Quick followup on a tidbit from last week: Eric Trautmann popped into our forum to clarify that ‘Halo: First Strike’ is a working title for the next Halo novel, and will most likely not be the final name of the book. Looks like someone at Del Rey was just trying to clear their inbox a bit early. More on this when we know something.

10 new stories for you – the Fan Fiction section never stops:

• Halo, by Andrew
• The Entar Chronicles Part 3, by Locke
• ONI Black Operations Part 3, by Jaywhit10
• Pax-the begaining Part 2, by Boa
• Battlefield 2552: Road to Redemption, by John Morris
• (Prologue) M31: First Blood, by Greg and Wes Foutch
• The Megg: The Escape, by Simpsons Rule
• The Virus Part 3, by monitor101
• Spartans: Combat Evolved: Prologue, by LordofDestruction
• ONI Black Ops Part Two, by Havok

Go read ’em…

Just in time for E3 2003, Skeletor posts his pictures from E3 2002. Get psyched!

A pair of new banners, from a pair of fans; check out our Banners section.

Six stories, two poems in today’s Fan Fiction update:

• ONI Black Ops Chapter One, by Havok
• Forsaken Forefathers: The Beginning of the End?, by AlphaBravo343 and Havok
• Taking Halo: Chapter 3, Bullets, Missiles and Plasma , by Steele
• The Start of my Beginning, by Andrew
• Spartan II: Stranded Chapter 2: Infection, by Vinny
• Halo 2: Revenge of a Spartan, Chapter 6, by LostRock
• The Human Race, by Nike
• Fallen Angel 15: The God’s Ring, by Gruntkiller/Covert

Sunday reading…

Episode 5 of Red vs Blue was released yesterday to sponsors – it’ll be available to the public in the next 12-18 hours. This one’s a plotbuilder… but it’s still pretty darn funny. Check it out, as soon as you’re able! 15-35 mb, depending on which version you download. Update: Once again, Halo-Game in France has mirrored this episode; check ’em out if you’re having trouble with the main site!

They’re un-friggin’-stoppable. The team of mnemesis and Finn seem to be determined to clear the entire Story page email archive before the Armageddon – and at this rate, they’ll do it handily. A pretty sizeable update from mnemesis tonight covers a wide range of ideas – and bumps down a post from yesterday that we didn’t even have time to mention! Go read. (Take THAT, Opie!)

Dang. Yesterday, we posted a bunch of desktops – and it turns out that one of them used, as a backdrop, an image created by Greg Martin (the second time this has occurred here at HBO). You CANNOT use copyrighted work as the basis for submissions here – ESPECIALLY not Mr. Martin’s, who says clearly, in several places around his website, that his artwork is NOT to be used this way. We’ve pulled the piece involved. Apologies for the confusion.

And finally, a fan-produced banner. That should clear out the images queue. If you submitted a piece of artwork and we haven’t posted it or contacted you, please send an email naming the piece (do not resend it unless we ask you to!), and we’ll see what we can do.

We also received a couple of logos a little while back; they’re on our Logos page.

Non-desktop artwork – we’ve got three for you. A cool collaboration between Postman and Dogsounds (posted on our forum a while ago, but only approved by both recently), another bizarre comic from Hack Trio (this is the last one we’ll post in Misc Art – any more submissions will have to wait for the opening of the HBO Comics section), and a pretty cool chip BOLL yanked from my neck. You’ll find all three in the Miscellaneous Art archives.

It’s been a little while since we cleared the images queues… first up, desktop images. After tossing out the non-attributed ones (how hard is it to upload a text file telling us you created a picture, folks?), we’ve got 6 images for you, from three different artists. Check ’em all out in the Wallpaper section. Update: oops, missed one; from the filename, I thought it was a logo submission. Check out Mister E’s Halo logo background, too. Update 2: We’ve pulled one of these entries because it included copyrighted work.

Got a TI 83 (or better) calculator? Then check out this game in the TI games archives – hehbo2k3, who pointed it out on our forum, says it’s a pretty fun game. (Unfortunately, it won’t run on my trusty HP 28S, so I can’t tell you what it looks like.) Update: Griffon points out a couple of screenshots; one from the original version, one from the new. Check ’em out. (Scroll down to ‘First Halo83.5 Screens!’)

Once again, Opie301 gently reminds us that he’s better at keeping track of when the Halo Story Page is updated than I am. (As a matter of fact, mnemesis told me that this would be going up – but he didn’t tell me when it was UP, so my bad for not checking.) It’s just a mini-update, compared to the monsters mnemesis and Finn have been putting up recently… a summary of the best speculation that’s shown up recently on the forum. Still, worth a look, especially if you don’t have time to read every post on the forum, looking for Story nuggets.

Konrad9 found a ‘new’ screenshot at Gamespot. (It’s not really new; it was seen in print before, in an OXM article (that for some reason isn’t scanned here) – but it’s never been seen online, in this resolution.) Very nice bumpmapping! We’ve added it to our Screenshots Database.

…but it wasn’t in Halo. Skeletor isolated a marine underground in 343 GS – and he doesn’t look like any other Halo marines I know about. (Well, that’s not totally true – I think it’s the guy on the left in this pic – but I can’t say as I’ve ever seen him myself in the game…) A year and a half later, and still the weirdness…

Eric Rickards made a pretty intriguing discovery; on Del Rey’s website, you can find preliminary information about a third Halo novel, entitled ‘Halo: First Strike’. The author is (once again) Eric Nylund… and the release date is scheduled for December 2003. Could this be (as Eric postulates) a Fall of Reach prequel… or will it tell the story of what happened between Halo and Halo 2? More info as soon as we get it… (Feel free to speculate in this forum thread.)

Sometimes, we get movie submissions that don’t meet our guidelines… because they’re so far out there they can’t even be HELD UP to the guidelines. Halo War is one of those. 215K of MC-rockin’ insanity. So if you watch that, and say to yourself, “self, where can I get more of that MC-rockin’ insanity?” – well, look no further than the ‘Halo 2: are u ready?‘ trailer, also from Paul – 292K worth of mind-bending Halo 2 action. (Both movies are in QuickTime format.) It must be Friday.

kiro69 sends word of a Wichita, KS Halo tourney to be held on May 24 – $5 entrance fee, to be pooled and paid out to the 3 top finishers. More details can be found at the 7th Column chapter Midwest Assassins.

MSNBC has an article asking whether Half-Life 2 and Doom III can revive game sales. Halo (and Halo 2) are mentioned at the end of the article, in a section entitled ‘Don’t forget the consoles’ – and there’s a poll attached to the article asking which game you’d like to have delivered to your door tomorrow. Halo 2 is running third… but only by about 150 votes (out of nearly 2500 cast). See what you can do about that! (Thanks to Lophan for the heads-up.)