What do you get when you double the excitement and mystery of seven pieces of Fan Fiction? A whole mess of stories to read, that’s what! Sheesh, people, your fecundity is startling. 🙂

• Return to Earth (Chptr 3: Alone and Still Standing), by CoLd BlooDed
• Untitled, by Djstan
• midnight sun (chapter 1, Moon war begins), by andrew meyer
• The Fallen: Chapter 4 Section 1, by Hikaru-119
• Foersaken Forefathers Part X, by Havok and AlphaBravo343
• Return to Earth (Chptr 4: Rescued), by CoLd BlooDed
• Ishkabibbl’sstory\Humanity’sLastHope\BloodyWar(Part 3), by Ishkabibbl
• And So It Began., by Alex Sullivan
• Project: Shadow Spartan, Chapter 7, by Agent Shade
• Buried Treasure(6), by Frensa Geran
• Spartans in NYC Chapter 5, by Chief-117
• The flood: a force to be reckoned with: Part 3, by crashedwarthog
• Brutus, The Spartans, Two AIs and the Pirate Fleet (Part 4), by Traumatised Marine
• Return to Jevan: Part one, Lets Move Out , by SpartanMX
• The Fallen: Chapter 4 Section 2, by Hikaru-119

Remember, use the Fan Fiction comments section for constructive criticism. Read on!

Part III of Evergreen98’s article on the upcoming Halo PC/Mac release is available over at the Junkyard (parts I and II are here and here). There’s a lot of good analytical info in there, go give it a read!

As many of you have noticed, Mythica is down again. Brian posted an explanation, but it looks like the downtime will once again be quite lengthly. On the plus side, Subnova has recovered from their earlier trouble. You win some, you lose some…

Halo vs Halo 2? One One Se7en knows. Pax.

If you live anywhere near the Indianapolis area, or even anywhere near the state of Indiana, you should be seriously considering going to GenCon this Thursday. They’re going to be having a three-day Halo PC tournament, with three ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video cards for prizes. Even if you don’t win, think of the prestige inherent in telling people YOU played Halo PC before most everybody else. So what are you waiting for! Get to Indianapolis, Indiana, and sign yourself up now!

Emil of the CobaltNova Halo League would like to announce the first annual Rockets On Prisoner awards:

“With approximately 240 to 300 Halo movies having been developed since the game’s release it was time that the community begin to recognize the very best among them.æ ”his year the “Rockets on Prisoner” award will be accorded to the winner in each of the following categories: Best Movie, Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay, Best Editing Sound and Visual Effects, Best Musical Score, and Best Documentary.”

They’ve already got quite a few well-known (and not so well-known) films up on the lists of potential nominees. Head over and check out the talent. If you don’t see a film you think should be entered, let them know. The deadline for nominations is Sunday, July 27th, so get going!

“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.”
-Edwin Schlossberg

So this is your invitation to think…

• First Contact; Chapter 1: Harvest, by retsamolah
• Buried Treasure(5), by Frensa Geran
• Return to Earth (Chptr 2: Flight to Captivity), by CoLd BlooDed
• A Marines Tale: Getting the Feel of Things, by pj-NYkr90
• Sniper patrol group 06, by Ishkabibbl
• Project: Shadow Spartan, Chapter 6, by Agent Shade
• Chapter 2: Dilemma, by Shinai Purugganan
• A World Apart Ch. 2, by Dark Spartan

Having a hard time keeping up with the forum? Can’t quite manage to read the 350+ posts per day? Aren’t named Louis Wu? Well, never fear, the Weekly Review is here! After over a year’s hiatus, the Weekly Review has returned to summarize the goings on in our forum. If you can only read one post and one post only, better make it this one.

ben informs us that Fire Team Charlie challenges you to add a voice track to their first video. Check out their site for details.

Over at the Junkyard, Evergreen98 has written a couple of interesting articles on the upcoming Halo PC/Mac release. The first two are up now, with the third along in a few days. Thanks to both vector40 and MrFluffyPants26 for pointing this out.

Break Point writes to tell us of his site, bphalo.com. Go check it out!

Last of the Half-Life trilogy on One One Se7en. Pax.

A few days ago, The Invisable O posted a challenge on the forum: Has anyone ever mapped the entire inner surface of Halo? BOLL took him up on it, and managed to capture some great images of the ring, which he posted in the original thread, along with additional images and explanation. Every time someone declares tricking dead…

Subnova, one of our primary movie mirrors, and who also shoulder some of our server-side processing, has run into trouble with their SQL server. The shared news search feature should still be working, but all movies hosted there are down. Unfortunately it looks like this will be a long downtime, as the message says. (If you’d like to help shorten it, the Donate button still works…)

What is the hidden significance of the seven pieces of fan fiction?

• D-Day II, Part One, by Hunter_Killer
• Return to Earth (Chptr 1: Attacked), by CoLd BlooDed
• Delta Squadron: Chapter One; Delta Squadron, by Steele
• Its Just One of Those Days (Prologue: 03), by Elfster
• A John Before Halo: The Invaision Begins (Part 3), by J-117
• Halo Zero /p6/ Brute Force… Quite Literally, by nicholas
• Halo Zero /p7/ The Prophet Meeting, by nicholas

One last movie, before I go: This one’s from MaverickJ, and it’s called Oddball Tactics, part 1. It’s 9.9 mb, in QuickTime format. (You can also find it, in WMP9 format, on Maverick’s Project Spartan site.) It shows you a bunch of slick tricks you can use to gain the upper hand in a Team Oddball game. Beautiful! As of right now, I’m on vacation, and the site is in the capable hands of Count Zero, mnemesis, and Ding. Any mail sent directly to me will not be seen for a week; if you have info you want posted on HBO, send it to halo@bungie.org. Enjoy yourselves – I certainly plan to!

We’ve put up a mirror page for the Sidewinder Saga, because it was getting confusing figuring out where (outside of the Halogamers.com home site) you could get the various movies. Thanks to Team Ice for their mirroring help – as an aside, Blade has also posted the Halo 2 Announcement trailer and The E3 Demo trailer on their video page.

Xbox Ottawa has put up #4 of their FTC vid series. Ex-Special Ops, huh? Current version of this one (3:38 long) is 23.6 mb, in DivX 5 AVI format… but they might have a slightly smaller QuickTime version up in the not-too-distant future.

Four Miscellaneous Art pieces for you – there’s no one-liner I can think of that describes them all, so just go look.

A couple of interesting (and colorful) desktops today in the Wallpaper section. Check ’em out!