Team Overkill points out a Gamespotting article praising the power of Halo to convert even non-gameplayers to console gamers. A fun read.

Back from the wilds, and still in an off-road frame of mind… nice to see that in my absence, there’s been a bunch of Warthog-related action. Blackstar has created a pair of Warthog ads—I like the first better than the second, but they’re both worth watching—in QuickTime 5 format, at 6.9 mb and 7.4 mb respectively… now we’ve had Ford AND Chevy representation. Also, dogsounds has weighed in from the other side of the pond, with a Range Rover version, which you’ll find in our Miscellaneous Art section. (He apologizes to Razorback for the use of the Warthog logo, but points out that since RB stole it from Warthog Games anyway…) I could have used this yesterday! To all content submitters – deep apologies for my forgetting to pass on new access perms to the rest of the crew – the latest round of material will go up in the next little bit. Good to be home!

The folks at Bungie are overjoyed at the number of folks that have signed up for the first Halo National Championship. At last count, the roster contains 3,665 brave men and women! Slots are filling up fast though, so if you’ve got the sack for it, sign up now!

psst! Word has it that some of our fellow BORG’ers have signed up!

Bungie’s Truth & Reconciliation site has been updated with a bunch of new screenshots for you to caption as well as a new installment of the Legendary Walkthrough (complete with cool shots and tactics!). Pax.

Join us as we heave a collective sigh of relief: It’s been almost a whole day since our fearless leader left the premises, and there have been no problems bigger than perms that need tweaking, etc. All-in-all, things are great here! :: wonders if someone left the oven on ::

Eep… Louis forgot to give me access to HBO’s ftp so now I can’t upload new fan fiction or art. Count Zero isn’t able to do it either. So anything submitted between yesterday and Wednesday will not be posted. Sorry, all! Pax.

Wonga – what are the chances? Two misc art submissions, from two different people, with the same general idea! Razorback sent in a very cool workup of the M-12 GT, a civilian version of the military ‘hog. I LOVE that hood ornament! Not quite in the same league, but still freakily coincidental, )hog sent in his own Warthog ad. Our Miscellaneous Art coffers runneth over!

Team Overkill, a group of four sharpshooters from Staten Island, have put up the first writeup of the end-of-Macworld Lanfest sponsored by the NYC Bungie-holics. You can find it linked from their Clan site… or you can cut to the chase and visit the Events page directly. These guys kicked ass and took names. Go read about the carnage! (Pics, too.)

Speaking of movies, Brian Towne has checked in after a week-long vacation… and it sounds like his movie server was not the only bad news he faced. 🙁 The good news (for HBO visitors) is that mythica.org should be back up and running in the next day or two, depending on when Brian can get to the datacenter. Hang on a bit longer…

Hnn Productions sends word that they’ve put a new movie up for you to grab. It’s called ‘Halo-Trigger Happy‘, and it’s a 4:15 long .wmv that weighs in at 6.9 mb. It mostly shows solo gameplay, set to ‘Click Click Boom’, by Saliva. We’ll list it soon in our Movies database.

The Fan Fiction just doesn’t stop – here’s the stuff that’s been building while we’ve been out of town at Macworld:

• Halo 2: Jupiter, chapter 1, by Chi Zhang
• Ascendant, part 7, by Archangel’s Blade
• The Mis-adventures of master chief, part 1, by el_halo_diablo
• The saviours of man, part 1, by Shadow_hunter117
• Rise To Honor, part 10, by Shadow
• The Return of the Archons, by Wado
• The Brethren of Saturn, Epilogue, by Lynnada
• Rogue Enemies, part 3 and The Lost Spartan, part 8, by Spartan415
• The New Reach Campaigns, by Gasmask

There were some mixups this time around – mostly owing to my very erratic schedule this past week. Halo 2: Jupiter has already had chapter 2 posted – because I missed chapter 1. You might want to read the whole thing as a series, for continuity. Also, Ascendant, part 7, actually came in over a week ago – it got lost in the inbox. Enjoy this batch – I’m out of town for a few days, starting tomorrow, and it’s unclear if stuff coming in before Wednesday will be posted by one of the others. Please be patient!

This came in a couple of days ago, but we missed it because we were all at MacWorld (except for Crux, who was burning incense and hoping for salvation). Jon Bonneau has created his view of what the box for ‘Halo Next’ (OXM’s unimaginative moniker for the next Halo game) will look like. Check it out in our Miscellaneous Art section.

A Halo National Championship? Microsoft, EB, and iGames (a game center company) have teamed up to offer you a nationwide competition with prizes like a 50 inch flat screen TV, amazing audio systems, and lots of Xbox-related hardware. You can read Bungie’s description at Bungie.net, or visit Xbox.com for links and a movie with some fun content. (To see if there’s an iGames near you, check this participating centers list.) Thanks to Grail, of CWB, who sent us a notice of this before Bungie had even put up its page!

It’s better to change the Man’s diapers, than to be the Man… or something. The founder of Bungie Studios, Alex Seropian, has announced that he’s leaving Bungie at the end of August to concentrate on… well, life. You can read the details at Bungie.net… but I’d like to say right here and now that we’re gonna miss him.

A couple of days ago, Miguel ‘Freewill’ Chavez, master of BS, cornered Peter Tamte at Macworld New York and asked him some interesting questions about the Mac and PC ports of Halo. Read the interview here – we’ll add it to our Interviews database in the near future. (And thanks to Peter for all the great info!) Comments, of course, should be directed to the forum…

MacGamer had a chance to catch up with Peter Tamte of Destineer to talk about Halo for Mac. When asked about system requirements, Tamte could only say:

“Desktops you can buy today will be able to run Halo. We can’t make any promises about older machines, however.”

Read the full article here. Pax.

Want a serious fighter jet? Check out Storm Singer’s Skyhawk – Background in Bryce, plane in Lightwave. You’ll find it in our Miscellaneous Art section. Fly me to the moon, baby…

A full Fan Fiction series today (plus more):

• A Whacky Spartan, Parts 1-2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6, by Daniel Jackson
• Halo 2: Jupiter, Part 2, by Chi Zhang

Gotta go now…

Whoa. Do you live anywhere near San Jose, California? Would you be willing to pay $30 for the chance to play Halo on a screen that is 40 feet by 60 feet (12×18 meters)? Swing by this page, then, and register forMax Games, at the Tech Museum of Innovation – on August 15, they’ll be holding a competition, in which the final round for various games will be held on the IMAX Dome theater screen. Wowza. (First heads-up for this puppy goes to Ryan Foote.)

Whew! The Gameplay Tips queue has finally been emptied – almost 30 tips added. (Some quite good, even.) Now we just need a reasonable way to sort them… For those myriad fans still waiting patiently (or maybe not so patiently any more – dang, Bungie got their PC Halo announcement out before we finished this), the Gameplay Tricks queue has been organized – there are currently almost 30 tricks in it, and I’m going to make getting them up a priority in the coming days. (It doesn’t help that I’ll be camping for most of next week… but we’ll see what we can do.) In the meantime, go learn the best Flag defense on Sidewinder! (And lots of other stuff…)