News.com interviewed John O’Rourke, marketing director for Microsoft’s games division about Xbox Online. O’Rourke, as well, mentioned an online version of Halo:

Microsoft is also preparing online versions of its popular Xbox titles “Halo” and “Project Gotham Racing.”

They’re not expecting to have a full beta program for their online service before Autumn, however, so don’t be looking for this product in the next 3 months… (Thanks to Patroclus for the heads-up.)

Thanks to bikeman704, Team Overkill and gotenks20001@hotmail.com (name unprintable on the web) who all pointed out that IGN Xbox had a report of the first day of E3, including a ‘frustratingly casual mention of Halo 2’:

As we said the next version of Halo (MS won’t even refer to it as Halo 2) will be online but the company was not forthcoming with any details beyond this.

Info… but no info. So it goes…

Bungie doesn’t normally get in the middle of rumor mongering… but this one was pretty big. Raelgun pointed out a forum thread over at Team Xbox which purported to describe a trailer for ‘Halo 2’ to be shown at E3 this week. Dave Candland jumped onto our forum to succinctly confirm that this is an ‘OBVIOUS TOTAL LIE’. If there is any Halo-related info at E3, we’ll be sure to bring it to you… but this ain’t it.

The newest Bungie employee showed his face last night… Congrats to Joe Staten and his wife – they have a new baby boy! (Thanks to Marty O’Donnell for passing on the good news.)

Klawria, of the Seventh Column Chapter Halo National, has begun work on a site called ‘Halo National‘. The banner states that the site is ‘Coming June 2002’, but there’s a considerable amount of content right now. Stop by and take a look! Thanks to Vector40 for the heads-up.

Hmm… many people have said that Halo would be oh-so-much-better with a mouse and keyboard, instead of the standard Xbox controller… well, it looks like they might get a chance to test that assertion soon. Xbox 2k has a story on the Claw, a device that works in conjunction with a standard Microsoft USB mouse to control all the actions available via the controller.

“Many PC gamers have expressed a desire to play Halo with a mouse plus keyboard style set-up”, said Jason Ferraro, Director Ferraro Design. “Our Claw and mouse solution provides an intuitive controller set-up for those less familiar with the standard dual analogue console game pad.”

Disclaimer – this could simply be a very late April Fool’s joke on the part of Xbox 2K… or it could be something we see next week at E3. Time will tell…

Saturday’s Fan Fiction:

• Effusion, part 9, by Tursas
• Fight for Her, by Omniscient
• The Aftermath part 1 and part 2, by Gasmask
• Last Hope part 6, by SSJBRK

Rainy weekend here – good for reading. (News will probably slow down – lots of family stuff to attend to. Not to mention the service outages that have started up again, thanks to the weather…)

xbill has developed a new measuring technique – initiated here, a couple of days ago, he has now used the NavPointâ„¢ Warthog to measure the height of the cliff outside one of the blue beam structures – it’s about 438 meters, for those of you dying to know. Anyone with some serious patience can measure distances on several levels with this tool. (This technique was first seen (by me, at least) in Frogblast’s ‘Mapping Silent Cartographer‘, posted a couple of weeks ago.)

Bungie’s Seventh Column site has news of two new themes for use by chapters – a Master Chief theme created by Stosh, and a Tru7h theme created by Jonah Friedman. I picked a random pair of chapters sporting these themes – you can see the MC theme on The Elite Enforcers’ site (they’re a central Florida team offering $200 if anyone can beat them on both Blood Gulch and Sidewinder), and the Tru7h theme is in use for the Central Florida Halo chapter, another CF team headed up by forum regular PCDestroyer. Check ’em out!

cman writes to point out that the newest issue of Rolling Stone (the one with Kurt Cobain on the cover) contains an article about musicians and their favorite video games. Halo features prominently – Jack Black, of Tenacious D, says

“Tonight we’re gonna rock a sold-out show, and then we’re going to play some Halo. I’ll see if i can find some Halo groupies – everybody loves Halo. I’m a full-time Halohead.”

There are several other good bits – once this issue is off the stands, we’ll be posting the article in our Press Scans section. In the meantime, go buy the Dead Tree edition!

Whoa – FINALLY! Way back on March 6, Bungie posted a series of closeup screenshots, and challenged fans to decipher them. Most were figured out within the first couple of days… but scrn_081 has baffled the community… until now. xbill gets the kewpie doll, according to Dave Candland, the devious creator of the challenge. W00t!

A pair of new desktop images have been submitted – you’ll find ’em in our Wallpaper section.

Thursday’s Fan Fiction offering:

• The Outer Limits, part 2, by agsbladerboy55
• Taker of Life, Giver of Death – prologue, by Ian Barnes
• Love, by Halo-Wannabe

The old, the new, and the short…

Alan Wu writes to point out that Project Mjolnir has changed servers – and there’s now a nice list of mirrored movies. We’ll be updating mirror lists HERE soon (for both this stuff, and the Repertory’s new links), but in the meantime you can grab what you need off the Project MJOLNIR mirror page.

Your Death Awaits – a Halo clan – points out that its website contains some interesting stunt pictures on multiplayer maps. (You can also find information on the clan itself, and contact them if you’re interested in joining.) Check it out!

Thursday’s Fan Fiction offerings:

• Last Hope, part 5, by SSJBRK
• The Hell Of War, part 11, by Jaywhit10

In addition, Nick has turned in a ‘proofread’ version of his recently submitted ‘Halo Aftermath Prologue‘, which has now been updated. A request to Fan Fiction writers – please, proofread your stories BEFORE you submit them, or live with the errors. The workload here is high enough without making small adjustments to already-submitted stories. (This is the fourth request of this type this week alone… a disturbing trend. Once a story is in the system, editing it requires editing multiple files; it’s far easier to submit new stories than it is to edit existing ones. Thanks for your consideration.)

Quick note about the search function here – it’s better now. Individual terms are separated (if you type in ‘pelican model’, it now searches for ‘pelican OR model’ instead of the phrase ‘pelican model’, as it did before), and if you go to the search page itself, you have the option to narrow searches by requiring ALL search terms be hit. Feedback, as always, is welcome.

Movie news: Dan Chosich wrote recently to say that there were new mirrors of both his movies (Halo Montage and 2070) (and one copy of a version not yet seen) on his site – all movies can be reached from his main movie page. (Links have also been added to his movie mirror pages.) Also, Brian Josselyn, of Blackstar Productions, writes to say that he’s re-encoded ALL of his movies; ‘Halo: The Movie‘ is now 6 mb smaller in its best quality, the second teaser has much better sound, and the third teaser is finally set to the proper aspect ratio. Mirror sites are encouraged to replace their existing versions with the newer version – there are currently copies at the Blackstar Productions page, and at mythica.org. (See the mirror pages for specific links.)

|RaptoR| submitted a nice desktop image (in 4 sizes), showing off both Halo and Oni – and was followed up by a much more lighthearted entry from Dolbex. You’ll find both in our Wallpaper section.

A month and a half ago, bikeman704 submitted a rendering of the Halo pelican in a Counter-Strike format… today, he brings you two screens of a level based on the Pillar of Autumn. You’ll find ’em in our Miscellaneous Art section. Nice!