Heh – the digging has started. Someone hacked around with their Halo disc, and found some interesting strings buried deep in the code – check ’em out. Evidence that cheats ONCE existed, at least… and some pretty funny (if colorful) error language. Definitely PG-rated for strong language. Thanks to Ray Rose for the heads-up on our forum!

Not long ago, we added an interesting One-Shot from Bonk, showing a rather unusual pose for a marine. Recently, he’s added an article to his site, iBonk.com, showing the full experiment – this is another example of the Frozen Stuff bug, but there’s a movie, and a step-by-step reproduction guide. Check it out!

It’s Launch Day in Australia… thanks to that International Dateline, they’re a few hours ahead of Europe. Stores should open in 7 or 8 hours… and then I’d guess we won’t see our Australian friends for a few days. Wish ’em luck!

Ask and ye shall receive. Three kind bandwidth mavens have proffered up connections for the newest Halo vid – we can call it the Montage Video. You can grab it at:

• Mythica.org (Thanks, Brian!) – HTTP
• The Repertory (thanks, Vector40!) – HTTP
• Psyjnir.com (Thanks, Psyrixx and *Ar!) – Hotline

More when we hear about ’em! (Remember, this puppy’s 20 megs large, 320×240 in .wmv format, and just under 4 minutes long.) Be sure to option-click or right-click the http links – otherwise, you might get a load of junk on the screen.

Halo-Game.com, a French Halo site, has put up a Halo review. I can’t really add it to the Reviews database, since it has no score I can assign… but they seemed to mostly like it. 🙂 (My french isn’t good enough to figure out more than that, and without an overall rating, I’m just guessing.) If you read French, though, check it out! (Don’t bother with Babelfish or Google’s translators, though… they’ll just make you laugh.) Update: Due to popular demand (hehe), they’ve added a summary section – and Halo pulled out a 19/20. Not too shabby! We’ve now added this review to the Halo Reviews database. (It’s review 77…)

Chapter 4 of Corbantis’ ‘The Tides of War‘ showed up tonight – go read it in our Fan Fiction section.

A few days ago, Dan Chosich posted to our forum about a new movie he’d made. The problem was, he put it up at Angelfire, which severely restricts the number of downloads this will ever see. It’s basically a collection of clips of fun/entertaining gameplay, an interesting (if somewhat disjointed) montage with some pretty cool sights. It’s also rather huge. (Just under 20 megs, in .wmv format) So: we’re calling for mirrors, again. If you can handle this, drop us a line – if the Angelfire site is down, we’ll give you another location (or upload it for you). Thanks!

Whoa. Ruzhyo noticed that TeamXbox has some extra goodies to go along with the new Xbox skin for WMP for Windows XP – and while the Halo skin in their goody pack is windows-only, the music tracks aren’t… and there are three new (never-released-on-the-web) Halo tracks in there! (Windows Media Player format, of course.) The package is a bit over 4 megs – and worth the download!

The Fan Fiction deluge continues… Roger Lin sends in Chapter 2 of his Resistivity saga, entitled The Perils of Reentry. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section.

Robo has dropped off a fun little One-Shot for your enjoyment… it’s not often you see this particular alignment. (Don’t look if you’re unspoiled…)

Divender, of AreaHalo, has uploaded one of his desktop images. It’s a little small… but it’s pretty cool. Check it out in our Wallpaper section.

On page 49 of this week’s London Sunday Times is an article on gaming consoles – and the picture they chose to use was the Master Chief… wielding a flamethrower! Rather odd, given that it’s been known that the flamethrower was pulled in development over 4 months ago… If there are any UK Halo fans who have access to the Sunday Times, a scan of this article would be much appreciated. (Thanks to Hamish Sinclair, stuck in low-tech no-scanner-land, for the heads-up.)

A new magazine called Xgamer went onsale in the UK last month, and the first issue contained a 12-page Halo spread. (We’ll be posting scans, courtesy of Ghôlsbane, later this week, when issue 2 hits the stands.) In the meantime, though, Games Radar UK has put up a chunk of the text of the spread – most of the actual review part is there. You can read the review now (they gave it a 9/10), and check out the added details later, when the scans go up. (We’ve added this one to our Reviews database, and put the 11 screens into our Screenshots database.) Thanks to Ghôlsbane for the heads-up on the online review, as well!

Divender writes to let us know that AreaHalo, a new German Halo site, has come online. Nice design (not NS4-friendly, but then, what is?), some GREAT wallpaper, high-quality content. Check ’em out!

Ran across another Halo review – this one from Xbox Au. They thought it was somewhat derivative… but that didn’t stop them from rating it a 9.4/10. We’ve added it to our Reviews database.

A reminder – The deadline for the first half of the Maw 700 Contest is this Friday night, at midnight UTC. Three more days to get those entries in! And by now you should be thinking seriously about submissions for the SECOND half of the contest – the movie submission. Rules, suggestions, and prizes can be found on the Maw 700 info page. (Thanks once again to poena.dare #CP#g, who has done most of the work on this baby.)

Fast and Furious, that’s what we call the Fan Fiction section around here. Shadow has dropped off another chapter of the Renegade Marines saga – you can read Chapter 4 by itself, or you can read the entire series. Don’t forget to leave some feedback!

Took longer than I expected, but our FTP Uploads folder is back up and running again. We’re happy to take submissions there. (The only real change – the directory is no longer world-readable. It’s a dropbox only… so be sure you let us know there’s something in there!)

Another new Halo review – this time, it’s the French site VoS JeUx. They loved it. They didn’t get a chance to play multiplayer… but the single player blew ’em away. You’ll find it in our Reviews database, as well. Thanks to Cyberpro54@aol.com for the heads-up.

The Master Chief and Cortana… back on Earth. Jehkoh drops off a new fanfic entitled ‘Order of the Seraphim‘, which looks at battle on Earth, post-halo. You’ll find it in our Fan Fiction section.