Year: 2001

Thanks to Chanan, who was the first to point out that the Halo novel, ‘The Fall of Reach’, is appearing in bookstores around the nation. And it’s already receiving positive reviews on our forum.

Very interesting movie out there – FULL OF SPOILER MATERIAL. It’s filmed with a handheld off a small TV screen, with no sound… but it has some very interesting content, such as interface screens, help screens, the fact that you can have closed captioning of spoken text… It starts with the player turning over an…

Wow – the stories circulating around the internet about crashing Xbox kiosks might just have some basis in reality! Matt Soell passed on this tidbit:Stefan just heard this from one of the MS testers…apparently some of the software on the demo discs was accidentally built with an old video library. A conflict between the finished…

Thanks to Mavruss, for the heads-up: Matt Soell has posted a note over on the Bungie Sightings forums, giving details about the RSVP situation for the Halo Launch Party. He needs the standard stuff – who, when, why… okay, maybe not why. Go read it at BS, or wait a bit for it to show…

Whoa – very cool. Chanan has sent in 15 screen captures (720×480) from the features movies on the December 2001 DVD bundled with the Official Xbox Magazine – there are a few Halo snippets in there. Some of the shots are similar to what’s been seen before, some are mediocre… and some just make your…

Halo showed up on TechTV today (a little after 4 pm Eastern Time). A couple of minutes of smooth gameplay… nice exposure!

TeamXbox has a story about the Xbox “Odyssey” Tour – a 40-city rolling Xbox circus; 50 Xboxes with plasma monitors and giant projection screens. There are a few pics, including one of a Halo game in progress. (Thanks to TomeOne for the heads-up.)

AEon wrote to let us know of a Halo desktop he submitted to Fileplanet last year. We’ve added it to our Wallpaper collection.

Uriel notes that the next issue of the German PC Games will have a ‘huge special about halo’ – it should be on the shelves on the 7th, and he expects to see it by next weekend. We’ll keep you posted!

Well… the Cinematics team said not to watch intro films posted to the net, because they would spoil the ‘first-time’ experience of playing for yourself… but many have said they’re waiting for the PC version of Halo, and in any case, we would be remiss if we didn’t tell you what’s out there. Fileplanet has…

Now this is interesting. Several subscribers have reported that there was no Halo trailer on the December 2001 Official Xbox Magazine DVD… but greatdayne27, over at the TeamXbox forums, says it’s just a little harder to find:While they are not in the trailers section if you watch the special feature “The Xbox difference” with Seamus…

Peter Askam sends in a pair of desktop images, based on the recent Craig Mullins piece – these are variations on a theme, and include the Pillar of Autumn, as well. Check ’em out in our Wallpaper section.

Robert “Apache” Howarth, of VoodooExtreme, presents some comments about Halo, and its length:I’m still hacking away in Halo, and thankfully it’s continuing to kick major ass. I’m deep into the game at this point (chapter 7 out of 11) and well past what I can talk about without spoiling it for you, so I’ll just…

An epilogue, of sorts… Vector40 turns in ‘Hawk Chronicles: Supplemental’, to wrap up the series. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section. Don’t forget to let him know what you think of it!

Thanks to Geordie McCabe, who pointed out that some Xbox posters around his University campus are listing an Australian release date in January 2002, with the slogan “The Game is Over – Reality Begins.” Looks like folks Down Under will be playing before those in Japan (February 22) and those in Europe (March 14)!

Heh – sometimes, you just gotta get your content where you can find it… I was hunting through the Xbox.com.au site to see if I could find an official release date for the Xbox in Australia (no luck there) – and I happened across the Halo page. They have a pretty fun little Flash animation…

OrangeWarp mentioned yesterday that there was a Halo blurb in the November 2001 issue of Maxim magazine. He took pity on HBO and scanned it for us (45K). They call Halo a “staggeringly polished first-person shooter”… which almost makes up for calling the Xbox “an overgrown Atari”. Take a look! (OW also scanned in the…

New desktop from Enforcer, paying tribute to the Bungie programmers. Check it out in our Wallpaper section.

Another one… TeamXbox has put up an ‘Early Hands-On Halo Preview’ as well. Like VoodooExtreme, they liked it – a lot:If any of you had any doubts that Halo would live up to the hype, you can put all that to rest. Period. There are also three .asf clips showing gameplay – all new, as…

VoodooExtreme has posted a hands-on Halo preview – they took issue with the controller, and mentioned the framerate concerns, but mostly, they just liked the game:The writing is great, the story is solid, and to be honest, Halo is hands-down the best action game I’ve ever played in my life.A full review will be coming…