Dang – this came last night, missed it. 🙁 Ryan ‘Mhaddy’ Matthews, of The Junkyard, wrote to let us know that the Junkyard has been experiencing some downtime (since the weekend, actually – they’re not dead, just offline for a bit. They’ll be back up and running soon.

Today’s Fan Fiction:

• Present Horizon, part 2, by Spook
• The awakening, part 3, by agsbladerboy55
• Whispers, by Ryan
• The Outer Limits, part 1, by agsbladerboy55
• The covenant, by agsbladerboy55
• Operation False Prophets, part 13, by Ian Barnes

Mixed bag…

Åstro the Space Duck has created the first Halo Story Page ‘maintainer column’. Hopefully, over time, the collection of these will grow. For now, you can read his treatise on Forerunner Symbols. (Yes, the subject has been looked at before – but never coupled with an attempt to interpret them.) He’s done a fantastic job isolating and iconizing the symbols found throughout the game – give it a read! Comments should go either on our forum, or to the Halo Story Page.

Lots of mirrors… too many to list. New homes for most of the movies released recently (including the elusive QT5 version of 2070). You can find links to all mirror lists on our Movies page. Thanks to all the bandwidth volunteers! We couldn’t do it without you!

Ryan sends word that the Halo Fan Fiction Project now has an informational page to go along with the forum set up a couple of days ago – stop by and get all the details.

Reuters is reporting that a market analyst is predicting a $100 price cut on the Xbox to be announced as early as E3 (in less than 3 weeks). That should jump-start new sales… thanks to Dave Calotta for the heads-up.

The Bungie Store is live. Start your buying. (Thanks, M.A.G…)

Even though there’s a small disclaimer at the top of the Gameplay Tricks section, we still get base stuffing pics, and vehicle balancing pics, and demands for faster action on submissions… to attempt to answer some of this mail, we’ve put together the first attempt at a Gameplay Tricks FAQ – please take a minute or two and read it over before submitting tricks (or mailing us). Thanks!

Mirror, mirror, on the net… We’ve gotten our first mirrors for this morning’s movies – Dave Calotta has provided Hotline access to all four films (links can be found on all the mirror pages), and Masterchief (the creator of Hell Above Water) has provided another mirror for that film. We appreciate the help!

DOH! I hate busy weekends… I miss stuff. 🙁 Music4Games.net has published a special Audio Review of Halo – they gave it a 10/10. Go read it, and see why Halo is head-and-shoulders above the competition, aurally speaking.

HUNTR-KILLR writes to let us know that XBConnect (one of the three options you have for playing Halo online right now, and by some accounts the least laggy) has a new release out, as of this weekend. Version 1.1 adds these features:

1. Host can see players pings
2. Players can see all players in game
3. Language filter
4. Full games show up in red
5. Fixed bug in adapter list. Should help some people finding xbox
6. Customizable sound events

Check it out at the XBConnect site, and download the latest version!

It’s not even movie mania – it’s movie insanity! Not 1… not 2… not 3… 4 non-trick movies have been released this weekend! We decided, rather than try to space them out, to simply dump them, whole hog, on the community. Here’s the thing, though – only two of them have download locations that AREN’T mythica.org. We need mirror offers… and we need ’em fast! We’re not expecting folks to mirror EVERYTHING – but if you can host one of these, please, send us mail. Without further ado… the offerings:

• Hell Above Water – this came in late last week; it’s a pretty simple movie, with clips all taken from the E3 2000 video (but cut differently), set to Curve’s Hell Above Water. It’s 6.7 mb, in zipped .wmv format. (There’s no mirror list.)
• ‘A**hole’ – this might just be the funniest Halo video ever made. A hilarious Denis Leary song has been brought to life with Halo footage – with a serious eye for detail. Available in .wmv format (two resolutions, 23 mb and 7 mb), and QT5 format (23 mb).
• The Halo Boys Soundtrack – the next offering from Blackstar Productions, this takes Bungie’s Demo Promo footage and puts it to great use – making fun of boy bands. 11 mb, in QT5 format. Two mirrors so far… with more coming, we hope.
• 2070 – the third offering from Dan Chosich, this 5-minute long piece puts Halo gameplay to music… and does it very well. Nicely edited. 24.4 mb, .wmv format. There’s apparently also a QuickTime 5 version, but we haven’t found it yet.

Until more mirrors come in, we’re gonna be pushing our luck with Brian Towne’s mythica.org mirror site… so be gentle. If you’re getting 5k/sec… kill the download, come back tomorrow. (Hopefully, by then we’ll have more places for you to grab it from.) Wow – sometimes when it rains, it pours.

An interesting pair of wallpapers came in this weekend – another dual-monitor modification, and an interesting piece that came out of a school project – it uses real life locations coupled with Halo artwork. Check ’em both out in our Wallpaper section!

Xerxes writes to point out that Halo Orbit has been redesigned. Check ’em out!

Geez, take a Saturday night off, and things go crazy! Here’s the first batch of uploads – some Fan Fiction for you:

• Operation False Prophets, Chapter Twelve, by Ian Barnes
• Effusion, chapter 7, by Tursas
• The awakening (life of a Spartan), chapter 2, by agsbladerboy55
• Halo: Aftermath (gj), chapter 2, by GarlicJr11

Halo: Aftermath comes with cover art, as well (link is inside the story).

InToRcEpToR has submitted a pair of desktops, created by applying Photoshop filters to some Bungie-created images. If you like painting on your desktop, check out our Wallpaper section!

A couple of links for you… StarWarsFanMan sent in a link to his Halo Pictures site a bit ago, but the message got buried in my inbox. 🙁 The site contains collections of Halo pictures – including a glitch scene showing TWO Guilty Sparks. We also received word of a clan site, the 67th Raptors. They’re looking to be the best that they can be… and they want you.

That Weasel writes to say that he’s mirrored the large and the small versions of yesterday’s new Halo ‘ad’. You can find the links on our Mirror page – and thanks again to That Weasel Television!

Ever been playing multiplayer and received the message ‘killed by the Guardians’? Ever wondered what it meant? Well, the Seventh Column Chapter HALO National is offering $100 (in a gift certificate to EBWorld) to the best explanation for their existence. Details of this bounty hunt can be found on Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site. (Thanks to Vector40 for the heads-up.)

A new Halo ‘commercial’ has hit the scene – created by Micro295, it blends footage from the E3 2000 vid, the first Halo commercial, and some other sources, and puts them all to ‘Hero’, by Chad Kroeger of Nickelback and Josey Scott of Saliva (off the Spider-Man movie soundtrack). There are 3 sizes – a 320×240 version, weighing in at 16.7 mb; a 240×180 version, weighing in at 12.2 mb; and a 160×120 version, weighing in at 7.4 mb. All three have been uploaded to Mythica.org and to the Psyjnir.com Hotline server… but we can always use other mirrors. (Current download locations will always be listed on the Mirror page.)