The miscellaneous artwork submission is smaller than the desktop one today; just one image. Again, there was more, but it came unattributed. Nothing we can do with it… Anyway, check the Miscellaneous Art section for BOLL’s fun take on what to do about lamers…

The desktop art has been building up for a few days; this week was spent working on getting ready for E3. However, we’re clearing the inbox today. We’ve got seven for you… you’ll find ’em in the Wallpaper section. Misc art will come soon, as well as a few new banners; there were 10 very nice new banners in our uploads folder, but they came with zero identification, so there’s nothing we can do with them. Once again – no ID, no postee.

An interesting tidbit of off-topic news… SilverBrin has posted a note explaining about the setup of the official Brian Morden Foundation, an organization set up in memory of Brian Morden, better known as *Ar-Isildur around these parts. Visit the links for more information, or to buy one of the cool <3 T-shirts.

Email from EVILDARKZERO reminded us that we never mentioned the Halo Action Figure Contest being run in the June issue of OXM. To win the full line of soon-to-be-released Halo action figures, all you need to do is send an email to xboxmag@futurenetworkusa.com, with your name, address, email and phone number, and you’ll be entered. (They’re picking 25 winners at random.) You can also send a letter to

Halo Action Figure Contest
c/o Official Xbox Magazine
150 North Hill Drive
Brisbane, CA 94005

Entries must be received no later than June 15, 2003, and the winner will be chosen on or about July 1, 2003. C’mon… what do you have to lose? (Contest is open to residents of the US only, sorry. And for some bizarre reason, it’s void in Rhode Island, too. And Puerto Rico. And where prohibited by law. I think it’s good to go in Peoria, however.)

Somehow this got missed by the majority of Fanfest attendees… thanks to Warbow for pointing it out. A few days ago, a letter went out to all attendees, with information about logistics, a schedule, and a description of what will be going on. One of the subsections of the general overview was titled ‘Videos Galore’ – it described some of the video footage that will be visible throughout the night. Most of it was expected, and I guess I must have skimmed it… because I missed this line:

“…a Halo 2 documentary being produced for an upcoming special on the Discovery Channel…

Whoa. A WHAT? Okay, certainly MY appetite is whetted… if we discover more about this before the show, we’ll be sure to post it.

Tiny but potentially significant Halo Story Page update… thanks, Finn.

Episode 6 of Red vs Blue is up for Sponsors at the Red vs Blue site (head to your forum, look for the link) – it’ll be out for the rest of the world on Sunday, but if you’ve dropped ’em a little cash, pick up your copy today. ‘Laughing out Loud’ is way overused on the internet… but the teleportation sequence in this episode sure had me doing it for real.

Ciarán did some digging, and came up with a bit more information about the next Halo novel, working title ‘Halo: First Strike’. From a Random House employee:

As for “First Strike,” it will take place immediately after “The Flood,” and will continue to follow the Master Chief. Other than that, I can’t yet reveal.

Interesting… interesting. Check out the forum post for more info about eBook versions of the first two novels, as well.

Dolbex writes to say that the Halo50K site has been overhauled completely, in anticipation of Halo50K2, coming up this August in New Jersey. 64 teams, $15,000. Sign up now!

12 Fan Fiction pieces for you today:

• The Devils Brigade Prt. III, by Spinks
• (Chapter 1) M31: First Blood, by Greg and Wes Foutch
• (Part 2) M31: First Blood, by Greg and Wes Foutch
• (Part 3) M31: First Blood, by Greg and Wes Foutch
• True Purpose(3), by Frensa Geran
• Unexpected Surprises Part 5, by JediKnight114
• Covenant Elite Morphology, by Mr Yun
• ONI Black Ops Part Three, by Havok
• Prologue: The Master Chief, by Ace
• Spartans: Combat Evolved Part One: Paintball Wars, by LordofDestruction
• Chapter 1: Reporting to Earth, by TheGladiator
• The Flood: A force to be reckoned with (Part 1), by crashedwarthog

Enjoy.

The MC has a crisis of identity – check out the latest One One Se7en comic from Stuntmutt.

As mnemesis said… Whoa. The long-awaited overhaul of Bungie’s Truth and Reconciliation site is complete… and man, is there some good stuff for you to much on. Lessee… New screenshots, new concept art, a new render, a new storyboard, the final level of Bungie’s Legendary Walkthrough… dang. You should be finished reading about the time the E3 stuff pours into your brain.

That Weasel steps up to the plate and mirrors Lethal Rage – always nice to have extra bandwidth! New movie coming tomorrow…

Holy flaming bacon, Batman! Bungie.net has put up a look at what’s to come at E3 next week… and just reading the text will clog your arteries. If you’re young and healthy, swing by and read up… if you’re old and fat, be careful. (There are also juicy details on PC Halo , from Michel Bastien, its producer… go read. And read. And then jog around the block a few times.)

We’ve had a few interesting movies submitted recently. We can’t put them all up at once, because we’d kill our kind bandwidth hosts… but here’s the first one. Called ‘Lethal Rage‘, it’s a sordid tale of murder and gang violence in the city… all set on Sidewinder. Parts are rather dark; blame me, not Pico, the creator. (Well, the original was pretty dark in those places… but not quite THIS dark.) Sound issues are NOT my fault. 🙂 5:37 long, 26 mb big. QT format. If you can mirror this, please, let us know!

Cool details from AEG, a PR firm that works with Microsoft:

Fragmasters and gamers alike are encouraged to get in on the Halo PC action at E3 for the chance to win a coveted Halo PC T-shirt. Gamers who attend E3, the annual video game convention taking place in Los Angeles from May 14 through 16, will get the first chance to play the new Halo PC multiplayer in the Microsoft booth (#1246). Winners of each four-player match will receive a Halo PC T-shirt and earn bragging rights over their friends. The competitions will take place throughout all three exposition days.

Nice! Gonna be a lot of people running around in Halo T’s…

Good news from Bungie, about the online version of the Trivia Contest to be hosted during the fanfest:

• Because they get screwed in almost all contests, international fans are welcome to participate in this trivia contest. If you win, Bungie’ll be happy to mail the prize pack to wherever you live.
• Because 7-11 pm Pacific time is an inconvenient timeframe in some parts of the world, and because Bungie’s already recognizing that international people will be playing along, the contest will be online here from 7 pm Pacific on Thursday (2 am Friday UTC) through 7 pm Pacific on Friday (2 am Saturday UTC). You are responsible for figuring out how that translates to your local time.

We’ve added some insanely hard questions, so the likelihood of multiple perfect scorers has dropped precipitously… but in the event of a tie, the winner will be chosen at random from the pool of leading scorers. All decisions made by management are final and not open to discussion. Don’t mess with us – we’ll send Ling-Ling to deliver you a world of hurt.

Snoppydude points out a new Xbox online linking tunnel, called X-Link Messenger. There’s very little information at the website – but if we learn more, we’ll let you know.

Team Overkill has put up a writeup of their Halo50K experience – go check out boatloads of pics and some funny commentary. (There’s a big one coming from NOF, of Team HBO, as well; in fact, it’s been online since last week, but there are currently almost 250 images loading on the single-page writeup… until we adjust this a bit, it’ll kill both browsers and the server. Soon…)

More Lego stuff, thanks to Fury Three: another Warthog design, and the first Lego Banshee published to the internet. Check ’em out!