Xbox launch title, on sale the day the console was, with a box printed in September 2001.

The retail UPC is left blank on purpose. GameFAQs and retroplace both give the 2001 North American SKU as F78-00001 with barcode 659556745158, while VGCollect puts F78-00002 / 659556745165 on its retail entries and F78-00001 / 659556745158 on the Not for Resale ones. Those cannot all be right, and a photograph of a launch box's barcode will settle it faster than more reading.

Rarity is Unknown and that is a real Unknown. Halo sold in the millions over six years of printings, and nobody has counted how many of those boxes read 0901. The date code narrows the window to the months before March 2002, when the Game of the Year box appears; it does not give a number.

Still wanted: a photograph of the back showing 0901 Part No. X08-54526 and the barcode in one frame, and the front close enough to read the top edge.

Source: Desk research across public catalogs and disc databases — Brandon Green (from VGCollect, Redump, Halopedia, Wikipedia and PriceCharting, October 2026).