A pair of desktop images for you today; one is dedicated to us (unsolicited again – must be the holiday spirit), the other celebrates a more legendary beast. Check ’em both out in the Wallpaper section.

Our Miscellaneous Art collection grows by three items today; there’s a new Halo 2 cover mockup, a Halo-based holiday card, and a teaser for an upcoming Halo-based mod. Check ’em out!

Apologies to all the art submitters in the last few days – life here’s getting busy (holidays, and all), and stuff’s been piling up. Let’s see what I can get out right now. First up: another 4 banners touting the goodness of this very site, created by Tru7h. We’re honored! You’ll find ’em in the Banners section.

Three Fan Fiction pieces were added to the database earlier this evening, but I didn’t have time for the news post:

• The Fall of Lunar 4, by Dispraiser
• The Fall Of Reach (poem), by Spartan 117
• Wings of Death, part 15, by el_halo_diablo

Dispraiser’s story was first released a week ago, under the name ‘The Lunar 4 Chronicles’ – this is a completed version. It’s rather large, so be warned.

Glen Sanford has created a small program (unfinished at the moment) to rate yourself as a Halo player. Simply plug in the stats from the final screen of a multiplayer game, and it’ll rate your skill (from ‘Too bad to calculate’ to ‘Level 10 Spartan II’). Currently it only works for Slayer games… but at 28K for the download, what do you have to lose? (Requires Windows – not sure what flavors; I tried it on XP, and it worked fine.) Glen’s looking for feedback; he wants to know if it’s worth finishing.

So a few days ago, I got a message from Bizkit522, a regular over at the IGN Halo board, mentioning the similarities between a couple of Marty O’Donnell tunes. Hurry, from the Oni Soundtrack, kicks in right after Konoko’s uncle is killed, and and is a high-tension piece punctuated by quick violins. On a Pale Horse, from the Halo Soundtrack, plays in a couple of places on the Assault on the Control Room/Two Betrayals level(s), and kicks in when the action is about to heat up – it, too, is a high-tension piece punctuated by the same violins. In fact, if you listen, these are very similar pieces (although Hurry is a bit faster – in my opinion, the refinements for On a Pale Horse make it a better piece)… is this a tip ‘o the hat by Marty to an older game, or did he just run out of music to use? He’s given us permission to let you hear both pieces – you can decide for yourself. Feel free to post speculation on our forum.

• Hurry.mp3 (350K)
• On_A_Pale_Horse.mp3 (764K)

These were both ripped at a relatively low bitrate (80 Kbps) – you should really buy the soundtracks for the hi-res versions.

Although Jester and Psyrixx, two original members of the iGames Players Council, have recently stepped down because of differences with the iGames philosophy, the games go on. Round 2 takes place this Saturday, December 14. Get some details at Bungie.net.

The Halo community, once again proving how much it rocks, has provided you, the viewer, with a boatload of download links for the new trailer for Brian Josselyn’s Halo Movie. We’ve compiled them on the Halo Movie Trailer Mirrors page.

A holiday card… from poena.dare. Love it!

In the hours since we mentioned it, there’s been quite a bit of activity surrounding the Halo Movie trailer put up by Blackstar Productions. Nick has created a smaller, modem-friendly version (8.3 mb) which we’ve mirrored at mythica.org… and Brian himself has posted a smaller (21 mb) version at the home site. This one (as well as the original, 35 mb version) are now mirrored as well at Mythica.org – and we’re gladly accepting any other mirror offers. It’s a pretty impressive trailer – leaves you wanting the whole thing! (The small version was encoded with the MsMPEG4v2 codec, and requires WMP 9 to view. Jacke points out that there are downloadable codecs to allow this to be seen on Macs, but as far as I can tell, they’re OS9-exclusive; I couldn’t find a way to watch this in OSX.)

The entire weekend’s Fan Fiction in one fell swoop:

• Halo Christmas Carols, by Gasmask
• Revolution 2 Return of the Forerunner, part 7, by Gruntkiller
• Wilkins, part 2, by Phat Bob
• A New Year’s Day, part 1, by Guilty Spark
• A Fresh Start, part 1, by Simon James
• This is Suicide, part 5, by Neile Pederson
• In The Beginning (dn), part 1, by Dan Nadler
• Shadows of Archon II, part 31, by Wado

Lots of new writers…

gd managed to grab a pretty funny sound clip of the Sarge, on Silent Cartographer – read about it in this post, listen to the relevant piece here. I’ve never heard this in the regular game (gd got this off the one-level demo) – I wonder if it’s unique to the demo, or if it’s actually there to be found in the full version?

Michael DiBiccari knocked down a Banshee on AotCR, and its landing spot was rather timely, given the season. We’ve added the pic to our Miscellaneous Art section.

Bonk comes back from a pretty long absence with a new cutscene blooper vid; 10.5 mb, 2 and a half minutes, in QuickTime 5 format. Messin’ with the Master Chief in the Shafted cutscene… to see what you can do with Bungie’s prescripted stuff, go check it out at iBonk.com!

The site’s being slammed pretty hard at the moment, so I can’t even get in to grab a copy we can put up at mirror sites, but it seems Brian Josselyn, of Blackstar Productions, has put up a trailer for his (in production) Halo movie. According to some forumgoers, it’s pretty impressive!

Whoa, interesting. Mark Levin has whipped up a Circular Room Grand Tour with pictures and commentary about the indoor portions of Assault on the Control Room. This is the first really intense look at the possible meanings behind the structures on Halo… and there are some interesting speculations. Check it out!

Xboxlanaz, a Phoenix, AZ-based 7th Column chapter, is hosting another big team Tourney, the Halo: Killtacular Invitational, on January 11. Top prize is $1000. You can read all the details at bungie.net.

Five new banners for you – four from Tru7h, who submits a series of HBO banners, and one from doggone, who plays with the ‘O’ in Halo to come up with a new Halo 2 logo. Gettin’ to be a real collection!

Red Loser has started a site devoted to the legendary Yellow Banshee… check it out for everything there is to know.

While it’s true that the Tricks queue has languished for months and its maintainer should be taken out and summarily shot, folks are still discovering cool stuff about Halo. Case in point: Finn, stalwart Halo Story page pillar, has discovered an unexplored area in Halo; a fourth Pulse Generator on Two Betrayals. It’s not fully operational… but the architecture is complete. Some of the areas are spooky in their darkened state. Check it out on Team 7hr33’s website!