Year: 2001

The Watcher writes to let us know that The Online Universe is up and running. This is a site devoted to giving game publishers and developers some insight into the needs/wants of the gaming public – so it needs YOU, the gaming public, to visit and make your needs/wants known.

This week’s Halo Update is over at Haloplayers… lots of bug fixes and art stuff. Marty and Jay auditioned some potentially surprising actors for voice parts… and oh, yeah, Marcus got a sex-change operation. Check out the details at HP.

Ack – we missed it! Adam ‘Barak’ Perfect, of Haloplayers, was interviewed for the Junkyard’s continuing Gaming Site Interview series yesterday. Go check it out!

Stephan from Germany sends us this link – we tried Babelfish, but it choked on the translation, so we have no idea what it says… but hey, a composite is a composite, right? (They should have added a shadow, I think.) Update: Nick Rolfe informs us that Babelfish works just fine if you remember the…

The shortest Fan Fiction in our archives, I think… Vector40 starts the poem he finished a week ago. You’ll find it our Fan Fiction section. (We’d give you an excerpt, but it would probably be the whole thing…) There’s more to come, we hear. Take THAT, Ape Man…

Lorraine Reyes (currently of the Phoenix team) weighs in with an explanation of those large protrusions found on the backs of the grunts. Maybe there needs to be more inter-team communication at Bungie Studios… or maybe Lorraine needs to cut back a bit on the coffee. (And before we get too much earnest mail from…

Tursas sends in the next installment of his ongoing fan fiction saga, Hermes Trismegistus. This is starting to get… weird. Just read it.

Haloplayers brings word of a Halo clan, The Roman Guard, that is currently actively recruiting for new members. If you’re interested, stop by and sign up! Update: Thomason writes to tell us that the Halo Guard is not a Halo clan – it’s a division of the Roman Federation, which is a Halo clan. So…

Battleground: Halo has put up two more chapters of its fan fiction opus, ‘Black Ops’ – it’s up to 12 chapters now. If you haven’t read it, go check it out. (As far as I know, it’s the only Halo-related fan fiction on the web that’s NOT in our Fan Fiction archive.)

Marginally Halo-related, definitely bungie.org-related: just in time for MacWorld, bungie.org has unveiled its first t-shirt, featuring many of your favorite Bungie characters (including the Halo Marine). It’s pretty, it’s high-quality, and it costs between $5-17, depending on how you pay for it – go take a look!

The Halo SETI Marines have a new top cruncher today – Niklas Brunberg processed 150 units to claim La Crunch Honneur. This pulled him within 11 spots of the top 100 team members, and gave him second place in positions climbed, as well – beaten out by Croz, who leapfrogged 61 teammates to take the…

Last week’s Weekly Update has been added to the Halo Update Database – go play with the search page. How long from conception to finished map? Ask Hardy. It’s like a jar of Ragu; it’s in there…

The Junkyard Gaming Site Interview series continues… and today’s contestant is our own Louis Wu. Looks like he’s been taking brevity lessons at the monastery… his answers are pretty short. You can tell how old he is, though.. just check out question 15. Pax.

Ph.D. points out (thanks to MSXbox) that GameSurge has interviewed James Parkman, Senior Level Designer for Unreal 2. At one point, he’s asked what games he’s looking forward to… and the answer is amusing:As for FPS games, I’m looking forward to playing Red Faction and Halo, as much to analyze as to have fun (maybe…

Blossoming open into a surreal starburst of fire and smoke, the blast sent the Wraith wheeling off towards the sea, and its concussion bowled over the Elite and most of the Grunts alongside the tank. Jackals flew into the air, screaming and spinning, discharging their plasma rifles in random directions, before they were lost in…

William Malmi writes to say that the Dogs of War squad has changed servers, and updated their site. There are some new rules of behavior, designed to improve performance of the squad… stop by and check it out.

MichiganJ.S has asked us to pull his server’s listing (CitrusV) from the GameStar movie mirror list, because the huge demand caused him to go way over his bandwidth limit (9.5 gigs in 2 days). Folks – it’s not unusual for a new Halo movie to be downloaded by 10,000 people or more. At 30 megs…

Matt’s Weekly Halo Update surfaced at Battleground: Halo this week – and it’s tasty. Lots of Sin-O-MaTiXXX stuff, some good multiplayer morsels, and the Shadow is out again. (Oh, and Jason’s listening to some scary stuff.) Go check it out!

Mark Levin, walking repository of Halo knowledge (and other infectious stuff), dropped a note on our forum to let folks know that he’s updated the HBO FAQ. Always nice when we’re up-to-date! Thanks, Mark.

What do you get when you put a great battle scene to great battle music? A little diversion, that’s what. Freedom, from Garden of War, started with the E32000 Halo movie, and spliced and diced it to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. The result is a pretty nice clip. Check it out. (1.7 megs, WMV format.)