Bungie is now taking suggestions for new merchandise for the online store – grunt plushies, anyone? Go read about it at the Underground, and chime in! (Thanks to Ghôlsbane for the heads-up.)

Jonas stopped by our forum to say hi – and dropped off three super-cool desktops. Two of them involve a Covenant craft he created some time ago, the Vesper. The third is… something else. Check ’em out in our Wallpapers section.

stosh has added another comic to his ‘Blam!’ series – this one looks at recent media claims about the powers of Halo. You can tell it’s not real, because members of the Taliban don’t eat fried chicken, peas, and mashed potatoes… but it’s pretty funny anyway. 🙂

Dang… managed to format this, start posting it, and forget to finish, about 4 hours ago. The BBC has an article on the change in video gaming (‘it’s not just for breakfast any more’ – wait, that’s orange juice), and while Halo isn’t mentioned in the article itself, it is one of the 5 options for best game of 2002 in the poll included with the article. There doesn’t seem to be any way of seeing the results now… but go vote! (Thanks to Andrew Czereyski for the heads-up.) Update: Andrew Katz points out that you can see poll results… but they’re not very promising right now. Halo has 22.6% of 6200 votes… trailing Medal of Honour: Frontline and GTA: Vice City. Have YOU voted? Update 2: Deimos™, of Subnova, noticed that it’s a Mac/PC thing… if you vote from a PC, your vote is counted, and you’re shown the results. If you vote from a Macintosh, your vote is ignored, and you can’t see the results (without following the explicit URL above). I SMELL A FIX! Update 3: hehe – maybe I should actually do some testing first. Turns out it’s a browser issue, not a platform one. IE can vote – Mozilla (and its variants) cannot. Still fishy… Update 4: lol – should have kept my mouth shut. Works for all browsers, all platforms. Deimos™ suggests that a Vice City fanboi was cheating, and the BBC page maintainers went overboard on the lockdown at first. Seems quite possible. In any case, go vote, and only vote once.

Rory Hartley has put together a short (2:03, 7.2 mb) movie called Superman. The techniques aren’t new… but the presentation is pretty fun. (Check out the sequence that starts about 38 seconds in…) It’s not very big – so we’ve put a copy up at Mythica, and mirrored it on Pez’s FTP server. Take a look!

A little while ago, we mentioned Psyjnir.com would be going down for maintenance. It seems to still be down – there’s no word on why, but I’d guess you could check in at Tiridurin, the official Psyjnir.com fansite, for speculation pretty soon. (Or you could go to the source – the Hotline server seems to still be running…)

Your daily dose of Fan Fiction:

• Shadows of….My Ass, by el_halo_diablo
• A New Year’s Day, Chapter 5, by Guilty Spark
• Christmas on the Frontlines, by Dispraiser
• Halo 2: A New Hope, Part 5, by Sephiroth

Time for bed, I think…

agentJ64 and Darth Epy0n both wrote to let us know that agentJ64’s Covenant model for Jedi Knight II is finished. In a forum post, DE links to JediKnightII.Net for the download (14.5 mb). In an email, agentJ64 links to JediKnight2Files.com. Take your pick. There’s also an SDK (3.3 mb) for skinners available. Finally, here’s a preview of the model (1024×767, 124K). If you play Jedi Knight II… you HAVE to check this out!

Gamespot has put up the most comprehensive information about PC Halo to date. Highlights:

• Solo campaign won’t change
• Project is “40 percent done”
• Minimum graphics card to be supported – GeForce2 MX
• Multiplayer will have all new maps, up to 32 players per server
• Unlikely to see play between PC and Xbox
• Difficulties will be tweaked (read: increased) to compensate for mouse/keyboard

There’s tons of good info in here – go read it for yourself. Thanks to all the folks who let us know, either via email or on the forum, about this article (looks like Parias was first).

Spike writes that Project-Halo has moved, to its own URL. Just a forum at the moment… but it says new content coming in January.

Forum regular Red Loser (back after a short break) posted a wonderful reworking of ‘The Night Before Christmas’ on our forum. I was inspired to add a bit of artwork. Enjoy it in the spirit of the season!

Razorback spent about a month brushing up on digital art (sorry) – the first attempt at digital painting makes a pretty gorgeous desktop. Check it out in our Wallpaper section.

A couple of images from Tru7h – another mode of transportion tossed to the curb by Bungie, and an ad for the Halo shotgun. You’ll find both in our Miscellaneous Art section. Super-quick update: As I was posting those, another image came in… It’s Christmas on Halo. Finally, a decent use for that energy sword! Check out Blade’s work here, or see all three in this update at this link.

Another pair of large, spoiler-rich banners from Sir Jivealot – they’re in our Banners section. (I still haven’t found time to overhaul the section… apologies for the large loading times.)

Subnova regular 2 and 2 make 5 has recorded a cool little clip of… SuperGrunt. In his own words:

Very few know the awesome power of flight given to all grunts. I however have managed to convince one of them into showing it off without the helpful nudge of explosive fragmentation grenades. He didn’t know I had a camera underneath my trenchcoat, so now all can see the hidden power of grunts.

The movie is 412K (it’s only 3 seconds long), and 320×240… but 2 is working on a higher-res version, for anyone interested in using this clip in a Superman-themed music video. Contact him (or us) for more details.

cHigiRi pointed out a Halo review we missed – back in February, the Swedish site Telenordia looked at Halo and decided it was great. We’ve added it to our Reviews database.

Whoknew dropped off a Banshee-flavored desktop… pick your poison. You’ll find it in our Wallpaper section.

Sir Jivealot has sent in a monstrous, spoiler-laden banner for our Banners collection… this might be the one that forces an overhaul of the section. (Not today, though.)

Quiet pre-Christmas weekend… just a couple of Fan Fiction bits:

• Through Your Enemies Eyes, part 2, by Jahan
• Hunter Interview, by Gasmask

Take a look… it’s not often the offering is this light.

hipboyscott points out a Halo 2 preview he’s written at ZTGameDomain.com – this one’s full of Halo: CE spoilers, but speculates on what’s in store for the story in Halo 2. Take a look!