IGN put up 12 new Halo PC movies last night – they’re all solo play. They’re available in streaming format for the general public, and downloadable .movs for Insiders. Thanks to maxmidget and The Burninator for noticing.

The Sybex Official Strategy Guide for Halo PC is now out. You can grab a copy from Amazon for $14 – remember, this puppy contains a boatload of info not in the Xbox guide from Prima, including Halo Bible material and spotlights on the fan community. Check it out!

Another bonus for folks ordering Halo PC from CompUSA – if you order before October 15, you’re automatically entered in a drawing that will send you to the CPL Winter Event in Dallas (including airfare, VIP pass, the works), plus some pretty sweet schwag. Check the details on their contest page. Thanks to CobaltNova for the heads-up.

Phil Sulak, president of Westlake Interactive, took some time out of his insane schedule to answer a barrage of questions about Mac Halo and where it stands. It’s been a long time coming… but it won’t be much longer. Go read the details!

Though stranded in the wilds of western Canada (though not FAR west enough to actually find civilization again), Finn has managed to update the Halo Story page with a couple of choice tidbits. The man’s a monster.

Today’s Guest One One Se7en comes from the multifaceted BOLL, who looks at platform issues…

12 stories today in the Fan Fiction section:

• Spartan III’s, Part III, by FOrunnER
• A Series of Wierd Events, Part Six, by Hunter_Killer
• A Series of Wierd Events, Part Seven, by Hunter_Killer
• Survival, Chapter Four: Critical Alert, by Agent Shade
• The Fight for Bravo Base; pt. 4- Reunion, by ONI_operative_343
• Derailed Part 5, by Dispraiser
• Nothing to Lose Part VI, by hornet34
• Homeworlds XIII, by Mainevent
• Episode Five- The Stanley Hoppetz Story, by Spartan117
• The Mars Annihilations Part 3, by Janglurevil7
• Humanity, by Mainevent
• How I Make Fan Fics, by Frensa Geran

They just keep coming…

Inside Mac Games has interviewed Brad Oliver, a programmer over at Westlake Interactive (the folks responsible for the Mac port of Halo). There’s not that much Halo information in this interview, but it’s worth a read anyway for folks interested in the future of gaming on a Mac; looks like the G5s are gonna make a splash! (There ARE a couple of Halo tidbits…) Thanks to Blackstar for the heads-up.

SketchFactor points out that it’s only one week until the Killatacular Classic IGames Championship (a tourney with $5000 on the line for the top players). Go to it!

Noctarus, of the Battleground: Halo forums, has written up a full transcript of the X03 video that’s been the talk of the Halo community for a couple of days now. This is a much more complete and accurate transcript than the one IGN put up on Friday – absolutely worth a read, if you either couldn’t download the movie, or couldn’t hear things. Thanks to Fluffy for the heads-up. Update: DOH! Pasted the wrong link in there. Fixed now. Thanks, Ross.

One One Se7en looks at a tidbit that appeared due to modding not too long ago. I personally think it’s a nasty shot – but that might be because I have an engineering degree (of sorts).

MaverickJ dropped us a note to point out that Project Spartan, a popular site with lots of cool tricks vids, is coming back. Details will be available at the above web address as soon as they’re known.

18 Fan Fiction pieces, and a bit of bad news: you may have noticed that HBO was offline for a bit over 4 hours this evening. This was partly due to some rather unpleasant people out there, and partly due to my own carelessness. With some help from the datacenter, we got back up and running – but we lost a chunk of data. I was able to restore from last night’s backup… but everything local added SINCE then (5 am UTC) is gone. (News is stored in a second location, offsite, so that was easy to recover.) The loss that most affects visitors is that of any new fan fiction posted since 5 am UTC on Sunday morning. Basically, if you submitted a story recently, and it’s not in this update (and you didn’t try to cheat by padding a too-short story with gibberish), it’s gone and you need to submit it again. Sorry. (Comments in the last day are also lost – again, I’m sorry.) I’m looking on the bright side – it could have been worse.

• Halo 2, Part 1:Battle for Earth, by Richard Thesiger
• The Battle of Kiris: Arrival, by DarkTemplar007
• Retaliation: Chapter Two, by Blue Jaguar
• Chapter Five: Rise of the Phoenix, by Blue Jaguar
• Halo: Warfront Chapter 3, by Adlin Yusman Yusoff
• Blood Written, by Michael
• Nothing to Lose Part V, by hornet34
• Homeworlds XI, by Mainevent
• Before the probe Part 2, by Master_Chief189
• Blood Written-Chapter 2- Walking Into Hell, by Michael
• Blood Written- Chapter 3- Death and Confusion, by Michael
• Cantankerous Covenant Cheers, by Sargeant Pepper
• A Lost Spartan Name Shadow, by Alpha Lance
• Deception, by Mainevent
• And now all hell will break loose Part 5, by metallicafan
• A John Before Halo: Part 9, by J-117
• Halo 2: Revenge of a Spartan, Chapter 10, by LostRock
• The Flood, by Alpha Lance

That ought to do for now…

Well, normally Sundays are reserved for Sunday One One Se7ens from Stuntmutt, or are left open… but there are a LOT of queued Guest strips, and no official one for today, so what the heck.This one’s another Iceman1330 strip – and it looks at the dangers of modding.

Red vs Blue is suing… everybody. Well, everybody who ever visited the Red vs Blue website. It’s all on behalf of their literally dozens of fans around the world. You can get the details from the Red vs Blue PSA #5, currently available on the Sponsors forum (but likely to the rest of the actionable public soon). Go see why you’re gonna go broke!

Now this is just bizarre. Microsoft has their official Halo PC website – but they ALSO have an overview page on the same server… with unique information. Specifically, the overview page contains an official system requirements section that the Official website doesn’t have. OS can go as low as Windows 98SE. CD-ROM drive can go as low as 8x. Video card minimum has been defined as ’32 MB T&L capable’ – more general than the old ‘GeForce2 or equivalent’ listing. Otherwise, there’s not much new here – but it’s definitely nice to have an official source for this info.

More on the 7-minute Halo segment from X03; as we mentioned recently, there are a couple of locations for the DivX version (the original source, Xboxyde.com, and a UK mirror). This versions weighs in at 50.7 mb. Blackstar has converted it to QuickTime (obviating the need for me to do it 🙂 ) – and you can grab the 56 mb version either at his site, or at files.bungie.org. Additionally, BlimBlim, the maintainer of Xboxyde (where all this goodness started), popped into our forum to mention a screenshot gallery showing some of the juiciest pieces in fullscreen (718×575) goodness. There are currently 17 shots there – but the number might increase. Lastly, I’d like to thank G-Xis for his enthusiasm and comments. Update: Oops, forgot one; Germany’s Halo Orbit has mirrored both the small and large AVIs. Sorry about that! Update2: Found another AVI mirror here (thanks, BiosHacker), and Blackstar has reduced the size of the QuickTime version to 40.6 mb (with no visible loss of quality); both links above now point to the slimmed-down version. Woohoo!

Rico has submitted an introduction sequence for an upcoming video project entitled ‘Halo Vice’ – in his words:

Originally I just wanted to use the footage to better understand my new editing system, but after suggestions from several friends and input from members of the RHOH chapter at Bungie.net I have decided to create a series of “shows” that can be freely distributed openly on the internet and on DVD. The goal is to have a moody, action-highlighted drama along the same lines as the classic 80’s television show Miami Vice (hence the theme music lifted off of composer Jan Hammer’s “Escape From Television” album). I even managed to find a similar font for all the titling! All images were compiled on miniDV and edited in Final Cut Pro 4.0.2.

The video is 2:44 long, encoded in MPEG-4, and weighs in at 16 mb. You can contact Rico through his 7th Column chapter, Rico’s House of Halo. (The movie was originally uploaded to FilePlanet – but was then redone. The current FP version is out of date – you should grab the files.bungie.org one linked above. When the FilePlanet version has been updated, we’ll post news about it.)

The Wallpaper section, also languishing for far too long, gets a massive infusion today; 18 new desktops, some of which absolutely ROCK. They’re all worth looking at… but if I had to pick my favorite 3 of the lot, they’d be this one, this one, and this one. (That last one is amazing… and no longer reproducible with the current version of Halo PC.) Whew – beginning to dig out from under!

Draikin points out a small (1.9 mb) divx-encoded AVI showing some of the Halo 2 footage from X03. (There’s no sound, and it’s 16 seconds of shakeycam footage, but you can see some cool stuff nonetheless.) He found it at Xboxyde. Update: There’s a much bigger version available now; it’s the full 7 minute section devoted to Halo 2, not just the 16 seconds of brand-new footage. It weighs in at 50.7 mb, and is encoded in DivX format. It’s already been mirrored by Intangir in the UK, and we’re working on a QuickTime version (which won’t be done before tonight, sorry). For those who just want to see the new footage, Blackstar has already converted the shorter movie: you can grab it from files.bungie.org. In order to download the larger movie from Xboxyde, you need to register there; it’s free, but it can be trying if you don’t read French (according to a number of people in this forum thread).