Inspired by a discussion on our forum, oldmano’theC drops off a desktop image with some pretty big intentions… check it out in our Wallpaper section.

And it’s Weasel to the rescue! That Weasel Television mirrors ‘Vehicle Fun’ by Black_Jackal, ’16 Minutes of Halo Fame’ by Assassin X and HiTmAn 101, and ‘Tournament’ by Warbow (in both the original QT and a new, 9.8 mb .wmv) – if you’re having trouble getting these files, go visit That Weasel! (The Tournament mirrors page has been updated with these links, as well as with Blackstar Production’s mirror – it shouldn’t be hard to get any more.)

New Fan Fiction from Shadow – Rise to Honor, part 3 is now available. Take a look!

Apologies for the delay – a few days ago, we received a sketch of the Master Chief… along with a series of images showing how the final product came about. You can find this image (and its evolution) in our Miscellaneous Art section. Interesting!

Woohoo! 5 more musical outtakes, courtesy of Marty O’Donnell and the Bungie Online team – read all about ’em (and download ’em) from Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation website. Thanks to Clefton Twain for the heads-up! (With a little work, the Halo Love Theme Sketch could have made it into a Godfather sequel… okay, maybe not.)

Movies, movies, and more movies… there’s no guarantee that the main server won’t simply melt, but we’ve put another massive film up at mythica.org – this time it’s Warbow’s ‘Tournament’. It’s… well, you should watch it, it’s sort of hard to explain. It’s 18 megs, in QT5 format, and if you can mirror it, we’d love to hear from you. In the meantime, you can find it on the web at mythica, and on Hotline at the Psyjnir Complex. (Psyrixx, you rock, too. 🙂 ) These, and hopefully more, links can be found on the Tournament Mirrors page. Let the downloading begin!

Xbox news: Pallor points out a new book by Dean Takahashi called ‘Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft’s Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution‘. She hasn’t read it yet, but has reason to believe that Bungie (and Jason Jones) might be discussed. Also – emildux points out an article at MSNBC.com that looks at Microsoft’s willingness to stay in the Console War – a prediction of nearly 2 billion dollars lost in the next two years in the fight to dominate the market. Some interesting numbers in here… nice to know that Halo 2 will still have a console to play on by the time it arrives.

Feel the love. Yesterday, we posted our new Movie Posting Guidelines, to (regretfully) explain why we couldn’t continue to find hosting for every single movie made by fans. Today, 3 new movies find non-HBO-related homes, and two movies get MORE homes. You guys rock. Okay, to business:

• Vector40, against his better judgement, risks tomorrow’s dinner to bring you ‘Vehicle Fun‘, by Black_Jackal – it’s a 3 minute, 7 mb .wmv file showing lots and lots of vehicle flipping.
• Mad Cow risks the wrath of his cable company by setting up a server on a spare PC in his home, and providing bandwidth for a movie called ‘16 Minutes Of Halo Fame!‘. Another .wmv, this one is (surprise!) 16 minutes long, and 27 mb big – it shows a series of gameplay stunts, with an unusual soundtrack; creators Assassin X and HiTmAn 101 discuss the tricks as they’re playing. It has a ‘reality tv’ type feel to it.
• Dan Chosich points out his fifth offering (titled, straightforwardly, Halo Movie 5, but also known as Halo Assault) – 6 minutes of Blood Gulch carnage, nicely filmed and set to music. (For what it’s worth, I’d say this is the best of his work so far…) It’s available in four flavors – two QT5 versions, and two WMV versions, ranging in size from 30 to 65 mb.
• That Weasel, a longtime HBO bandwidth donor, provides homes for Scottish Hunter and the new H3 – links point to their mirror pages, which reflect the new entries. (Mad Cow has ALSO provided another home for H3 – and that’s listed there too.)

All of these movies will make it soon into the Movies database… along with a couple of other recent releases we’ve neglected to archive. To all the hosters – you guys make this community hum. To the movie makers – it’s wonderful to see that Halo inspires so many to such heights, and we’re really happy our recent scaling-back hasn’t hurt the creative spirit. Keep up the great work!

Got Halo, but can’t find any prospects for local LAN games? Never fear, the 7th Column is always there to help! Shaq Diesel and Skip Weasel, two Bungie employees (and, from the sounds of it, lonely guys) offer you tips on how to make friends, in the hopes of building up a critical mass for a Halo fest. Check it out!

The movie deluge has begun – and we’ve been forced to change our policies. 🙁 To the rather large number of people who submitted movies over the past few days – we’ve written up a set of guidelines for movie submission; they should help explain our position on this issue. For right now, though, we have a new file for you – and we need mirrors for it, because it’s quite large. It’s called High Speed Highway Halo, or H3 for short… and it chronicles the insane antics of Team H³ as they play the first (and only, we hope) game of multi-car Halo. (You may remember that we brought you some photos of their folly a couple of weeks ago – now watch as they setup, plan, and execute this risky stunt. It’s available in both Windows Media Player and QuickTime 5 formats – both weigh in at a bit under 20 megs. If you can mirror this – please drop us a line. (There are more films in the pipe, and we’re going to get swamped if we’re not careful.) In the meantime, you can find the available mirrors listed on the H3 Mirrors page. Thanks to NsomniA for the creation of this film, and for all of his patience for massaging it into multiple formats! Update: DOH! Sorry, I’d put them in bad places… the Mythica.org urls should work now. Apologies!

Monday Morning Fan Fiction:

• The Brethren of Saturn, part 2, by Lynnada
• …Must Carry You Out, by Knight Premier (extra points for knowing the significance of the title)
• Tides of War, by Reiyou (no relation to the other 2 series by this name)

Go to it!

Weekend link roundup – a site for ‘X-Squad‘ was pointed out to us; they’re a Halo clan that plays on Gamespy. Visit their site if you’re interested in joining, or would like to challenge ’em. (Thanks, Griffon.) Also, Ross Mills writes to say that his Halo Ideas site was far more popular than he expected, and has decided to overhaul his site. To that end, he’s set up a contest; he’s looking for artwork for the new design. Details can be found on the site.

These things seem to go in cycles… and recently, there have been a lot of questions on our forum, asking how Bungie gets those incredibly beautiful screenshots. We’ve finally added the answer to our Most-Asked Questions list. Feel free to point others here.

A couple of pieces from Microsoft’s Xbox.com site which might be worth a read… Francesca Reyes, Senior Editor of the Official Xbox MagazineÊ·rote an article entitled ‘The Real “Halo” World‘, describing how multiplayer fests affect the interactions between co-workers… and Martyn Rose penned an article called ‘Co-op Multiplayer Blast Fest!‘, which looks at why Coop is so much fun. (This latter article requires you to sign inÑ´here’s no cost to registerÑ´o xbox.com before reading it.) Take a look! Update: Eep! We forgot to mention the interview with Max Hoberman and Matt Soell about the Bungie Store! (It’s not new, but we never mentioned it before…) Definitely worth a read.

A new Fan Fiction story for you – KnightmareWolf’s Fafnir Chapter 1. (This was actually submitted before the last update, but we managed to miss it.) Also, Kyo has submitted revised versions of both of his chapters (we don’t encourage this – really) – you can read the new versions individually, or as a unit. Update: DOH! Didn’t even notice the new chapter of Shadow’s Rise to Honor series in our inbox as I was processing fiction. Check out Chapter 2: The Mission now.

Caught again… miles did some fancy footwork in order to leave a nav-pointed grunt alive at the start of Truth and Reconciliation… and hence was able to measure the distance from the arrival bay inside the Truth and Reconciliation (where you end up after going through the gravity lift) and the starting point of the level… and the interesting thing is that the ship is BELOW the start point, not above it! Bizarre…

CENOBITE has created a Master Chief skin (in three sizes; the ‘Light’ size looks most like the Halo Master Chief) for Tribes 2. You can see what it looks like here, and download it from the Skinner’s Guild. (You’ll need to registerÖ©t’s freeÖ´o download, so if there’s enough demand (and if it’s okay with CENOBITE), we’ll host a copy here, too.) Update: CENOBITE has no problem with our hosting the file – so if you don’t want to register at the Skinner’s Guild, you can grab a zipped version here. (Okay, it’s not technically HEREÖ·e’ve put it into Mythica’s mirror spaceÖ¢ut the point is, you don’t need to fill any forms out to get it.) The Skinner’s Guild is still a great source of info and advice, though – if you have any questions, that’s the place to head.

Wondering what Halo looks like, in the context of its astral neighbors? Roger Wilco created a little demo of how he thinks it might move around Threshold, Basis, and their sun… take a look.

Friday’s Fan Fiction collection:

• The Long Ride Home, part 9, by Joshua Barreto
• A Second Last Chance, chapter 4, by Torch99
• Prince of Angels, part 2, by Kyo

(This is actually yesterday’s fan fiction – they were ready to post then, except that one of the authors forgot a title. Rather than wait any longer, however, I’ve decided to post them as is.)

Heh – a few days ago, Halo 2 was just a rumor in the minds of the hopeful. Two days ago, the news of its existence (as stated by J. Allard) was all over the internet. Today… according to the Magic Box, it’ll be out in Japan by the end of this year. Don’t you love how fast things change? (For what it’s worth, we’d be willing to bet reasonable amounts of money that this is horse-pucky.) Thanks to Jon Chang for making us smile.