We thought it was too much to ask… but those miracle workers at Bungie never sleep. The Bungie Store is open! Go buy your Grunt Plush Doll today!

Halo Babies! Bungie takes the wraps off their newest project, an animated television project scheduled to debut this fall. Check the Tru7h and Reconciliation website for all the details! (Video clips are coming – we can’t wait! (Thanks to Djof, on our forum, and Jester, via email, for the heads-up.)

A few descriptions of the carnage that took place at the Hilton Towers in San Francisco (yesterday’s Battle of the Bay) have been posted on our forum. Thanks to Psyrixx, Appleicious, and Tarrsk for their input… hopefully there’ll be more!

Wh00t! (As of the time of this post, the Mac version is incomplete – you won’t be able to unstuff it, because the Binhex file didn’t completely upload, it seems. This will likely be fixed soon. The Windows version is fine, though… the Error message is a riot.)

Daniel writes to say that Team 7hr33’s website has had a major overhaul – new layout (I like), TONS of new content (much of which I will eventually steal for inclusion here), and one disappointment – a movie, posted yesterday (and filmed on March 11) shows Team 7hr33’s exploration of the ‘Black Door’ on Two Betrayals, mentioned in the recent Gameplay Trick uploaded by Frogblast. (It STILL doesn’t predate Legolas’ documentation in our forum… but it is the first video showing the door.) Go visit – check out the Maw vids, the frontwards 360 in a Scorpion, and the very slick plasma pistol/grenade combo trick… and everything else around there. These guys have S7yle, with a capital S.

We wish you peace on this day, in a world gone mad… and we offer you a new batch of Fan Fiction:

• Aftermath Part 2, by Alex Cross
• The Hell of War Part 3, by Jaywhit10
• The Renegade Marines Part IX, by Shadow
• Siege of the Rings Chapter 2, by The Wraven
• Finishing what you started, Part Two, by LeAtHeRnEcK

These are all available in our Fan Fiction section.

There’s a pretty big backup in the Gameplay Tricks queue, but time is short this weekend. I’m putting up a recent exploration by Frogblast – it stands alone, unlike some of the other entries. Check it out for some freaky behavior in Two Betrayals!

Yesterday, we mentioned some changes to the Japanese Halo site – protexts has been kind enough to translate the news item associated with the dogtags (he calls it a paraphrase/translation):

They are having a Halo tournament 3/31 in two shops in Nagoya: Nagoya Toys Paradise and Miraiyabuusu. The players will purchase first time limited dog tags (comes with rubber silencer (literal translation) along with a case and a logo on it). The dog tags are the tickets to the tournament.

So, if you’re going to be anywhere near Nagoya in the next couple of days, you might want to visit one of these shops!

Two new desktops for you – one, from Joel Day, was created some time ago, but only submitted recently. The other, from Loren Judah, is new. You can find both in our Wallpaper section.

Nice. (It’s an accompaniment to this article at the Seventh Column, Bungie’s community site, about an upcoming (TOMORROW!) lanfest with an expected 50 participants. Wowzers!)

Four new Fan Fiction entries:

• Finishing What You Started, Part One, by LeAtHeRnEcK
• Resistivity Chapter 3, by Roger Lin
• Aftermath Part 1, by Alex Cross
• Effusion Chapter 2, by Tursas

You’ll find ’em all in our Fan Fiction section.

How many different ways can you screw up in a Warthog? Parias and Mr. Zig put that question to the test, with Driving Drunk, a new Halo vid. Currently, there are three sites you can grab this at:

• Shaw.ca (Parias’ site)
• The Repertory (shooting for 50 gigs over the limit!)
• Mythica.org (thanks, as always, to Brian)

The slight music glitch at the very end is my fault – don’t blame Parias. Overall, a pretty funny flick! (You can read his description of it on our forum.) The movie is 2:38 long, and about 9 megs big, in QT5 format. Give it a shot!

PS2 and Xbox Hardcore have posted their Halo review – and while it glows, there are a few odd things about it. They list a 60hz mode for PAL for it, though for the past week or so, that’s been just about the biggest gripe on our forum (the LACK of a useful 60hz PAL mode)… they list 4 players in the info box (though the review itself correctly states that up to 16 can play), and they give it an overall rating of 91%, though their individual scores are all much higher (graphics: 94%; sound: 96%; playability: 94%). It’s a good read, though – check it out. (We’ve added it to our Reviews Database – currently at 108 reviews, average 94.8%.)

Drunkgamers.com has put up part 4 of their multiplayer tips series – this one contains a 2.4 mb, 15 second film showing how knowing the patterns can help teammates work nicely together. (It’ll put a smile on your face… unless you’ve been in Blade’s position.) Take a look!

The Official Japanese Halo site has put up a bunch of wallpapers – they look a lot like the images poena.dare #CP#g sent in a while back… except with Xbox and Halo logos plastered on ’em. (There is also a nice new section on characters, and an interesting picture in the news that shows dogtags and some sort of metal box – the only (english-readable) text is ‘Halo Championship’… intriguing.)

A few weeks ago, I instituted a new ‘official’ policy about Fan Fiction submissions – they need to be of a minimum length for inclusion in the collection – but I neglected to make this clear on the Fan Fiction page itself. This has been rectified. Apologies to all Fan Fiction writers who missed the original post, and were therefore unaware of the policy.

What the…? The Bungie webcam has gone dark! (Here’s a recent pic, in case it changes before you read this.) I hadn’t noticed this before, but it’s an hour off Redmond time – I wonder if it’s a daylight savings thing? In any case, hopefully it just got knocked over during a wild night of carousing in the Bungie offices – and is not a sign of something more sinister (like an infiltration of… oh, never mind).

ShdwPnthr points out a pair of movies he’s made – one shows the carnage you can wreak with the chaingun on the Warthog (I’d have done a bit more driving damage before getting in the back; you suffer less personal damage that way, but the wreckage is undeniably vast in any case), and the second shows a pretty slick start to the Maw Run. They’re in QT5 format, and weigh in at 1.5 mb and 900k, respectively. Check ’em out!

Barnolde caught a Covenant Dropship pilot drinking on the job… check it out in our Gameplay Tricks section.

Gh?lsbane found a couple of shots of a Star Wars ‘Shadow Droid’ that looks somewhat like a Banshee – check out these views:

• concept view (42k)
• schematic (92k)

Even the names of the weapons are familiar…