Today is the 5th anniversary of the MacWorld Trailer, the day that Halo was introduced to the world (and the planet reverberated with the clang of dropping jaws). And yesterday was, incidentally, the 5th anniversary of this domain name (halo.bungie.org) – the website had been up at that point for almost two months, but it had been reachable at blam.bungie.org; we changed names (and post formats) when Halo was officially announced. (Why the 1-day offset? It’s hard to tell this far down the road… but I think it’s a mistake. 🙂 ) The traditional gift for a 5-year anniversary is wood – I offer you the inside of my skull in celebration. We’ve come a long way, baby!

29 new pieces have been added to the Fan Fiction section today. It looked far worse when I stopped by to approve stories – but after I deleted 19 of the 20 copies of Elitehunter676’s submission, things weren’t quite so bad. (I can only hope it was a fit of epilepsy that caused him to submit 20 times… epilepsy is controllable with medication.) Hidden among today’s entries is the first submission for our collection of the Enkidu Fan Fiction Contest entries – Wado’s Dark Halo chapter is online. Again – anyone who wants to add their entry to this collection, simply submit it via the normal means, and then send me an email telling me that it’s part of the series. (Please tell me the NAME of the story, so I don’t have to guess which one’s yours.)

Cody Miller, who took first place on Truth and Reconciliation, also aced the Library for our Going Nowhere Fast contest. Beating his nearest competitor by 5 minutes (and the third place finisher by almost 25 minutes), he raced through this level of relentless destruction almost without stopping. The video is 153 mb large, and available (for now) via BitTorrent. (And because we haven’t mentioned it in a few days, here’s a BitTorrent download link – there are still folks who haven’t grabbed a client yet.)

Tina Leyk got stuck without power this afternoon – so she sat down with her Prisma pencils (and a pen) and sketched out a gorgeous Spec-Ops Elite. Check him out on her Fan Art page!

Betcha thought I forgot Calvin and Halo, didn’tcha? Calvin sort of wishes his mom forgot HIM…

On Sunday, Stuntmutt submitted a pretty funny One One Se7en for c0ld vengeance; today, he’s made good on the promise of that strip. Whatever else you might say about him… he follows through.

Dispraiser has posted Weekly Update 3 for Halogen, the C&C Generals total conversion, over on the Junkyard forums. New renders, discussion of vehicles, and a units list… give it a read!

MLGPro.com has interviewed Zyos, one of the top pro Halo gamers on the scene right now, about what it’s like to be a pro gamer. In addition, if you live in the Atlanta area, you can stop by the Lennox Mall Gamestop between 5 and 7 pm this Friday, and maybe get the chance to play him. (If you beat him, you get free admission to MLG Atlanta – 50k3, kicking off this weekend.) Go check it out!

Walshicus has updated his Halo Stellar Cartography submission to include data about every star on the map. Simply click on the map thumbnail to get started exploring. This, I think, is beginning to qualify as an obsession.

That Weasel Television, in conjunction with Mother’s Tooth and HaloRules.com, is launching its first all original, all exclusive, Halo series called “Grunts Are People Too!!!” Original music, grunty action, dead grunts. What more could you want? (Some episodes don’t seem to be uploaded yet, but give it time.)

Hmm. Looks like I forgot to update the Weekly Bungie Updates archive last week – but it’s now up-to-date. An awful lot of content in these past two updates… things are really coming along. See, for example, the progress on the lightmap farm – back in february, it was just getting built – now it’s a critical piece of the puzzle, so much so that a crash causes a loss of a day. Ouch!

Ducain has announced a new contest – The Three Towers. Put stuff on the Blue Beam towers, win cool schwag. How great is that?

If today’s One One Se7en makes no sense, you’re not reading Bungie’s Top Stories closely enough.

The cast Halo: Resolution are getting out… maybe.

Stefander points out the latest Zanzibar weekly update, over at Halomods – the energy sword is really coming along, and some other guns are being modeled. Take a look!

Cyber Gaming Network has posted a Halo 2 preview; it’s a solid read, combining info from the E3 demo and recent press without going TOO far out on the speculation limb. (It’s an update of a much shorter preview they wrote after E3 2003; the URL hasn’t changed.) Give it a read…

aiMutation is a Windows program for modifying the appearance of the AOL Instant Messenger. Recently, a new skin was released with a Halo theme. Thanks to Baldev Patel for the heads-up.

Many of you probably saw threads on various Halo or Xbox forums this weekend about leaked beta screenshots. Bungie has yet to make a public announcement about this (it’s unlikely that they ever will, actually), but there are many clues that suggest that these aren’t fakes; that they did, in fact, come from a beta version of Halo 2. I wanted to take a moment to state our official policy on leaks like this, and to explain why I think they’re a problem. We will NOT allow links to these pictures to be posted to our forum – as we find them, we’ll remove them, and if people persist, they’ll be banned. As one of our admins posted last night, if you can’t find them for yourself, that’s YOUR problem. Many folks are asking what the big deal is – they’re just screenshots, and not even very exciting ones… who cares? Putting aside the legal issues (which aren’t actually minor), there’s a really good reason to keep pics like this away from the public… many casual gamers don’t realize that a beta version is NOT a final version. Often, there are elements that have been added specifically for beta testers – debugging information, or extra on-screen displays, so that testers can provide useful feedback to the creation team. (Beta testing isn’t a game; that should have been made clear from the recent Bungie.net article. It’s pretty serious business.) When beta shots hit the public, though, many people are oblivious to the fact that they’re looking at a test image. We’ve already had folks griping on our forum about how cluttered the HUD looks, and how disappointed they are in Bungie for putting so much crap onscreen. Others read these comments, maybe without even looking at the pictures themselves, and the ideas spread… and before too long, there’s buzz about how crappy the interface of Halo 2 is. Only… it’s NOT the interface of Halo 2 – it’s the interface for BETA TESTERS. Boiled down: the final product can NOT be judged by the appearance of an early beta – but because many people can’t make distinctions like that, pictures of early betas do NOT belong in the public eye.

Massive content update over at Halo Babies – new fan art, a new fan STRIP section, and some credit stuff. w00t!

Brand-new layout at XboxOttawa… and with it comes a new Flash game called Melee Combat. It’s a bit hard on your keyboard… Go play. Thanks, Mantis819.