Bungie.net has expanded their forum system to allow forums for each 7th Column chapter – if you have a burning desire to chat with your chapter mates, get to building!

The Halo National Tournament just passed 10,000 contestants… wonga. According to Yeroen, that makes this the biggest LAN event ever. 🙂

Artistic submissions today:

• CrAzYjOhN911 submitted a VERY large scan of a Halo sketch
• BOLL submitted a modified screenshot using Swedish candy, inspired by this forum thread

You can find both in our Miscellaneous Art section.

Heh – The Banners section gets an update… with an HBO banner, no less! Thanks to Mr Bill Jr V for the submission.

I… I… words fail me. (Apologies to Jen Taylor, and smacks around the head and ears for Team Overkill.)

Good lord. (Thanks, mnemesis.)

Tuesday’s FanFic:

• Banserki’s Journal, part 7, by Sarge
• The Return of the Archons, part 5, by Wado

Go get it!

Halo sightings crop up in the oddest places… check out Blackstar’s latest find.

Doh! Tarrsk sent word last night that Halo is back in the news on Gamespy – due to the Halo National Tournament. (Registration for said event, btw, is at 9552 at the moment – closer and closer to 10,000 contestants!) Gamespy sees the large number of contestants as a positive sign that online console gaming has a future. Oh, yeah…

Finally—FINALLY—the Gameplay Tricks queue gets looked at. No, it’s not cleared yet. In fact, most of the stuff that went up has been known for months… but remember, baby steps, right? 10 down, 25 to go. More tomorrow, unless a rock falls on the house. Go look at the ten posted today.

Another Halo review has been posted – Monsters at Play, a site aimed at the thinking crowd, has weighed in… and Halo gets another thumbs-up. Give it a read – it’s worth it. We’ve added this to our Reviews database.

Mr Bill Jr V has sent in a Bryce/Photoshop composite honoring a great game, and a great operating system. Check the Logos section.

CrAzYjOhN911 has dropped off a new tidbit of Miscellaneous Art for our collection…

Ample amounts of artwork came in to our coffers recently – We have the following tidbits for you:

• A rendered sniper rifle, by nova kog – nice Maya workmanship!
• A postcard from Halo, by Mr. Bill Jr V – makes me wanna go…
• New camo outfits for the Halo marines, by Warbow – and if I’m not mistaken, Private Gough has been replaced by Private Warbow…

Visit our Miscellaneous Art section for the goodies!

The weekend’s Fan Fiction offerings:

• Taker of Life, Giver of Death, part 4 and part 5, by Ian Barnes
• Evocringe Chapter 1, by Masurati
• Durandal, by Craig Hardgrove
• The Return of the Archons, part 4, by Wado

Go get ’em!

At the end of May, a new section opened at HBO – Keyes’ Corner. The first (and so far only) installment was an in-depth look at the Unlimited Ammo glitch in Halo… and now, 2 months later, Storm Singer has added another little twist to the whole shebang. He learned that the limits on the UA glitch with respect to vehicles can be circumvented in some cases. Check the writeup for details. And let us know if you come up with innovative uses for this!

A few weeks ago, n3m noticed a new project over at Planet Half-Life – a mod called ‘Incoming‘. We neglected to mention it then – but it came up again yesterday. So we’re mentioning it. 🙂

After a two-week downtime, Mythica.org has returned! 2.7 gigs of movies are back online, and the biggest Halo movie host (by far) has returned to serve up the goodness. Try not to crush it in your haste to grab whatever you were missing… (Thanks to Brian Towne, whose tireless efforts have returned this resource to the Bungie community… we now know EXACTLY where we’d be without you, Brian!)

Woo – long weekends out of town can be GOOD things. 🙂 First up – The Junkyard is running a new competition – guess the release date of PC/Mac Halo (exactly), and win stuff! (There are several copies of Halo, and some multimedia cards on the line.) The news story is here, the Guess Contest is here. Check it out! (Thanks to Vector40 for the heads-up, and apologies for the delay in posting this.)

Daniel Conway was inspired by the energy stations (the blue beams) in Halo… and whipped up a little something for our Miscellaneous Art section. Check it out!