ElectricSheep thought he had it – the mystery image with the Marathon logo was, in his opinion, Captain Keyes’ pipe. Preliminary investigation suggested this might be the case… but the context was all wrong. (The blue stuff around the object is nowhere to be seen in the first level.) Dave Candland confirmed that we had NOT, in fact, found the image… but folks weren’t ready to give up. AmechWarrior suggested that maybe it was near the Keyes flood creature… and Strykerwolf confirmed that it was there. We have no pictures, however – hopefully, they’re coming soon. Congrats to all involved!

Two new submissions by Germain Couët – a Miscellaneous Art piece with some fun reflection work, and a desktop image for our Wallpaper section. Check ’em out!

poena.dare #CP#g brings attention to some interesting Halo schwag at eBay – there’s the Making of Halo DVD, a cool poster, and a collector’s card (made of metal). Matt points out, though, that the Making Of video will be available Soonâ„¢ at the Bungie Store… likely for far less than you’ll pay on eBay. Worth a look!

Bonk dropped in to our forum, explaining that iBonk.com has gotten an update – all tricks now have descriptions in words and pictures, in addition to the movies that were there before. They’re very nicely done, too – check it out!

Some may wonder why the largest hunt since the Glyph puzzle went uncommented-on by the maintainer of this site… chalk it up to vacation. 🙁 Two weeks ago, our forum was inundated with wild speculation about hippos, and their potential representations in various parts of Halo. Finally, on February 21, Frogblast found a REAL hippo – drawn in loving detail on the outside of the shotgun shell. Matt Soell, the instigator of the Hippo search, was kind enough to send along (first to Battleground: Halo, and then to us) a hi-res version of the shell artwork – we’ve added it to the Easter Eggs page, for posterity. Congratulations to Frogblast… and a happy hippo hello to Matt, whose obsession was so enthusiastically picked up by the HBO Forum denizens.

Whoa – bizarreness. Haloplayers has lost the haloplayers.com domain, and can now be reached at www.haloplayers.net. They’re working on a complete site redesign, in anticipation of the release of the PC version of the game, and plan to support all the extras (squad hosting, email, etc) they supported in the past. In the meantime, their messageboard is still up and running. Drop by and commiserate on the loss!

Regarding the new images posted at Tru7h and Reconciliation yesterday – Dave Candland has thrown down the gauntlet, with respect to this picture:

Regarding scrn_084.jpg, you’re going to have to scrutinize very closely to find this one. The hippo was all over the place. This image can only be found in one location. I’ll be surprised if this is discovered by Easter.

Will it be you that finds it? Where will you look? The race is on!

Three new entries for the Frogblast Tricks page… erm, the Gameplay Tricks page – all three are on the Maw. See how far you can push Halo – where can you go? This is some amazing stuff…

Bonk sent in another One-Shot – this time, it wasn’t even him. Some hunters came along and stacked up a pair of marines, one on top of another, on Silent Cartographer… there they were, just minding their own business, and the big bully Hunter decided one would look better standing on the other’s head. The question is… can you make THREE of ’em stacked?

More poetry, as Skyryan1 sends in The Motherworld for our Fan Fiction collection. Sadness from a Covenant viewpoint…

Games Magazine afficionados will recognize the latest batch of Screenshots at Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site as a fun game of Eyeballs – can you figure them all out? (Don’t play this game if you haven’t played Halo…) Additionally, a new section (inspired in part by an HBO fan request) has opened – Desktops. Getchyer official Bungie wallpaper here! Thanks to mnemesis for the heads-up.

A very funky pic has been added to our Miscellaneous Art section – in our ftp space, covenant dropped off a line art image showing a pair of Covenant elites… um, BUILDING a Shade. Hehe… this one’s cool.

Ever wish you could get your hands on that old interview of <insert Halo personality here>? Well, now you can. We’ve done our best to compile a list of most of the Halo-related interviews posted to the net in the past couple of years – you can find them in our Interviews database. Hopefully, it’ll be easy to navigate, and find that special quote you wanted. Know of one we missed? Tell us about it!

Three new bits of art from Germain Couët – a mural, and two annotated Gallery pieces. You’ll find all three in our Miscellaneous Art section.

More sketching – Talon sends in a pencil drawing of a Covenant Elite. Check it out in our Miscellaneous Art section!

Bungie’s already said there’s nothing in the works… but the speculation continues. TeamXbox has an article from Video Store Magazine, discussing potential movie deals for Xbox games:

There has been interest in such Microsoft properties as Bungie Software’s Xbox sci-fi action epic “Halo,” which has sold more than 800,000 units…

Thanks to Razorback for the heads-up on this one.

covenant dropped off a pair of sketches of the Master Chief – MCHangin and MCLoungin have been combined into MCPosin, and posted to our Miscellaneous Art section. Nice linework!

Okay, okay… we done get bamboozled. Not even on purpose. The literary goose chase Marty O’Donnell sort of sent us on was just that – a goose chase… he didn’t even mean for so many people to see it. It was a joke, and I (among others) got took. Gotta be more careful…

Hmm… Marty knows how to spill those beans… From the Question and Answer database of the Marty’s Army fanclub at the Seventh Column:

Q What are the meanings/histories behind all the names in Halo? 343 Guilty Spark? Pillar of Autumn? Truth & Reconciliation?

A Marty the Elder says: 343 Guilty Spark is from Ender’s Game, Pillar of Autumn is from Titus Andronicus and Truth & Reconciliation is from the Bible. We here at Bungie borrow from as many sources as possible. (Master Chief was borrowed from Julia Child but we misspelled it).

Looks like I’m gonna have to go back and read Ender’s Game again… and where’s my Shakespeare collection? Thanks to mnemesis for the heads-up on this one.

Eep, almost forgot – Ape Man turned in the Level Transcript for the Maw this morning – that completes the spoken text in the game! If you have any questions about dialog… the Halo Story page is the place to turn!