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.)

We said he’d be adding one every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday… and he is. Stuntmutt’s second comic (‘Splinter Sell‘) goes live today. It’s likely that we’ll be adding a Comics subsection to HBO to house this, Warbow’s Calvin and Halo, Hack Trio’s… thing, and a new one by Mathjis Buster (and anything else that comes along) pretty soon.

Earlier today (okay, last night, local time), we posted a note about a movie we couldn’t watch, hosted by That Weasel Television. Thanks to the kindness of our forumites, we had a couple of flavors submitted that we COULD watch; we’ve tossed Lion’s MPEG version up to Mythica – it’s 27.2 mb (as opposed to the original 21 mb). You can grab it here. Enjoy!

A little while ago, we put up a page dedicated to BOLL’s cool panoramic Halo shots. Recently, he built a wicked-cool Flash interface for viewing these… so we’ve dumped it into the directory here. Use the plain-vanilla page we built… or BOLL’s much slicker viewer. (Benefit of ours, I guess, is that downloading the files is much easier.)

synide has put together a website for tournaments in the Jonesboro, Arkansas area. If you’re interested, stop on by and sign up!

Ross Mills has created a Halo movie in which (I think) the Queen song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is acted out, using Halo characters. Ross wasn’t able to figure out how to convert his WMP9 movie into a format we could read, so he’s gone elsewhere for hosting; That Weasel Television has put it up… and given it the That Weasel Seal of Approval. Maybe someday I’ll get to see it – but in the meantime, if you have a computer that can view WMP9 films, head over to That Weasel TV and grab this 21 meg movie.

To show his appreciation for the astounding goodness that is the Halo 2 spread in the Official Xbox Magazine this month, bikeman704 triggered the Megg… and added a bit. Cool. (Hehe… he’s still got four bullets left…)

Gah! I forget to check the Fan Fiction section for a couple of days, and things go MAD! 18 new stories since Monday…

• Stowaway Part 2 (1 of 3), by Dispraiser
• Epic Poem I, by devilsNight
• The Road to Zaxheoa: Chapter 1: The Covenant Attack, by Nike
• True Purpose(2), by Frensa Geran
• Just Getting Started Chapter Eight, by James Kinsella
• Death from Above part VI: The Gods of War, by AlphaBravo343
• ONI Black Operations Part 2, by Jaywhit10
• Brutus, the Spartans, two AIs and the Pirate Fleet (Part 3), by Traumatised Marine
• Battlefield 2552 first Clash of a New Campaign, by John Morris
• Fallen Angel 14: Last Man, by Gruntkiller/Covert
• The Marines, by Nike
• Just Getting Started Chapter Nine, by James Kinsella
• Pelican Charlie 223 Chapter One, by James Kinsella
• The End , by Tsuranuku
• The Megg Story, by Simpsons Rule
• Pax-The begaining Part 1, by Boa
• Rebirth – To Biraak, by KnightmareWolf, Shadow, Archangels_Blade, Spartan415
• Pelican Charlie 223 Chapter Two, by James Kinsella

Read ’em if you dare.

Nice find by aaron charles – a sizeable writeup about a bunch of (old) guys who get together regularly to play Halo – in LA Weekly. (It’s the second story down, titled ‘War Games: Playing the First Battle of the 26th Century’.) Beaten by Chinese children… but back for more.