Apologies to the rather large list of folks who were waiting for their Gamertag/screenname entries to be approved – I guess Tarrsk is on vacation. I just noticed them; dunno how long they’ve been there for. 🙁 Anyway, now’s as good a time as any to make sure your games list is up-to-date… forum regular (and moviemaker extraordinaire) Dan Chosich had some good times with SketchFactor last night, except that nobody knew who anybody was.

In an attempt to curb the email, we’d like to state that Mythica.org, our primary bandwidth donator for Halo movies, is down right now. We don’t have word yet on what’s wrong, or when it will be back up… but rest assured, as soon as we know, you’ll know. If you click on a download link that points to Mythica, and it doesn’t work… it doesn’t mean we took the movie offline. It just means the server’s down. Update: looks like Mythica’s going to be down for a week, at least. The box has hardware problems that need to be fixed, and shipping time to and from the datacenter means that there’s no way it’ll be back online before next week at the earliest. Sorry, folks!

13 Fan Fiction stories for you today:

• True Purpose(11), by Frensa Geran
• Halo: The Scythe of Death Part Three, by LordofDestruction
• Covenant Invasion! Part Three, by Hunter_Killer
• Rescue, by MJOLNIR
• A Marine Named Peters: Forward to Bravo Base!, by GLADIATRRR3000
• Battle for the Norah: Part Two, by Sterfrye36
• Halo 2: Capter 1: Defenders of Earth, by Shadowrunner
• Halo Zero 2 /p1/ Attack on Nuuth, by nicholas
• The Mars Annihilations Part 2, by Janglurevil7
• The Ganymede Seige Part II, by Spartan81388
• Death’s Angels: Chapter 1, by Space_Moose
• Foresaken Forefathers Part VI: Island Infiltration, by Havok and AlphaBravo343
• Critters the reckoning part 2, by Caleb Generoso

Lots to read…

Nice find by CSJ – Bungie has posted ANOTHER sign from the E3 trailer for those who like to read such things. Nice tip o’ the hat to Hill Street Blues… (The discovery method for this one is pretty funny.)

For the folks that have trouble with our forum, we’ve added a small FAQ – you can find the link at the very top of the forum. It covers things that turn up on the forum itself. (Very little of it is Halo-related, specifically.) Thanks to Cybrfrk for its inception, and mnemesis for editing help.

Wednesday’s One One Se7en is now up. Harsh truth… but tru7h nonetheless.

Yesterday, Gholsbane posted a rough sketch of the E3 demo map. Today, he’s got a polished, colored version, with pretty icons and everything. Check it out!

SketchFactor graced our forum with a pretty clear shot of the Hog billboard from the E3 demo trailer. He was afraid nobody would notice it, though… go appease his fear, would you? Thanks.

Wow. Every week, we get email from folks who want their site to be added to our Links list. We announce ’em all… but it’s rare that I’m as impressed with one as I am with Halogamers.com. Clean design, good (unique) content, lots to explore… It’s not finished yet, but it’s well on its way. Check ’em out… and if you’re near Eau Claire, WI, go play with ’em!

Another Halo 2 Preview posted – this time over at GamePlasma. Some um… interesting suggestions (the machete’s back? And release has been pushed up to December 2003?), but mostly a pretty upbeat piece. Thanks to TankRamp, at Battleground: Halo, for the heads-up. (We’ve added this to our Previews section.)

A pair of Canadian tournaments for you: Got Game has a FFA tourney running June 27-29 in Victoria, British Columbia – $20 to get in, $500 first prize, more details at the website… and Fragapalooza, in Edmonton, Alberta, will happen on July 17-20 – it includes a 4v4 CTF tourney. There’s $30,000 in prizes on the line for the entire event (Halo is a small part of the package). Thanks to Dark-Bane and Sabre for the heads-ups.

Last alternative version, at least from us: this one is in WMP7 format, 360×243 big, weighing in at 46.2mb. If anyone has a problem with it, PLEASE let us know. We’ve also put up a secondary mirror list, for those times (like this afternoon) when HBO goes offline for a bit. They should be identical; go to the one that’s easiest to reach. (For those interested in these sorts of numbers, o1.com (the Red vs Blue guys) transferred over 4.5 terabytes of Demo trailer movies in the past 4 days, not including the BitTorrent versions, and Mythica’s closing in on 3 terabytes. Don’t even ASK what that would have cost from a standard service provider…)

The Halo 2 Caption contest has drawn to a close… and Evil Otto has had some fun writing up the results. He included some REALLY bad entries, some almost-good-enough entries, and, of course, the winners. (Several HBO regulars made the ‘almost-good-enough’ list, and a number of others used lines we’ve got in our Title rotation here.) Congrats, however, to shiner1x, epitaph01, and Shishka (yes, our very own Shishka) for gettin’ in! (Dave: for next time, Quote 1 belongs to Steven Wright, and Quote 2 belongs to Dilbert.)

CuBaNo found two Battlefield 1942 mods that have previously gone unnoticed by us here: Aeolus: Spheres of Influence, and Home Front. Both have sizeable amounts of content so far… take a look!

Gholsbane has posted a sketch of the E3 Demo map… and you might be surprised by how tightly connected the whole level is. (He’s planning to update this map in the near future, so we’ve archived this early version for posterity.)

More tournaments: ;*@PTUR3 writes about his clan site, Hushed Casket, which has quite a bit of confusing information; there’s a Halo tournament in Athens, GA at the end of June, but the website listed (http://www.tournamentwars.com/) doesn’t seem to be reachable. There’s another tournament in Game City, FL (we mentioned it in early May), but it seems to have been postponed for lack of interest. There’s also an Independence Day tournament sponsored by UCGA on July 26, in Madison, AL with a payout of $3200 if 32 teams sign up. And finally, we got word from Dynamo, of xbox-qu/bec, telling us about the second edition of their Xbox Challenge. It will be held in Rimouski, Quebec, on June 27/28, and will feature a number of games (including 4-player-team Halo). Details can be found on the Xbox-Quebec website.

Last January, Xbox.com put together their Hall of Fame, in which all major awards for Xbox products are listed in one place. (I never noticed it before; thanks to CuBaNo for the heads-up.) Halo DOMINATES the page. Heh.

Do you play Xbox online? XboxConnect 3.0 has just been released – in the words of one of its developers, “it has more features than you can shake a stick at.” Start shakin!

Gah. Dark Helmet writes to say that his site, darkhelmet.org, is currently offline due to an administrative snafu. He wants everyone to know that it will be back, better than ever, as soon as he can make it happen. Dark Helmet was a pioneer in putting hogs on top of things; he went lots of places first. We can’t wait until his site is back, with new content!

Thanks to Monkey, who pointed out a new GamerFeed over at Xbox.com; it’s a discussion of quantum leaps in quality without changing the technology. Halo is used as an example. 🙂 Check it out!