Year: 2001

Wow – a wallpaper bonanza. Enforcer has uploaded no fewer than seven new images, in two major themes. I’ve grouped them, since they’re so similar – you’ll find descriptions of the variations on the main page for each theme. Just go visit our Wallpaper section and it’ll be made clear.

Thanks to a random, 6-month-old thread on the IGN Xbox forum, a new tidbit has come to light – in an interview that IGN Xbox did with John Howard and Joe Staten in April, Joe mentioned a multiplayer mode we haven’t heard of before:I just got done whupping arse in a game of split-screen “Slayer”…

Thanks to Uriel, who pointed out on the forum that dom, an artist for Megatokyo, has posted an Xbox/GameCube rant. (Scroll down the page to the area below the comic – look for dom’s column.) After reaming the controller, and running down some of the good and bad stuff he saw recently, he hit on…

Narcogen, over at Rampancy.net, noticed an interview with Ed Fries and (Japanese Xbox division manager) Yutaka Haruki at Coremagazine.com. Fries believes that the Japanese will embrace Halo (and other US offerings):In the United States, 70% of the people who have reserved an Xbox also reserved the game Halo. We expect a similar figure in the…

Harry Al-Shakarchi pointed out this article on TGS 2001 over at IGN Xbox – it’s an overview of the feel of the show. They were taken by the Japanese reaction to Halo:On a side note, it’s particularly cool to watch Japanese gamers play Halo, trying to figure out the controls as if holding a violin…

Josh Hampton decided that much of the wallpaper out there was too cluttered for actual desktop images… he’s taken the clean approach. You’ll find his entry in our Wallpaper section.

Aaacourt22 sends in a hand-drawn Marine, suitable for inclusion in wallpaper, if you so choose. Check it out in our Miscellaneous Art section.

The fan fiction of Gordi has attracted a following, as can be seen by reading his comments. Mr Bill Jr V thought enough of it that he set his most recent story in Gordi’s universe – it gives a bit of the backstory of the 6th fleet. Now THIS is cool… fan fiction for fan…

Ryan ‘Mhaddy’ Matthews dropped us a note about needing fresh blood at the Junkyard. The boilerplate was a bit too long for our front page… but it’s a good cause, so we’ve put it here. If you’re interested in working on a solid gaming site, check it out!

A couple of weeks ago, a site called Xboxweb put up a Halo preview, and in it, they mentioned a multiplayer mode called ‘Ogre’. Ogre first surfaced in a print preview in the July 2000 issue of PC Gamer UK, which hit the newsstands on June 6, 2000. It was described as a unique multiplayer…

Just in time for Halloween and Thanksgiving, Tom Van Sinden sends in a pair of holiday-themed desktop images, in a couple of resolutions each… Trick or Treat is gonna be on MY desktop for a bit! Check ’em out in our Wallpaper section.

Eric Trautmann, MS Content Developer, drops by to pass along a tantalizing tidbit about the Halo backstory – there had been some forum speculation about the credibility of the plot – why, for example, would the Covenant go to the trouble of a ground war against the inhabitants of Reach, rather than simply wiping the…

Mr. Temper points out on our forum a new print review of Halo, in Game Informer magazine – he supplies links to scanned pages, and includes written text for those who can’t read the small print in the pics. The upshot – they liked it…

A boatload of updates coming… bear with me as I write ’em up, one by one. First up: the TGS movie. Many people have been complaining about a couple of features of this movie – first, that there are three separate cov kills at the start that use the same bit of soundtrack (same covenant…

And the battle for leadership of the Halo SETI Marines continues… this week, charleya tops Int_21, 265 to 212 units (and to think, there was a time when the entire TEAM didnt’ crunch that many units in a week) for La Crunch Honneur, and cdm3 leaps over 38 team members for the Frogblast Award. How…

JimPa|NsE drops us a note to let us know that he’s written a new Halo preview for Halo Network – Babelfish tortured it, but if you read German, you should go visit.

Down, but not out… Battleground: Halo has mirrored the .wmv version of the new TGS film on Fileplanet – grab it there if you’re having trouble with Gamespot’s servers. Thanks for the heads-up, Bounty!

Quick note from Bounty, over at Battleground: Halo – they’re not ignoring all the weekend’s news, or sleeping; they’re having technical difficulties. The news system seems to have stopped taking submissions (since Thursday night)… he’s hoping all will be back on track by tomorrow. Hang in there!

For those having trouble getting through to Gamespot’s servers, or simply on lower-bandwidth connections, we’ve put together a screen capture page, showing some of the more interesting features of the movie. You can check it out here. Enjoy!

Thanks to vein13, who pointed out a new movie at Gamespot. (It’s the Halo Trailer 1 – Direct-Feed entry on their Media Index.) It seems to be an extended version of the IGN movie mentioned yesterday. It’s available as a downloadable wmv file, a downloadable mpeg, or streamed .asf formats (in several speeds). It’s 320×240,…