Once again, the Fan Fiction pours in. One each from SkyRyan1, Gasmask, and bikeman704. Check ’em all out in the Fan Fiction section!

Woohoo! Kudos to Frogblast, who noticed what is likely the Halo Soundtrack on the Bungie Webcam:

Now all we need is the Bungie Store to reopen… Update: Tumbleweed points out that this is NOT the Halo Soundtrack, after all… but the Xbox Soundtrack 1, available since November 13. (We reported on this back on November 7 – shame on me for not recognizing the picture!

Three new tricks from Frogblast – all from Assault on the Control Room. He’s placed Warthogs just about everywhere on the level a human can go… and he and Mr. Pinchy showed how to swap Banshees in midair. Whoa. Check ’em out in our Gameplay Tricks section.

The end of an era… after almost 2 and a half years (856 days!) of keeping track of the Halo SETI Marines, we here at HBO are giving up the ghost. The team will go on, as long as people want to contribute to it… but we will no longer process or post statistics. Interest has been waning steadily – output has been dropping for months, and once again, we were passed this week by a team with 20% of our members. SETI (for the 3rd week in a row) has again changed the format of the outputted page stats, necessitating (again) the overhaul of the scripts that process the statistics. The final straw was the loss of Noah – 3300 units, and he left the Marines for… nobody. (He is no longer a member of ANY team.) That’s a pretty eloquent statement for boredom. To all the Marines who put their extra cpu cycles to work these past few years… thank you. You can see how you stand on the final 7 day stats page.

Team 7HR33 has posted a couple of new movies on their website – Crazy Ernie definitely seems a little crazy, and the Spooky movie is… bizarre. Check out the Antics section! Thanks to MaTT for the heads-up.

Halo Command Central, a site that disappeared from the Halo scene a while ago, is back – at a new address. Check ’em out!

Two new press scans for your perusal – XBM, an Xbox magazine in the UK, put up an 8-page Halo review in its February issue, and Gimp was kind enough to scan it for us… and the March issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (off the shelves yesterday) contained another edition of the Halo Inner Circle, a monthly Halo tips section. Enjoy!

I hadn’t realized this was such a big deal… but we’ve now received over a dozen emails about it, so maybe I’m wrong. CNN mentioned the win by Halo at the Fifth Annual Interactive Achievement Awards last week. (We mentioned the awards… but apparently, the CNN article is bigger news for a lot of you than the awards themselves.) First credit for the notice goes to Mr Yun, who sent in word over 15 hours ago.

Icons, icons, everywhere! Malagigi sends in a passel of Mac OSX 128×128 icons – you can grab ’em here, in .sit format, or preview ’em here. At the same time, El Bastardâ„¢ creates a quick MC head, and some other Bungie-related stuff, and tells us about it in this forum post.

So Halo’s the game of the year. What better way to advertise it than say it on the game box! Pax.

Wishing that you could get hold of an Xbox controller that was a little smaller than the standard Microsoft controller, but of the same high quality? Now you can – Gamespy reports that Microsoft is planning on marketing the Xbox Controller S, similar (but not identical) to the Japanese Xbox controller, in the US.

GameSpy: What does the S stand for?

David Hufford: Well, there’s not a lot of science behind it, it’s more of an art thing. I think we were all in a room and thought it would be a cool name, so we just came up with it.

As good a reason as any… check the article for the lowdown on the actual unit. Thanks to SonicStorm, of Battleground: Halo, for the heads-up.

fAt1, from MPZ Halo, drops us a note about the latest issue of Edge Magazine (issue 108). There’s an interview with J. Allard, Xbox General Manager, and one of the questions had an amusing answer:

Edge: What would you say to the PS2 being better value for money, considering that once you’ve bought a couple of Xbox games, some extras and a DVD controller the Xbox almost doubles in price?

Allard: Halo.

Sounds about right to us… (fAt1 points out that the high cost of the Xbox in the UK (£350-450, depending on what you buy with it, or $500-650 US) might lead to some embarrassment in the MS camp come the 14th… we’ll have to wait and see.)

Whew – the Fan Fiction is coming in fast and furious. Another chapter each from Velker, Shadow, and Gasmask… check ’em all out on the Fan Fiction page!

Bonk submits a fun pic showing what happens when you TRY and exploit Halo bugs (as opposed to stumbling across them accidentally). You’ll find it in our One-Shots collection. (The spoiler warning is incidental – the pic itself isn’t a spoiler, but investigating the stuff behind it might be.)

Gameplay weirdness: NthDegree256 was playing through the Maw, and when he blasted the engine vents, he saw what looked like a huge gout of red blood bursting from the opening. Ferrex stepped in to explain what was happening:

This is a “feature” that was discovered a little too late to be documented. What you’re actually seeing isn’t blood… it’s dirt. Red dirt. That particular effect does some sort of sampling of the texture color at the point where it originates from… that way, you get yellow sand spray when it hits sand, or brown dirt when it hits dirt.

In this case, the vent cores are cherry red from the heat. Those cherry red surfaces are probably (I haven’t checked this) of material type “dirt”, the default material type. The net result is that, when a grenade or rocket detonates against one of those surfaces, you get a horrifying geyser of blood colored dirt.

I haven’t seen this personally yet, but apparently, it’s dependent on where you hit the vent. However, it’s very nice to have an explanation… I’m sure it’ll come up again!

Mad Dog lets us know that his Halo site has been updated. It’s pretty bare-bones, but if you want some Halo gameplay tips with a healthy dose of attitude on the side, you should check it out.

Registration for Bungie’s E3 Seventh Column Tournament is now closed – but registration for the Fanfest itself is open. If you’re interested in going, read this news post, then fill out this form. Spots are limited, so sign up now! (And if you’re looking for practice partners, check out the Seventh Column’s week in review – there are some new up-and-coming chapters listed there, you might find someone local!)

More icons for everyone! Liquidex has redone his as a WIndows icon file – you can grab it here. For those among you for which .ico files are very hard to use (you can count me in that group), the .gif version at the start of this post is the same image. Also, Djoey.154 created a whole series of .ico files (which I’ve also converted to something a bit more web-friendly) – you can see all of them here.

Velker’s Halo 2 Chronicle continues, with Part IV. Thank goodness for snipers! The Fan Fiction collection grows.

Bonk points out that iBonk is back up! A new movie and some details of the folks behind the site are the latest additions. Check it out!