Stuntmutt is sucking up yet ANOTHER Sunday slot with one of his Sunday One One Se7en strips. Apologies to the Guest strip submitters who have to wait LONGER now. (Luckily, anyone who CAN’T wait can still tell us to add their strip to the new One One Se7en Archive, opening tomorrow…)

Rockin’. FormerCide discovered a bitmap of a mystery woman on the level Boarding Action (PC version), when he was messing around in the game’s resources. (BOLL posted the pic, because FormerCide wasn’t sure if it was kosher to do so, and BOLL figured he was 5000 miles from Bungie headquarters and was immune to death rays.) This afternoon, Chris Butcher stepped in to identify the picture as that of the girlfriend of the original artist working on Boarding Action (someone who no longer works at Bungie). The weird part is… they’d FOUND the pic, once, and removed it. It came back. (Or was present twice.) Just goes to show… there are still things left to find!

GLADIATRRR3000 has put together a funny little Flash animation, called 343 Guilty Stick. It weighs in at 2.4 mb. Enjoy!

Ownt put up a review of Halo PC yesterday. They liked it quite a lot (gave it an Uber Ownage award). Repetitive levels in single player and some clipping bugs in MP brought its score down to 90. (There are also 44 highly compressed images, mostly of the levels Halo and TImberland.) Thanks, Blue’s News (via Ash).

Today’s Guest One One Se7en is the last in a series of spoofs of RvB. (For what it’s worth, this is the sort of strip that will be added to the One One Se7en Archive automatically, once it opens on Monday.) This one shows the danger of spinoffs – to the ORIGINAL. And remember – if you’ve got a guest strip in the queue (a queue which is currently almost 40 strips long), you can STILL get it added to the Archives very first posting, in 2 days. Just let us know.)

Cool. Macsoft has put up a full webpage for Mac Halo – a sign that release really isn’t very far away. Release date: December 11, 2003. A week later than originally suggested… but coming from the producer, it’s a pretty reliable date. (I’m tickled that we got one of the circle links at the top…) Thanks to Iceman1330 for the heads-up.

Halo Babies has been updated – there’s a new strip that looks at situations explainable by network problems… or extreme inexperience. (You have to decide for yourself which is which as you play.) There are also some new AIM icons. Check it out!

Blade writes that halo.leetgamers.org is up once more. Newest content is a review of Xbox Halo.

Just got notification from the Bungie Store that my recent order (the two 5-piece mini action figure sets) has shipped. Jackals, Marines, and MCs… on the way!

Thanks to everyone who wrote to remind us of the official price drop on the Xbox version of Halo. The subject first came up a couple of weeks ago on our forum, in connection with all the November 15 rumors; because it didn’t seem new to me, I neglected to mention the press release. However, it IS new to lots of people, and a $20 price cut is nothing to sneeze at… so go look! (And remember – Halo makes a great stocking stuffer! Well, if your stocking is big and square, it does. I bet you could fit a copy of Halo into one of KP‘s stockings these days… what with all the extra space needed by the hardware, you know.)

Konrad9 popped into our forum to mention that Halo: First Strike has appeared on some store shelves already (he bought, and read, a copy yesterday from the Strand bookstore in New York). A couple of weeks early… but hey, you don’t see ME complaining!

gwdpto, known online as HBO-Kingpin, has put together a group of talented Halo PC players and one kickass moviemaker (Dan Chosich, of 2070Wired Films), and released a movie called ‘The Void‘. On the surface, it’s just a bunch of guys screwing around on Gephyrophobia. gwdpto is proud of the fact that it shows the ‘Longest Piloted-Vehicle Jump in Halo EVER’. But beyond that, the filmmaking is beautiful; this movie should show you how you can take pretty pedestrian material and turn it into a movie that easily exceeds our posting guidelines. It weighs in at 28 mb, in QuickTime format, and hosting is being handled by C.O.E.R.C.E. (There are currently in the neighborhood of 8 or 9 hosts handling this movie, so bandwidth shouldn’t be a problem.) The movie was announced on our forum, so feel free to add comments to the thread. Update: Looks like Doughmainename.com has gone down; we’ve posted the mirror rotation here. (Same mirror sites, same random distribution of URLs, except that the doughmainename.com link has been removed.)

goatrope and Devin Olsen have put together a little film showing some slick tricks that can be performed on Danger Canyon. It was originally released in WMP9 format, and hosted by nukedude (later mirrored by KP). We’ve also converted it to a QuickTime file, and hosted it locally. The WMP is 10.3 mb, the QuickTime 10.9 mb, and both are 640×480 and 1:46 long. Enjoy! Update: nukedude and Devin Olsen have posted a followup, showing the final trick done by one person, with no damage, using the Sidewinder Sneak technique developed to get through the grating on Sidewinder. 16 mb, DivX format. A QT version is coming soon. As rapture succinctly summarizes it, it’s going to take some work to keep this glitch from ruining DC completely as a CTF map. Update 2: QuickTime version (8 mb) now available.

One One Se7en addresses one of the major complaints critics have had about Halo gameplay. Not that the subject hasn’t been covered before… (Remember: if you’ve got a strip in the Guest queue for One One Se7en, now’s the chance to tell us if you’d rather it be displayed in the upcoming One One Se7en Archive, opening this Monday.)

Halo: Resolution points out a danger with the turn-on-a-dime abilities of a Halo PC mouse…

Nick and leftfb show what might be the best use of the Gameboy Advance SP screen… ever. (Two small vids, linked in this post and this one; wmp9 format.)

16 stories for the Fan Fiction section in the 48 hours since the last update…

• Merick’s Journal’s: Episode 3: Return to Blood Gulch, and The Broken Bagboy, by John Kitchen
• Lan Battle Chapter 3 Chris’ Manuevers According to Jesse and his Men, by Blue Angel
• Galaxy 07 – Part Four – Boot, by Jillybean
• Fear not! (a little poem i made)., by FF Echo
• Life of a Marine Chapter 1: Suprised, by WannabeMarine
• The Discovery Chapter 1 & 2, by Christian Sisson
• MSOG: Chapter 1 & 2, by Sprtn117John
• Last Battle: Outpost 33, by JOTD Fanfiction Team
• Harvest, by Kinotrica ‘Mocka’
• A Spartan’s Path- Prologue , by Myth
• Eldar Counsels Log Part 3- O’ Fortuna, Depthera the Coming, by Blue Angel
• Rebirth – The Child Within, by KnightmareWolf/Shadow/Archangels_Blade/Spartan415
• Battle for the Norah: Part Ten, by Sterfrye36
• A Marine’s Tale: A Covenant Ship and a Nearby World, by pj-NYkr90
• A Series of Wierd Events – Sequel, Part Three, by Hunter_Killer
• Long Time Gone Part 5, by grylsy

Not so bad, I guess.

Geez – almost forgot. Today’s One One Se7en guest strip is yet another Red vs… Who parody from Devilmingy – and no, it’s not the last one. A sweating MC… interesting.

001 has put together a new film showing some of the recent advances in Xbox modding. (Many of these have already been shown in individual movies, but this one gives you a nice overview.) It’s being hosted by BPHalo, and weighs in at 10 mb. It’s called ‘Random Hacking in 2 Random Levels‘, and is in WMP8 format. Comments can be added to this forum thread.

gwdpto pointed out that the HBO-COERCE Halo PC server has gotten 9 new games in its map rotation, and lost one, as well as having existing games tweaked a bit. Check out the new carnage!