I played a lot of Halo as a kid, with friends both locally and online. Throughout the series, I’ve always been a fan of the M90 shotgun. Over the years, it’s changed slightly, but it’s largely been a unique style of shotgun.
First, it’s an eight gauge, an admittedly a large and powerful option. Second, it feeds from the top, with the loading gate and magazine tube being placed above the barrel. It also features a set of iron sights, a heat shield, some form of a muzzle device, and a pistol grip.
It’s just a neat gun all around, and a young veteran named Nathan Frisque has made a functional, working variant of the shotgun. It’s not an eight gauge, which would be cool, but too heavy recoiling with expensive and hard-to-find ammo.
Nope, Nathan adapted a left-handed Remington Wingmaster into a replica of the M90 shotgun. Nathan dropped a video a few weeks ago detailing the build. The video has garnered over 300,000 views, and Youtuber GarandThumb even reached out in the comment section, asking Nathan to contact him.
The Real M90 Shotgun
I reached out and spoke briefly with him about the project. He gave me a rundown of the parts, pieces, and future of the M90 Replica. He started with the aforementioned left-handed Wingmaster. In his words, he ‘convinced’ the gun to reliably fire upside down with aluminum and steel. He retimed the action to allow the carrier to load the shell sooner.
The action arms were rewelded and modded to a steel rod machined to allow the action to operate with the pump over the barrel rather than the magazine tube. This was a challenge because the barrel has a varying contour.
The ribbed barrel has been used as a surface to mount the modified action rod. A poly choke from the 40s has been installed onto the barrel. The barrel itself was cut from 22 to 18 inches.
Nathan made the M90’s distinctive heat shield by combining a Slade street heat shield and an ATI heat shield with the whole thing mounted to a Mesa mag coupler. The sights were modified to better resemble the sights on the fictional M90.
The pump action is a combination of two M203 grips and an Adaptive Tactical pump. The trigger has been routed backward, downwards, and then back forward and re-angled into a proper geometry. A custom stock adapter to cover the trigger interface and to mount a Magpul UBR stock and BCM grip.
The Goal
This was just a passion project for Nathan. It took him months of work and, according to him, nearly five grand to figure it out and create this prototype and proof of concept.
Creating an M90 was the goal, but he doesn’t plan on stopping there. He now wants to produce a more innovative American shotgun. Something novel, something effective, and unlike other shotguns that are on the market.
In his words, his next step is a “real shotgun. Something better than a flip job and an appearance package.”
You can’t say he isn’t passionate. He seemingly worked his ass off to produce a working replica of the M90, and if he’s willing to do that without any promise of fame, fortune, or a prayer of breaking even, it’ll be interesting to see how much farther he’ll go. He clearly has the passion, and if you mix that with the dedication and hard work he’s already shown, I can’t wait to see what he does next.
