Thanks to Elvish Archer, who picked up (from a Japanese site, no less) that Halo won the AIAS Interactive Achievement Award for Game of the Year! (We told you they’d been nominated… and that the ceremony was supposed to be yesterday, but AIAS hasn’t updated their website yet.) Congratulations, Bungie! Nice feather, that one. Update: Matt Soell points out on Bungie.net that in addition to Game of the Year, Halo also won Console Game of the Year, Console Action/Adventure Game of the Year, and Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering. (That’s 4 of the 8 categories they were nominated for… and 3 of the 3 major ones.) W00t!

Billy Ford stops by our forum to announce that TeamSlayer.com is hosting Halo tournaments that don’t cost anything to enter. They’re even working on prizes. Stop by their site for more details!

Freewill is looking for people interested in playing in the Halo tournament at the Bungie Fanfest Convocation on Friday, May 24, 2002 in LA. If you are planning on being there… drop him a note!

A new review has surfaced – XBM, a UK magazine, has put an online review up. Except for the repetitiveness near the end (a somewhat universal complaint), they loved it – 98% was the final rating. We’ve added it to our Reviews database. (The print version will be going up this weekend, thanks to Gimp.)

Liquidex, in answer to a forum request for Halo icons, has created a nice Master Chief version (and blown it up for detail):

Except for the spelling error, it’s perfect (and if you’re using it on your desktop, you won’t want the words anyway). Thanks, Liquidex!

Three short fan fics submitted recently – two post-Halo speculations and one poem. Check out The Renegade Marines (minor spoilers), Halo 2: Hope for Mankind (bigger spoilers), and A Ringworld Far Away in our Fan Fiction section!

Another look at a post-Halo possibility, from drexx – Earth: Combat Evolved picks up where Halo leaves off, and the action starts right up. You’ll find it in our Fan Fiction section.

Heh – over at Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site, there’s word of a Seventh Column club-created Halo comic – the Slacker Pimps have a Halo illustrator in Slacker Tang. (You can see more of his Halo work here.) Thanks to craZy for the heads-up!

Think you’re a l33t Warthog driver? Can you do donuts on the back of a Pelican, while your gunner takes out the swarming Banshees? Do you love nothing more than the smell of engine grease on your armor? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, your Sarge wants you! (Your psychiatrist probably wants you, too, but that’s no concern of ours.) Grab your grease gun and head on over to the Maw 700, an honest-to-goodness bungie.org contest! Submissions are accepted beginning now, soldier.

Gamespot is reporting that Halo’s lack of presence at Microsoft’s International Gaming Festival bodes ill for long-suffering PC fans:

And while Microsoft recently admitted that the game is still scheduled for an eventual release on these platforms, the absence of Halo at Microsoft’s event–which featured some games that won’t be out for another year–suggests that a computer version of the game may be a long way’s off.

(The wording itself should raise a few flags, but…) Here’s something to chew on – the lack of a PC Halo at the event might just mean that… Bungie isn’t ready to show it yet? (Absolutely nothing says it will take more than a year from this point to finish PC Halo, Gamespot’s speculations notwithstanding.) Thanks to Alan Koslay for the heads-up.

Velker’s Halo 2 saga just got a chapter longer – you can find Part III in our Fan Fiction section. Don’t forget to leave him comments!

Three new tricks have been added to our Gameplay Tricks page – 2 of them collaborations. Bizarre physics, exploiting the zone freeze bug, and weapons theft… they’re all worth looking at!

Bonk, unfazed by the fact that his server is offline (because you guys have been downloading too much stuff from it), has created a 14.3 mb, 3 and a half minute long video showing off some fun Warthog driving (plus a bit more). Be warned, though – there are spoilers in here. (Thanks again to Brian Towne for the hosting…) Update: Mr. Zarquon has kindly provided a mirror. Welcome, Tasty Bandwidth…

Microsoft’s Japanese Xbox site has posted a Halo promo video which basically shows off Halo and talks about the game (I can’t understand Japanese, so I apologise for getting that wrong). You can hear all the various characters speaking in Japanese here. The video is Windows Media:

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Be warned however that there is potential spoiler material in this video. Pax.

Three new Halo reviews have surfaced – Four Fat Chicks (4/4), Game Industry News (5/5), and a second review from MGON (9.5/10, compared to their first 9.8/10). All three have been added to the Reviews database. Thanks to Blue’s News for the heads-up on these.

Not sure how I missed this (my issue came several days ago), but Electronic Gaming Monthly listed its 2001 Gamers’ Choice Awards in the April 2002 issue… and Halo picked up Game of the Year.

And on the first day the Xbox did launch with a Halo, and we looked upon it, and we saw that it was good.

Halo placed 3rd in the Readers’ Choice poll at EGM’s website – 4 votes (of a total of nearly 5000) shy of Final Fantasy X, and 80 votes shy of Grand Theft Auto III. It also won the Readers’ Choice Xbox Game of the Year (though the EGM editors decided they couldn’t give it both titles, so their Xbox pick was Oddworld). Thanks to VeeoftheMiB for the heads-up!

Operation: False Prophets gets another chapter, as Ian Barnes pays tribute to the mighty Hippo. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section.

Brad ‘Stuy Parker’ Root sends in a new treed Warthog shot for our One-Shots page… there are a few more levels in which this can be done! Who will be the first?

For those who didn’t notice it, the Halo Story page got a massive speculation infusion yesterday – mnemesis processed a goodly number (though nowhere near all) of the backlogged ravings – erm, ideas you people have been sending in. Check it out! While you’re there… you might notice that the Level Transcripts section is nearly complete – great thanks to Ape Man and Åstro for sending in 3 of the last 4 levels (the Maw should be coming soon)! Been a long time… but they’re there now!

Heh – forum regular Frogblast gets a mention at Bungie.net – the Soffish theme for 7th Column fansites has gone live ahead of schedule, because of him. (Remember – if the link leads you to a message about a database wipe, first hit reload to see the REAL message, then send Yeroen a note to fix this. 🙂 ) Thanks to brandontyler for the heads-up!