Woohoo! The long-awaited ‘Warthog Revisited’, Randy Glass’ followup to his ‘Warthog Jump’ film (first seen last week, in a slightly less finished form, and the Bungie Fanfest in LA), is now available! You can grab it for a VERY short time at Randy’s site – but he’s going to pull that down sometime today. Mirrors would be gratefully appreciated! (I’ve already tossed copies of both the large (320×240, 17.2 mb) and small (240×180, 8.9 mb) versions up at mythica.org – thanks, Brian! – but the more, the merrier!) Read Randy’s forum post for more details.

For those who think Halo’s tapped out, interest-wise… check this out. Razorback posts a note to our forum, explaining how he set up a situation where the standard auto-aim feature of Halo just stopped working – in his words, “it whould like, thorw away my vision from the hunter.” (Razorback is Portuguese – give him a break on the spelling and grammar.) Stormsinger added some details… and Ferrex popped in with the behind-the-scenes explanation… and for Halo-geeks, it’s pretty satisfying. (If you read it and say, ‘so what?’, rejoice in your non-Halo-geekiness.) It’s not old yet, folks!

Whoa – thanks to Frogblast, who noticed a new set of screenshots over at Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation; another set of Eyeball Benders! This one’s tougher than the last set… add your guesses to Froggy’s thread!

Halo: Game of the Year Edition box acronym: revealed! Mnemesis, our research droid, has sent in both the acronym… and a pretty decent guess:

ABTFIPAS05

Yes, that’s the number ‘5’, not the letter ‘S’. Mnemesis’ guess? “Ask Bungie To Finally Introduce Pimps At Sea On Sega.” (Well, except for the 5…) Have an idea yourself? Post it to our forum! (Thanks to B5RobMan, who did his best to find this acronym – your time was appreciated!)

It had to happen… Scott Porter writes to let us know that work has begun on a Marathon Infinity conversion – Halo: Combat Unevolved. They’ve JUST started, so there’s not much there yet… but if you are interested in getting in on the ground floor of this project, send him mail!

It took much, much longer to put together than any of us expected… but I’m proud to announce the opening of a new section here at HBO – Keyes’ Corner. This will be a place where complicated aspects of Halo are examined in-depth; we won’t just look at a single piece, we’ll tear the puppy apart, see what makes it tick. We’ll show you how you can use it during gameplay, and look at some of the ramifications, when relevant. Installment One covers the Unlimited Ammo/Unlimited Camo glitch – what it is, where to find it, how to activate it, what you can do with it. The article is replete with maps and movies of the areas you need to visit and the tasks you need to accomplish in order to activate the glitch. Many thanks to Stormsinger, xbill, and Frogblast for their invaluable help in putting this together!

Heh – Daniel (Finn), of Team 7hr33, has put up a page of images commemorating his (and Rich’s (Shovelface’s)) visit to E3 – dinner with Bungie, Fanfest shenanigans, and a very freaky accident involving a man in a palm tree. Check it out! (Visit the Team 7hr33 website, and then hit the ‘Bungie Trip 2002’ link about halfway down the Index.) A nicer pair of guys you won’t find. (Though put guns in their hands, and it’s a whole different story…)

Goodness… passed right over this. 🙁 Robo42786, a frequent contributor to our Fan Fiction section, has created a music video for Halo – it’s called ‘When Worlds Collide’, and is set to the song of the same name by Powerman 5000. It’s in .wmv format, and weighs in at 4.9 mb, zipped. We’ve put it up on mythica.org’s server – but anyone who wants to mirror it would be gratefully acknowledged.

In the old days, Box Acronyms were a staple of Bungie’s offerings, and provided quite a bit of discussion fodder for fans. The practice fell by the wayside, unfortunately, with Oni… and the original Halo release has none, either. However, starting with the Game of the Year Edition, and continuing with the Halo Soundtrack, the practice is back! I don’t have a copy of the GotY box, so I don’t know what the acronym is… but Friday night, lucky Fanfest-goers got their hands on the Halo Soundtrack, a couple of weeks early… and the acronym there is

SABABWL

Our own mnemesis, of the Halo Story page, threw out a guess of ‘Songs About Buildings And Babes Wearing Leather’… but this is probably not exactly right. Anyone else have any guesses? (We’d also love to get hold of the GotY acronym, if anyone’s got a copy…)

Wednesday’s Fan Fiction input…

• Effusion, part 10, by Tursas
• Last Hope, part 8, by SSJBRK

This is the final chapter of Effusion (though an Epilogue should be coming)…

Read this. Thanks.

For those who had trouble yesterday seeing the mod designs created by Roger Wilco… he’s put up a local mirror here. Hopefully, this will work a bit better than Tripod did…

Thanks to Miguel Chavez, who sent in a nice pic of the close of the Fanfest last week. It was taken just before we broke everything down, and you can see the die-hard late-stayers, along with two of the 6 Xboxes we used (plus their screens). Only about half the people are labeled – this is my fault, as I didn’t know everyone there. 🙁 (If you know any of the unnamed people, feel free to tell us – we’ll add labels.) And for those who don’t believe Miguel is REALLY Bungie’s Number One Fan… check this out.

The movies released after the fanfest on Friday have been added to the Movies page – they should be easier to access from there. More coming soon!

Built-up fanfic over the weekend:

• Pillar of Autumn, by Nick
• Upon this Stage, prologue 2, by Gordi
• Taker of Life, Giver of Death, part 1, by Ian Barnes

Go to it!

A pair of desktops came in over the weekend – you’ll find them in our Wallpaper section.

Wanna see some cool vehicle designs for a potential mod for Halo for PC? Looky here.

When you feel like frowning… sometimes you need to just laugh.

Quick post (more in the morning) – Ryan wrote to point out that The Halo Fan Fiction Project has gotten a makeover – check it out! (And join ’em if you want to help bring the story of Halo to life in words…)

Back at home… but not really here yet. Off to a Memorial Weekend Parade; there’s no guarantee I’ll be back any time soon, so no promises of news backup clearouts. (The Count has done a pretty good job keeping up with stuff, anyway – there’s not THAT much to catch up on, except maybe a rundown of the Fanfest Friday night.) Enjoy the weekend!