Live near Nashville, TN? Up for some Halo competition with $5,000 guaranteed on the line ($2200 for first place in the CTF competition, for example) at the end of November? Stop by the website of The Associates of Gaming Professionals, and read about their upcoming Halo tournament. $25 a head to enter; not bad for a shot at $2,200! (Thanks to b.net for the heads-up.)

Bandwidth might be a little tight… but we’ve tossed up the ‘Pyramid of Destruction’ film from the October 2002 OXM cover disc. It’s 5.3 mb, 1:20 long. Nothing spectacular, mostly vehicle antics on Sidewinder… but hey, if it’s good enough for OXM, it’s good enough for us. (The November issue hit the stands yesterday, which is why we’re willing to post this.) Thanks, as always, to Team Overkill for ripping it, and to Brian Towne, for the bandwidth to serve it.

Another creation from the Reyes-McLees shipyards… first the Pillar of Autumn, now Egan. Congrats, Lorraine and Rob!

Issue 9 of the Official UK Xbox Magazine hit the stands yesterday. Because of that, we’re able to bring you two articles that were published in issue 8. You’ll find these in our Press Scans section. Thanks to Griffon for the scans.

Four new desktop images for you today – mostly dark, but otherwise without a unifying theme. Check ’em all out in our Wallpaper section.

Justin Bernard, of the Halo squad ‘Delta Force’, has submitted a logo promoting the squad. You can find it in our Logos section.

Another banner from Richard, aka t3ch – you’ll find it in our Banners section.

HNN Productions has created a new Halo gameplay vid; NewGun. 5.3 mb, .wmv format, 3:12 long. Video quality is low, but good enough to see what’s going on (and the tradeoff was made to keep filesize small, which is nice). Footage ranges from run-of-the-mill gameplay to pretty funny little clips; overall, there’s nothing really new here, but the ‘tank chasing a player’ scenes have a real Warner Brothers cartoon feel to them. Take a look!

Another desktop entry from Mattman, in our Wallpaper section.

Weekend Fan Fiction:

• After Halo pt. 3 Chapter 3, by Kyle
• Revolution, part 13, by Gruntkiller
• Shadows of Archon II, part 21, by Wado
• Death Dealers, by Havok

Once again, Havok (previously Helljumper, previously Andreas) has changed his posting name. Apparently, my polite request to maintain the name you post under was overlooked. Because of that, we’ve instituted a new policy; no name changes will be accepted in the future. This is now documented on the Fiction Guidelines page. This may seem harsh – but understand that adjusting all the database entries that reference this name (in the Fan Fiction database, the comments section, the front-page news, sometimes the Miscellaneous section or the Misc Art section) takes quite a bit of time – for something that really shouldn’t change at all. Thanks for your understanding.

A couple of pretty cool banners were turned in recently; they’re HUGE, but they’re definitely worth looking at. I’ve put up smaller versions in our Banners section simply for page-loading convenience… but links to the originals are there as well. Check ’em out!

Another AIM Expression… this time it’s Halo 2-specific. Check out Nick’s note on our forum; it contains links to preview pics, and to the Expression itself.

dogsounds sends in a new Halo 2 weapon option. You’ll find it in our Miscellaneous Art section. Man… I need one of those.

Alex Sullivan wanted to let us know of his Halo 2 website. Looks like there’s more coming… (We’ve added a Halo 2 section to our Links page.)

GameReviewers.com have put up a Halo 2 Preview… and are hosting both main QuickTime versions of the trailer. (We’ve added the links to our Mirrors list.) Check it out!

Daniel submits a great sketch of the MC – you’ll find it in our Miscellaneous Art section.

SpikeDaDragon has created a new Halo Expression for AOL Instant Messenger. If you know what this is (or if you use AIM and would like to know what this is), visit Spike’s site and download the file. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a preview of it anywhere, so if you don’t have AIM (or aren’t willing to modify files without seeing the results first), you’re out of luck. Update: There’s a screenshot now, so you can see what you’re getting into.

DragonFire’s little brother whipped up a new desktop for you – you’ll find it in our Wallpaper section.