Justin Bernard turns in another piece of artwork promoting the squad Delta Force – this time it’s a banner. We’ve reduced the display size (so that it fits on the page), but the original is available as well.

FunkyCheesMunkey draws another Halo pic for our Miscellaneous Art section. (It’s really, really big, so if you load it and see only white in your browser window, realize you have to scroll a LOT to get to any content.)

Okay, I guess this is sort of Halo-related… Matthew Ramos created an Xbox Yahoo Messenger skin, and the MC has a prominent place in it. You can see a preview he sent of the skin in action (42K), or you can download the skin itself (172K). I’m not sure we’re the best place for Instant Messenger skin collections… maybe in the future, if you have a skin you’d like the Halo community to see, you should find a skin archive site to house it at, and send us a link. Thanks!

Heh – in an article from the Houston Chronicle’s Sports 2 section front page last Sunday, tossed into the middle of a pretty funny discussion of what happens when real-life football players run up against their electronic doppelgangers is a tidbit of Halo goodness.

On the other side of the room, a group of offensive linemen were involved in a four-player game of Halo, the most popular game in the locker room next to Madden. The game involves the deployment of a cyber-enhanced soldier whose mission is to keep a threatening alien race from Earth.

“I can’t believe I killed myself,” McKinney yells.

“I survived that crash?” guard/center Chad Overhauser says.

The game gained popularity among the Texans during training camp, when tackle Jimmy Herndon and Chad Overhauser brought an X-box to training camp.

Better believe it – athletes know where the REAL competition is. 🙂 (Thanks to Alex “Atoyot” Philips for the heads-up.)

Team Xbox has put up a preview of Halo 2, combining much of the info available elsewhere into one big easy-to-read story. Go take a look!

Early-week Fan Fiction:

• Super Six Four, by Sarge
• The New Reach Campaigns Chapter 7, by Gasmask
• A New Enemy, by Matthew Edwards
• Wings of Death, part 9, by el_halo_diablo
• The Story of Halo, by Spec Ops Elite
• HELLJUMPERS, part 10, by Havok
• The Shadows, part 8, by Glenny

The Story of Halo is broken into two pieces in the database, due to limitations here… but the above link points to a full reading of it.

Live near Nashville, TN? Up for some Halo competition with $5,000 guaranteed on the line ($2200 for first place in the CTF competition, for example) at the end of November? Stop by the website of The Associates of Gaming Professionals, and read about their upcoming Halo tournament. $25 a head to enter; not bad for a shot at $2,200! (Thanks to b.net for the heads-up.)

Bandwidth might be a little tight… but we’ve tossed up the ‘Pyramid of Destruction’ film from the October 2002 OXM cover disc. It’s 5.3 mb, 1:20 long. Nothing spectacular, mostly vehicle antics on Sidewinder… but hey, if it’s good enough for OXM, it’s good enough for us. (The November issue hit the stands yesterday, which is why we’re willing to post this.) Thanks, as always, to Team Overkill for ripping it, and to Brian Towne, for the bandwidth to serve it.

Another creation from the Reyes-McLees shipyards… first the Pillar of Autumn, now Egan. Congrats, Lorraine and Rob!

Issue 9 of the Official UK Xbox Magazine hit the stands yesterday. Because of that, we’re able to bring you two articles that were published in issue 8. You’ll find these in our Press Scans section. Thanks to Griffon for the scans.

Four new desktop images for you today – mostly dark, but otherwise without a unifying theme. Check ’em all out in our Wallpaper section.

Justin Bernard, of the Halo squad ‘Delta Force’, has submitted a logo promoting the squad. You can find it in our Logos section.

Another banner from Richard, aka t3ch – you’ll find it in our Banners section.

HNN Productions has created a new Halo gameplay vid; NewGun. 5.3 mb, .wmv format, 3:12 long. Video quality is low, but good enough to see what’s going on (and the tradeoff was made to keep filesize small, which is nice). Footage ranges from run-of-the-mill gameplay to pretty funny little clips; overall, there’s nothing really new here, but the ‘tank chasing a player’ scenes have a real Warner Brothers cartoon feel to them. Take a look!

Another desktop entry from Mattman, in our Wallpaper section.

Weekend Fan Fiction:

• After Halo pt. 3 Chapter 3, by Kyle
• Revolution, part 13, by Gruntkiller
• Shadows of Archon II, part 21, by Wado
• Death Dealers, by Havok

Once again, Havok (previously Helljumper, previously Andreas) has changed his posting name. Apparently, my polite request to maintain the name you post under was overlooked. Because of that, we’ve instituted a new policy; no name changes will be accepted in the future. This is now documented on the Fiction Guidelines page. This may seem harsh – but understand that adjusting all the database entries that reference this name (in the Fan Fiction database, the comments section, the front-page news, sometimes the Miscellaneous section or the Misc Art section) takes quite a bit of time – for something that really shouldn’t change at all. Thanks for your understanding.

A couple of pretty cool banners were turned in recently; they’re HUGE, but they’re definitely worth looking at. I’ve put up smaller versions in our Banners section simply for page-loading convenience… but links to the originals are there as well. Check ’em out!

Another AIM Expression… this time it’s Halo 2-specific. Check out Nick’s note on our forum; it contains links to preview pics, and to the Expression itself.