Year: 2000

Mail from SOKAR tells us that Halo Empire has put up the largest German Halo forum – it’s made up of 4 sites from three nations: Halo Empire and Halo Information Network from Germany, Halo.ch from Switzerland, and HaloZone from Austria. Check it out… the actual forum can be found here.

As mnemesis noticed last night, the main Bungie page has had a news update. Not much there yet… but Max promises great things in the near future. Nice to hear!

noddy99 wrote to inform us that the US Halo Command is no longer dead. Well, it seems it hasn’t been dead since last month, if the news page is any indication. We’ve moved it off the dead links. (The quizlet, though, is dead… it wants to know what platform you are looking forward to playing…

Thanks to Diogo Barbosa, who submitted a pair of desktop images (variations on a theme) to our Wallpaper page. Aptly titled, those…

Thanks to Neil Grattan, who sent in a new piece of fiction for our Fan Fiction page. Go take a look!

Okay, here’s an odd one. Halo Command UK has started a section called ”Flippapers’… it’s wallpaper you can turn upside down. (The obvious question will remain unasked.) If you’re intrigued (and who wouldn’t be?), head on over and take a look! (Follow Media to Stuff, then to Flippapers.)

Ryan “Mhaddy” Matthews sent us mail that the Junkyard is having a contest… they’re making custom-designed Tribes maps or logos. Visit the site, click on Custom Orders, and fill out the form (name and email)… if you win, they’ll make you what you want. Apparently, the logos part can include Halo. If you’re interested, stop…

Thanks to 3of9 (undead), who caught this before Matt had a chance to berate us for missing it (he posted it to the R.net forum): Happy Birthday to Stefan Sinclair, another Halo Dev Team member! October is the month for Halo guys, I guess.

The Halo SETI Marines hold on to their tenuous position at number 43 in the Battle of the Teams, bumping the buffer to 23 units ahead of The IsraAliens, thanks in large part to our new recruits (hotpoo and greener) and to Banzif II’s increased crunching. Let’s keep it up! In local action, DarthFlounder increases…

The secret of the wall-hugging hippos, revealed! Well, okay, not really… just the monkey-impaling ones. Matt Soell tries on his Rudyard Kipling coat for an afternoon. Personally, I think he looks better in purple, but it’s a hell of a funny read anyway.

Back on July 26, 1999 (a week after MacWorld NY 99), we snagged a logo off the bungie.org Hotline server. It had no identifying marks, so we put it up, and asked the author to mail us. Yesterday, he did. And he told us that it was a rough version of the final product. Therefore,…

hmm… real, or imagined? Kosh drops us a note about an interesting Halo engine sighting. CheckOut.com interviewed Michael Hamlett, the lead designer of Strike Force, a Counter-Strike-like mod for UT. It’s still freeware (and not officially supported by Epic), but apparently, potential deals are in the works. At one point, Michael mentions future possibilities:We even…

BluR writes to say that Halo Heaven now has a mailing list, for Halo news. If you want the latest in your mailbox, check ’em out!

Heh… Simon Marek dropped us a line:Just writing after seeing your re-post of Matt’s listing of the newBungie staff members. Couldn’t help but notice the presence of JohnHoward. Now I don’t know how many others have noticed, but the PrimeMinister of Australia is also called John Howard. Another step inBungie’s plot to take over the…

We got an email from Erbium-=SUN=- that made us wonder… so we put together a little page to look at the development of the Halo jeep (and specifically, it’s weaponry) over the past few months. Take a look, and be sure to post your thoughts on our forum!

Thanks to Fire Phoenix, who announced (via our forum) that the iHalo Marine Corps is officially online now. Check it out (fp highly suggests using IE only)!

Rampancy.net has switched over to the new forum Ferrex has been working on for a couple of weeks. Looks a lot like the old forum, but 1) it’s MUCH faster, and 2) it’s much more configurable. And 3) (actually the most important, for some of us) it’s very searchable. Go check it out!

Hey, cool! A couple of days ago, we mentioned Halo-Australia’s short story contest… seems they’ve gotten a couple of celebrity judges for this thing! Matt Soell of Bungie and Steve Brown of PCGamer UK will be rating your work. Nice going, guys! (And that’s THREE news items today that mention Matt. Hmm…)

This week’s Halo update is over at Rampancy.net… not even on their forum. (Has Matt been reading the oni.bungie.org forum recently?) The news is, there isn’t much news… although they’re putting bullets back into the game. (We’re happy, how about you?) Thanks, Matt, for keeping to your weekly schedule! Matt’s Halo update, at R.net this…

A week ago, Matt Soell posted an update on the state of Halo, and in it, he said (among other things)- Jason is splitting his time between AI work and story work with Jaime and John. John? Who’s John? Well, we followed up, and Matt was kind enough to fill us in on the newest…