He’s been quiet on the posting front… but Crux Fidelis, our stalwart behind-the-scenes guy, has gotten himself interviewed by Ryan ‘Mhaddy’ Matthews… go check the Junkyard’s Spotlight for the lowdown on this Benedictine bloke!

A Halo tournament in Scotland? Aye. Check out ntlworld’s Home Gaming League page. Games are every Thursday, admission is £5.50/player. Thanks to Les Campbell for the heads-up.

Kudos to Mike Smith, who noticed that the front page of the E3 2003 website has a listing for an ‘Expo Spotlight’:

3-20-2003榦amp;#8226;æ “neak Peeks returns with a vengeance. Halo 2, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and StarCraft: Ghost headline this year’s session. Other speakers include John Carmack, Brian Reynolds, Seamus Blackley, American McGee, and Raph Koster.

We were pretty sure that there was gonna be lots of Halo goodness at E3… but the fact that it’s making the spotlight is a pretty cool thing.

Stuntmutt found a page (182K) in Toyfare magazine (issue 69) showing Joy Ride’s Halo action figures. We’d put this in the Press Scans section… but I can’t find any useable online info on Toyfare. (One of these days, we’ll post the collection of pictures from last month’s Toy Fair in New York… but this is what we have for now.)

Many, many thanks to Deimosâ„¢, of Subnova, who stepped in yesterday during HBO’s time of need and made sure you folks could still get the Halo content you’ve expected from us. (They’re currently supplying some of our bandwidth.) An added bonus: news searches are now MUCH faster (close to 20 times faster). If you need older content, there’s no longer any excuse! (Try that little box up there. Go ahead – you know you want to.)

A new Halo site is up; nice design, focuses on gameplay. Check out Elite Guide.

Old-time Bungie fans are most likely not a huge portion of the current pool of Bungie fans; Bungie’s latest poll (‘Which multiplayer gametype do you enjoy the most?’) shows that the vast majority of respondents (90% of 1500 votes) enjoy playing either Slayer or Capture the Flag, gametypes made popular by FPSs like Quake and Unreal. Only 8% voted for gametypes brought forward from older Bungie games, like King of the Hill and Oddball… and only 2% chose ‘Race’ (a gametype relatively unique to Halo) as their favorite. Just goes to show you what happens when your audience base widens…

If you’re reading this, you’ve found the server’s new home. This is a backup of the existing site. Unfortunately, the death of the machine this morning wasn’t out of the blue; the box has been pretty unstable for a few weeks now. (It’s been unstable for longer than that, but the instability can only be attributed to hardware problems recently.) One of the side effects of the nearly continual crashing in the past few days is that the nightly backup hasn’t been completed since early Friday morning; all news and new features since then are in limbo until the original machine is brought back online. (Please be patient.) Fan Fiction, movies, artwork, and any other submissions in the past few days still exist; they are simply unavailable until repairs are completed. Please do not resubmit your work. (Additionally, in order to keep the bandwidth demands down while on this smaller pipe, we’re going to delay posting NEW fan creations; they’ll go up, eventually… just not right now. We’ve taken the Fan Fiction submission form offline, and we ask that you hold off on sending us artwork for a few days.) Again – we apologize for the downtime/lack of functionality… we’re doing the best we can to get back to where we were (and we WILL keep up on news posts), but hardware failures get messy sometimes.

poena.dare forgot to take his meds again…

Funky downtime… datacenter says it’s not them, but the server said it wasn’t down, either. Anyway, check out Bungie.net’s newest contest – if you can come up with the best three-player Halo gametype variant for Halo, you’ll win the accolades due a true master. Entries are only accepted from Seventh Column chapters, and there are other rules, so be sure to read Bungie’s news story carefully. You’ve got just a bit under 2 weeks; deadline is midnight (Pacific time) on Sunday, March 30. What are you waiting for – get creatin’!

Today’s Fan Fiction:

• Ishkabibbl’s Story Part 1, by Ishkabibbl
• And Raise Your Head With Pride! 5, by Arthur Wellesly
• A Forerunner Tale Part 1: And So The Flood, by nicholas
• The Battle For Sigma Octanus Chapter 7 No Way out, by monitor101
• The Flood: Part One, by Justin Everett Simon
• The Tour (part 3), by Traumatised Marine
• The Clouds Cry — part 1: Just a Nightmare , by Matt James
• An Undying Hope — part 1: Hell in the Valley, by Matt James
• Chapter 6-343 Guilty Spark, by Ultra Sonic 007
• Last Stand part 2, by grylsy
• Fallen Angel 9: Invasion, by Gruntkiller/Covert
• Life of a UNSC Marine Part II, by Tygpj

There were a few that needed to be deleted… there’s always someone who either can’t read directions, or feels like abusing the system. If you feel that your story was deleted in error, let us know.

Three art pieces for you today, including a pretty dang impressive MC model made for a 3d animation class. Check ’em out in our Miscellaneous Art section. (Wallpaper coming later today.)

ICDedPpl writes to let us know that the MOSHPIT now has a page up for easy access to movie mirrors. Currently, there are just the new ones put up yesterday (and one made by one of their members), but that number will increase. We’re always grateful for movie mirroring bandwidth!

Eric writes to tell us of his Halo site, Halo Cave. Update: Both Eric and ToXiC have written to clarify that it’s ToXiC’s site, Eric is just helping.

Sometimes, the tenacity of Halo fans just has to be seen to be believed. (Before you blow that off as just another pic, look carefully at what’s behind the MC – and where it is.)

poena.dare uncovered an interesting tidbit related to last year’s Halo National Championships… if you like backstory, read this forum post.

The Movies database has finally been brought up-to-date; movies from the last 6 weeks have all been added. There’s a new movie there, too – it’s called ‘Hurt’, and it’s mostly Blood Gulch gameplay (with some cutscene footage added nicely for flavor), set to Johnny Cash’s remake of NiN’s ‘Hurt’. It’s available in both QuickTime and WMP9 formats, weighs in at 13.4 mb (QT) or 17 mb (WMP9), and lasts just over 4 minutes. Hosting is currently provided by Mythica and the Psyjnir Complex, but we’re happy to add mirrors to that list. Grab your flavor. Update: ICDedPpl gets our back – Hurt (the QT version and the WMP version) is mirrored at the MOSHPIT.

Stuntmutt points out that Halo Hacking gets a mention in the latest issue of Edge magazine (number 122, April 2003) – and so does HBO. (They point to the mirror link for the very first hacking film. Hopefully, visitors reading that will explore and discover the OTHER hacking movies… they should be in the Movies database within the hour.) Update: poena.dare points out that today is the 8-year anniversary of Bungie modding, in general. (Well, sort of – Mia was available before Pfhorte was, but that’s a story for another day.) Check Bungie Sightings for details.

In a surprising twist, the Halo Story Page is NOT updated today. (Finn actually has real life work tugging at his coattails, and mnemesis… well, mnemesis is mnemesis.) I must say, however, that it was a struggle to make this happen… so if you’re not watching carefully, there might be an update in the not-too-distant future.

Ryan ‘Mhaddy’ Matthews writes to let us know that the Junkyard is looking for help:

We’re looking for anyone who has a passion for any of the games that we cover and has a basic understanding of HTML. All positions are open; from newshounds, interview / review / preview / article writers, site maintenance, file keepers or just a general helper.

If you’re interested in helping us out and have the time to dedicate to the ‘Yard, drop me a line at mhaddy@the-junkyard.net. Skills can be taught. Benefits available :).

They cover more than just Halo.