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!

Whoa. Mark discovered a note about the rebuilding of Project Phoenix, over at GameDreamZ – if this is accurate, Phoenix will appear for the Xbox Next console (the second-generation Xbox), being reworked by FASA and the old Oni team. (They used the obligatory ‘rising from the ashes’ line in the writeup…)

Bravehamster writes about a major lanfest being set up for New Year’s Eve in Santa Maria, CA (about 3 hours north of LA on the California coast). They’re shooting for 90 players, and want the thing to run from noon on December 31 through noon on January 1. Admission is $25, and all the pizza and soda you can eat and drink are included. Check out the Central Coast Frag Fest website for more details!

halo.leetgamers.org is offline for a bit; read this forum post for details why. Thanks, Blade.

Battleground: Halo newsman Tankramp has been Spotlighted over at the Junkyard; go read about what makes him tick. Thanks to Mhaddy for the heads-up.

So here’s the thing. A few months back, we started receiving Guest strips for One One Se7en, created by fans of the Stuntmutt creation. We filled in the days of the week not covered by the main strip – but they were coming in faster than we could post them. Today, the wait time for new submissions is well over two months – and this has begun to cause problems. (Many of the submitted strips are topical, and the jokes are somewhat muted if shown past their expiration dates.) We’ve decided to open a One One Se7en Archive.

What is this? Well, think of it as overflow space. The Archive will be updated once a month or so – guaranteeing that no strip languishes longer than a month before being presented to the public. Strips will be identified by author, submission date, and a thumbnail… but archived strips will NOT make it into the normal One One Se7en (daily) queue. Whether your submission goes into the Guest rotation or the Archive is up to you; the trade-offs are a front-page mention and ‘official’ standing, versus (potentially) faster post times. Some strips will be placed in the Archive automatically; any strip posted on our forum from this point forward will be archived, instead of Guest-queued. If the Guest queue is longer than the next archive date, a topical strip will be placed in the archive. If a strip is submitted on a topic that’s already been over-mined (in Stuntmutt’s words), we’ll archive it, instead of queueing it. And the submitter can CHOOSE to be placed in the archive, by specifying it when they submit.

We’d like to offer all currently-queued Guest strip submitters the chance to be posted in the first Archive posting, which will happen this Monday, November 24. (After that, Archive updates will happen on the 7th of the month, or thereabouts.) If you’ve submitted a strip that hasn’t been posted, and would like the opportunity to enter this new section instead of waiting for the Guest queue to reach you, drop us a line (yes, we’ve created a new email address for this).

Unsanity, a company devoted to tweaking the user interface of Mac OSX, has announced ShapeShifter, a product that will allow you to add ‘themes’ to your interface. One of the first themes released (in fact, installed with the program) is called Eylo (rhymes with Halo) – and a quick look at the theme shows why. Check it out! (Thanks, Mig.)

Bizarre… there’s a site out there devoted to stories about stupid things people do online. Halo PC is one of the covered games, which is what makes this Halo news… There’s no really easy way to search for Halo PC stories (or at least I didn’t find one), but I gotta say, the few I did read were all whinefests. Still, some people like reading that sort of thing (or writing it)… thanks to Uberblue for the heads-up.

Stuntmutt uses today’s One One Se7en to point out one reason Gearbox might have left the new weapons out of Campaign in Halo PC… Marathon fans are probably thinking “Smells like Napalm” right about now.

Tweakfactor.com has posted a Halo Tweak Guide, designed to help you get the most out of your video hardware. Check it out for that extra framerate boost! Thanks to Blue’s News (via Ash) for the heads-up.