Last month’s mind-shaking magazine articles are no longer on the newsstands… so we can finally bring them to you in our Press Scans section. You’ll find ‘Apokalyps Nu‘ from the September issue of Sweden’s Super Play, ‘X-Files‘ from the October issue of France’s Official Xbox Magazine, and the gorgeous article from the September Edge Magazine. Enjoy!

We’re swimming in Miscellaneous Art today…

Pair of new desktops for you… check our Wallpaper section.

—m0bus— has turned in a new banner, in use on his clan site, BOX Inc. Halo. You’ll find it in our Banners section.

There’s been plenty of Halo Story speculation on our forum recently… but now there’s even more; the Halo Story site has gotten a tasty update by our very own Finn. Go see what he thought was worth considering this time around!

Boatloads of new content at Bungie.net… on top of yesterday’s system upgrades, we now have a Legendary walkthrough for Two Betrayals (with almost 50 new screenshots – and more if you know where to look) and an article entitled ‘So You Want To Be a Programmer‘, written by Michael Evans, a programmer on the Halo team. Go read it all!

Three new images for our Miscellaneous art collection this time around. Folks: during the past few days, we’ve received a huge number of art submissions. Some of them we received more than once. Again – if you don’t see your image online in a day or so after submission, feel free to send us email asking us whether we got it… but PLEASE don’t resend the image unless we say we didn’t. Also: if you’re going to start with Bungie artwork, and add a line of text… or paste a character from another game onto it with no attempt at actually combining the images… we’re going to decline to host it. The overall quality of submissions in recent weeks has dropped precipitously (with several very notable exceptions) – people seem to be encouraged to send in barely modified existing work by seeing other barely modified existing work actually get posted… so from this point on, we’re going to be a bit more selective about what we post. This is not to say you must be a great artist; it’s just to say that in order for us to display your work, we have to be convinced it’s YOUR WORK. (More than half of the submissions this week aren’t getting posted for this reason.) I hope this makes sense to everyone.

Inverted can be fun. New desktop from Frank Machado in our Wallpaper section. Update: eep, forgot one. Bbow of Been Mawed dropped off a Halo50K desktop. Sorry about that.

Three new logo modifications from Justin Guizzo – check our Logos section.

A week’s catchup on Fan Fiction:

• Revolution, part 16 and part 17, by Gruntkiller
• A New Breed, Chapter1.final, by Geshtu
• Liberation, part 6, by Hoju
• Shadows of Archon II, part 23, by Wado
• The New Reach Campaigns, part 8, by Gasmask
• Forgotten Emotions, by Geo Drakis
• Have Design, Will Build, by hipboyscott
• Outlaw, part 2, by Chris Cassani

On a less pleasant note, there’s been some abuse of the comments system in the fan fiction section recently. There’s not a lot I’m going to do about this; the system wasn’t built with idiots in mind, and policing it really isn’t feasible. One writer suggested that if the abuse doesn’t stop, I’d have to institute some sort of forum system and force people to register to leave comments; this isn’t true. If it gets bad enough, I’ll just remove the comments mechanism altogether. One of the things that makes this site interesting to a diverse group of people is the ability to contribute; artwork, music, fiction… and yes, comments on others’ fiction. If it makes you feel good, or powerful, to screw up the ability of others to add to this community by forcing me to shut down areas I don’t have full control over… well, maybe you need to get out more. Remember: this site is run completely on volunteer effort. We don’t charge you anything, we don’t force you to look at banner ads, we’re simply trying to give you a place to share your love of Halo. Please – don’t make it so hard for us that we simply remove areas that require policing.

Ouch.

Achronos has posted at b.net that some new features are being added to the site that will make your surfing experience better, but that will include a half-hour of downtime today. Since we were reamed for not notifying the public the LAST time b.net went offline for upgrades, consider this your notification.

Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade were at the Xbox Live Bootcamp (the MS event that took me out west this week), as well… and the comic that came out of it is Halo-related. (The actual writeup Tycho posted is far more interesting to read – even though I now feel I have to rewrite parts of my own impressions (written on the plane home yesterday) in order not to look like I’m just ripping off his text.) Take a look!

The Xbox was finally released in New Zealand at the beginning of October… and the Kiwi gaming site Gameplanet has posted their review of Halo. They loved it. We’ve added the review to the Reviews database.

It’s late, and I have to be up pretty early for the plane flight home… but I figured I’d drop off this preliminary report. I spent today in a conference room at Microsoft with a dozen other folks, testing a wide variety of soon-to-be-released games that will work with the Xbox Live online service. It was a blast, and though what I learned isn’t directly related to Halo (and Halo 2 won’t be out for over a year), I think some of the information might be of interest to some readers of this site; I’ll be writing up my impressions in the next few days. More to the point, though, I’ll be back in town (and able to update the site) by tomorrow night… to fan fiction submitters, thanks for your patience!

David Karl, of Moden Studios, has mirrored a whole bunch of movies on his hotline server:

The Evolution of Halo, Groove 117, High Speed Highway Halo, The Halo 2 Trailer, an extra small version of the H2 trailer for poor modem suckers, The Matrix (Halo Remix), Warthog Jump, and Warthog Revisited.

Links have been added to all appropriate lists. Thanks, David!

A new banner for you, from Jack Smith – check our Banners section.

One last desktop before I get on a plane… grab it in our Wallpaper collection.

Fan Fiction for an early Monday morning:

• Marine Ambush, part 1, by Diomedes Rangue
• Liberation, part 4, by Hoju

This may be the last fanfic update for several days. I’m headed out of town, and although there are others who might update (and although I might find time while gone to do so), it’s quite possible that any submitted stories will be queued until I return on Wednesday night. Please – don’t be impatient, and don’t send your story more than once. Thanks!

A nice brick wall, enhanced with a Halo logo, courtesy of Random Hero… check our Logos section.