In late March, an unofficial probe into some comments made by Pallor became what is now known as ‘The Megg Hunt’ – a community feeding frenzy that eventually involved hundreds (thousands?) of Halo fans, an attempt to discover an easter egg placed in Halo specifically for Meg by her boyfriend, a designer on the Halo team. It got ugly before it got solved… but solved it got. A few days ago, some folks with access to modded xboxes and hacked copies of Halo found some clues that pointed to the location of the Megg… and the rest, as they say, was history. Today, Meg has written up a full history of the search, including the steps required to see it for yourself (and a movie to help you along). Zip on over to Subnova for all the details. (Be gentle; this information is being posted in a lot of places. If you have trouble seeing the page, try again later.)

Hart points out a quiz he’s created at Quizilla; What Weapon Are You? Take the test, and find out!

And again… there’s ANOTHER of the Dogtags sets up for sale on eBay; this one currently sits at just under $15 (much better than the $71 the last one closed at), auction closes in 2 days, but the seller has no history at all. Caveat emptor… and thanks to The_Unseen for the heads-up.

Wow. Halo: The Flood has shown up on Publisher’s Weekly’s Mass Market Bestseller’s List (number 11)! Wow. More details over at Bungie Sightings. Thanks to poenadare for the heads-up.

The last time the Movies database here at HBO was updated was mid-March – about 5 weeks ago. As of today, the 22 movies released since then have been added to the database. Total number of movies is up to 231; it’s getting to be an unweildy list. Time to rethink the organization, maybe…

We forgot to get back to this last week… but the Halo Dog Tags we mentioned on eBay a while back sold a week ago for $71. Ouch!

At least two big websites have picked up the info available in the latest issue of the Official Xbox Magazine, and have made some of it available in text form. Eurogamer fairly credits OXM as its source… Computer and Video Games doesn’t. (“Details have been released…” yeah, well, it’s terrible to actually NAME a competitor…) If you haven’t downloaded the scans (good for you!), you can get a good sense of what’s in store at this stage by reading these articles. Thanks to Ciarán Walsh, Harry Al-Shakarchi, and Nathan Drews for the heads-up. Ups, even.

A week ago, BOLL came up with a new technique for creating cool panoramic views from Halo. He’s continued to create, and the current collection is up to 31 images. We’ve built them a home in our Miscellaneous section, and will add new images as he creates them. (Warning: the current page has more than 30 images on it… it might be slow-loading on modem connections, and even some broadband connections. If things get out of hand, we’ll take steps to reduce the load.) Make good use of these images… they’re really slick.

In an effort to break the database system at the Halo Story page, Finn processes another 18 user submissions in the two days since his last Story page update. If you think your puny human brain can handle it, head over to the Halo Story Page and read, read, read! (FAQ coming soon, apparently.)

Before I forget – 6 stories for you today in the Fan Fiction section:

• Cahpter 2: Gayap’s Story, by HaloFREAK
• True Purpose , by Frensa Geran
• Desolation, by Havok
• Looking Back to Move Foward , by John Morris
• Another ONI Black File: Halo ? We Got There First: Part 4, by Arthur Wellesly
• Another ONI Black File: Halo ? We Got There First: Part 5, by Arthur Wellesly

What are you waiting for?

Forum regular Opie301 has submitted a Reference Guide for Halo multiplayer gametype creation. All the various options available when you’re creating a new gametype are explained in detail. This is available now in our Miscellaneous section, as well as from Subnova, online… and if you choose, you can download a Microsoft Word document or a PDF document for printing. (All links can be found at the bottom of our online version.)

For those who haven’t grabbed Episode 4 of Red vs Blue from the official site (or for those in Europe), Eclarap points out that Halo-Game is once again mirroring this content.

Skav’s back.

Just a heads-up to the Fan Fiction writers… an oversight that’s been in place since the new automated system went online a couple of months ago has finally been rectified. (Thanks to Socrates for the heads-up.) You can now submit poetry again. The warning below the poetry/prose radio button should not be taken lightly.

Well, if you’re good at acronyms, this forum post from Red Dawg can help you figure out how the finals went at the Halo50K tournament… but the bottom line is, The Dream Team (which has won both AGP tournaments to date, as well as (in the person of one of its members) the Halo National Championship last year) took the gold AGAIN. No word yet on how Team HBO fared, unfortunately. Update: Oops, missed this thread. Looks like Team HBO got whupped… but hey, the competition was pretty rough!

Now HERE’S a weird one. Stefander dropped off a short movie he made, showing a small oversight on Bungie’s part. To reproduce it, you need a modded Xbox. Play the Maw right at the start – kill off the first wave of Flood that bust down the door. The second wave is just two guys – bump one (after it passes the broken door). Wander for a bit… and you might see this (1.6 mb, QT format). No graphics for the weapon… but it clearly used to be there. Nice! Credit to Goatrope, apparently, as well.

9 stories for you in the Fan Fiction section for you:

• Dimes Up, by Blindside
• The Forgotten -Phobos (Part 1), by el_halo_diablo
• SPARTAN II: Stranded Chapter I: Crash Landing, by Vinny
• Data Entry: UNSC Warship 5-101, by Dan Mitteer
• Bloody War: Prologue, by Ishkabibbl
• Dark Halo (04): The Megg , by Wado
• Above and Beyond the Call of Duty: Part 1, by pj-NYkr90
• Halo 2: The Wraiths chapter one; and so it begins, by Wiley Kimball
• The Road to Zaxheoa: Prologue: Hell Takes Its Toll, by Nike

Go get ’em…

To the eight million and one people sending us info about the OXM scans… Yes, it’s true: the June issue of the Official Xbox Magazine has a massive Halo 2 article, with some pretty incredible pictures. Yes, they’re allowed to print those – they got their permission straight from Bungie. Yes, we know that there are literally DOZENS of places where you can download these scans now. No, the issue is NOT on the shelves yet – only subscribers have their hands on it right now. No, we are NOT going to post these scans, or link to them; our policy with magazine scans is that we will NOT put up anything from a magazine still on the newsstand shelves. (June’s OXM isn’t even ON the shelves yet… forget about being OFF them.) By scanning these pages early (or downloading them and choosing not to buy the magazine because you’ve already read the article of interest to you), you’ve taken money from OXM, and increased the chances that OXM won’t be in business to BRING you cool articles like this a year from now. It’s not clear to me why we have to state this policy over and over, every time a magazine puts out a major Halo-related article… but it seems we do.

Another movie for ya – Fight or Flight, from Dancing Grunt Productions. 4:30 long, this movie is full of fun little snippets, mostly from single player or coop. From it, you can see stuff like coordinated marine rolls, cheating death by using vehicles, and some nicely timed warthog tosses (one into a blue beam – it’s tossed right back). It weighs in at 20.9 mb, and is hosted by mythica.org, with a backup on the Psyjnir Complex Hotline server. (More folks should take advantage of this resource – transfer rates are high, and the collection of movies is enormous.) Enjoy!

More art clearage, including a pretty amazing Maya render of the MC, and a tiny little icon… Check the Miscellaneous Art section for five new entries.