d!s-CreTion (enraged on bungie.net, who’s gonna be kicking my butt at an HBO Junkies lanfest in a couple of weeks) has written up his Halo National Tournament experiences – he’s in the Regionals! Check out the details.

Another mirror for some of the more popular movies out there – check out Xbox4uweb.de:

• Rocket Dance
• Dreams of Masterchief
• Warthog revisted
• Warthog jump part1
• Warthog jump 2k2
• Hamlet
• Rocketrange
• Vehicle Fun

These, too, have been added to the relevant mirror pages. Thanks, guys!

Thanks to Willy, who pointed out that hump-u.com is hosting a number of Halo vids:

• Warthog Jump
• What Goes Up
• Battle of the Bay Rocket Dance –
• Warthog Revisited
• Hurricane Halo
• Breaking the Rules
• Hell Above Water
• Halo Boys

We’ve added individual links to all the mirror pages. The bandwdith is greatly appreciated!

There’s been a settings change in one of the Regionals games for the Halo National Championship – an issue was raised on our forum by PS-DragoNSpeaR that made it clear that the existing rules would be rather unfair. Details can be found at Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site. (If you’re playing in the regionals, READ THIS – don’t show up Saturday to discover the game you’ve practiced for is different than you expected…)

In an effort to live up to their name, Games First has put up a ‘preview’ of Halo 2. There’s nothing in there that hasn’t been seen elsewhere… but it is the first ‘preview’ (named as such) we’ve seen. First mentioned at VoodooExtreme, but we snagged it off Rampancy.net.

Jester has written up his experiences at the Halo National Tournament – swing by the Psyjnir Complex for the details. 4 rounds, lots of deaths…

We received word that Mad Gamers reviewed Halo – they gave it a 10/10, downgrading it only for framerate drops at high action points. We’ve added it to our Reviews database.

HBO Babies – the Pilot! Check it out. (.wmv format, 1.7 mb.) Okay, okay, it’s fan-made… but check it out anyway! (And thanks to MasterOmok for sending it in!)

On April 12, This Side Up sent in some designs for proposed Halo maps. Today, a new batch has come in – this time, they’re textured. We’ve added them to his Map Designs page.

Warbow has created a nice little set of Halo cursors for Windows users. (These work in 9x, NT 4.0, Win2k and XP – Me’s not listed?) Directions are included – the download is tiny (8k), so what are you waiting for? (A static preview, not showing you the animation, can be seen here.)

This is really yesterday’s fan fiction – but life was busy…

• Cry for a Hero, part 3, by el_halo_diablo
• Shadows of Archon, part 5, by Wado
• The Discovery, part 8, by strategyfreak

Go get ’em!

A pair of new desktop images for you – Ken Schreiber compares Halo and Halo 2, and Allenthar colors in a cool Bungie wallpaper (in a multitude of sizes). Check ’em out in our Wallpaper section! Update: We’ve added a third image for the morning – this one from Deimosâ„¢, over at Subnova.com… it utilizes an exclusive screenshot and a classic quote; check it out!

Artwork for you this morning:

• Priceless MC, by WildebeestNZ (another MasterCard takeoff)
• Halo 2 Cover, by Jesper Nielsen (a projection of the future label for Halo 2)

Enjoy – you’ll find these in the Miscellaneous Art section.

oldmano’theC has created a pretty amazing ‘Fan Fiction’ – it’s a video called HALO Genesis?1, and it shows one vision of how Halo might have been formed. It’s fully computer-generated footage – there’s nothing from the game itself (except the title, and maybe the planetary layout) – even the music is original. It’s available from its home site, or from our mythica.org mirror. It’s 18 mb, just under 2 minutes, and in QT5 format. Check it out! Update: Thanks to Tocki, of Halo Orbit – there is now a German mirror of this film. (It doesn’t come in Chip’s nice little display window… but heck, if you’re in Europe, saving the transatlantic bandwidth is easily worth losing that!)

This was noticed a week ago, by Bachus, first… but we’ve finally added the new Halo 2 banner from the main bungie.com web page to our Banners collection. It shows the MC before an open airlock, an interesting viewpoint not shown in the rest of the currently released media.

The Psyjnir Complex’s Shallow Throat tells all! (Well, tells SOMETHING.) Halo 2 storyline – revealed?

Smilebit has a theory about the delay of the Halo 2 trailer…

A few days ago, we posted a desktop image submitted by Chome, of Xbox Weekly. Turns out that pic used (without permission) the artwork of Greg Martin, specifically a picture called ‘Inevitable‘. At the request of Mr. Martin, we’ve yanked this entry. (He does some pretty amazing work – you might want to browse through his site.) A warning to content submitters – if we discover you’ve submitted a piece using artwork that belongs to someone else, we will not accept any future submissions from you – in any category.

We mentioned the Halo National Tournament thoughts of Freewill, and Team Overkill – now there are a bunch more at Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site. Stop by, and see what people were experiencing…

Even when we say no, someone says yes. Kevin Chambers’ movie ‘The Drunk Master Chief’ was turned down here for hosting because it didn’t meet our (rather stringent) posting guidelines… but it’s already found 2 homes: Haloid is hosting it on the web (last item on the list), and the Psyjnir Complex is hosting it via Hotline (go to Files, then Halo -> Movies). 14 megs, .wmv format… go for it! (We’ve got a pair of homes lined up for the larger movie mentioned this morning, as well – just ironing out some details.)