Wednesday’s Fan Fiction:

• Rise To Honor – Background, by Shadow
• Apollo, chapter 3, by foxhound
• Haven, chapter1, by ~Ice~

foxhound suggests that, since so much time has passed between chapters 2 and 3 of Apollo, you read the entire series from the beginning. And don’t forget to leave feedback – ~Ice~, for one, suggests that future chapters will only be forthcoming if you folks want ’em.

A fun little movie came in recently from Halo-Wannabe, an HBO forum regular. 6 megs, just under 2 minutes, in QT5 format – it should definitely make you smile. You can find it at mythica.org. Check it out!

Foxx Wolf sends in an image which asks a question we’ve all wondered about, at some point… (admit it, you wanted to know, too) You can find it in our Miscellaneous Art section. Incidentally – Foxx was the person who asked ‘Who’s the oldest Halo player?‘ Marty O’Donnell writes

By the way, my mother has played Halo and she’s 78 years old.

It’s pretty clear that virility runs in that family, so maybe Mrs. O’Donnell shouldn’t count…

Light Fan Fiction offering this time around, just a couple of stories:

• Ascendant Part IV, by Archangel’s Blade
• The Lost Spartan (Chapters 1-4), by Spartan415

All the more reason to check ’em out…

3Suns points out a new poll at GameSpotting (about 3/4 of the way down the page) – ‘Which no-show did you want to make an appearance at this E3 the most?’ Among the 8 possible answers are both Halo 2 and Halo PC. Halo 2 follows Perfect Dark Zero, with Halo PC a distant 3rd. Go vote!

New content over at Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site – there’s a pretty fun new ‘Caption This!’ section, wherein Bungie puts up great screenshots (warning: spoilers), and you write captions for them (and vote on other people’s attempts)… and in honor of tomorrow’s release of the Halo Soundtrack, there’s an interview with Marty O’Donnell. Thanks to mnemesis and Ape Man for the heads-up on the screenshots section – even though BOTH of them missed the Marty interview… (he doesn’t get no respect!) Check it all out. Good stuff.

In Japan, Halo dog tags and a case were given out with very early copies of Halo. (You needed the dog tags to get in to the Halo Championship.) Now, thanks to Team Overkill, you’re being notified that a set of dog tags and the case are being sold on eBay – current bid is $24.99, and the acution ends in 2 days, 9 hours… Update: Seems $24.99 was the ‘Buy it Now’ price – it’s not clear to me why the auction wasn’t listed as over when I posted this, but it is now. Thanks (again) to Deimosâ„¢ for the heads-up.

Cybrfrk, our friendly neighborhood Gameplay Tips section maintainer, sends word that

• The Tips database has just hit 100 entries
• He’s just hit 35

Go peruse the database… and wish him a happy birthday while you’re there!

The Press Scans database has been brought up to date again. Another Halo Ad added, along with some mad ravings in last month’s Xgamer, and a very interesting article from the last issue of Xbox Nation. (These last two were both mentioned some time ago – March 26th for the XBN piece and April 24th for the Xgamer bit – but we needed to wait until these were off the shelves to post them.) Remember – the quote from Alex S. about the relationship between Halo and Marathon was addressed by Matt in the aforementioned thread. Update: A couple of months ago, Subnova put up scans of an interesting interview with Jaime Griesemer, Halo Designer. We were so caught up in not posting it before it was off the shelves that we forgot about it altogether. Deimosâ„¢ kindly reminded us – it’s been added now.

Coolaid sends word that he’s created a new Halo movie. It’s pretty big (55 mb, zipped), in QT format. 6 and a half minutes long – mostly jeep flipping, set to music. You can find it on his Power Rangers clan site, or his friend’s site.

Clint Wilkes sends in a new Mastercard ‘Priceless’ parody – you’ll find it in our Miscellaneous Art section. (Nice nod to Foxx Wolf’s mom! And to Stormsinger, as well…)

Thanks to Kurt Bergeron, who prompted us to update our Interviews database with the latest Matt Soell interview. We took the opportunity to add a few missing ones from farther back. There’s still the issue of ‘Off the Net’ interviews… we’re working on it.

One of these days, a new section will come online here at HBO – it’ll house some of the cool mod-related artwork that’s sprung up in the past few months. Until then, though, new submissions will continue to go into the Miscellaneous Art section… like this rendering of a Scorpion motion-tracking missile (described in ‘The Fall of Reach’, and featured in Stormsinger’s upcoming Skyhawk model). Check it out!

The oldest Halo convert? Foxx Wolf sends in an account of getting his mom hooked on Halo – she’s 63 years old.

I spent a pleasant hour or so teaching her how to move around and play, what to do, the basic how’s and where’s of first-person games. She loved it! Despite her slower reaction times, and lack of any familiarity with the concept, she was smearing grunts all over the grass pretty quickly. I get the feeling she’ll probably play while I’m not around!

Do you know any Halo players older than this? (Besides Marty, of course…)

Night of the Living Mirrors… Vector40 writes to say that he’s added The Repertory to the list of mirrors for the ‘Evolution of Halo’ vid. That Weasel writes to say that he’s converted that movie to Windows Media Player format (it’s now only 30 megs), and you can grab it from That Weasel Television. Brian Towne writes to say that the load on mythica.org for the Evolution movie has dropped enough that mirroring Dan Chosich’s ‘Halo: DV’ movie isn’t a problem… so we’ve added, deleted, and moved links. You should find the ‘Evolution of Halo’ mirror list and the ‘Halo: DV’ mirror list in order.

Beware of… Team Overkill turns in a new desktop image for our Wallpaper section.

Another monster movie – Dan Chosich, who’s already turned in a number of movies for our Movies section, has created a new one. It’s available in both QuickTime 5 and Windows Media Player formats, in pretty high quality – the QT5 version is 36 mb, the WMV version is 47 mb. For the time being, they’re both hosted on Dan’s Twenty-Seventy Wired site – but mirrors are, of course, always appreciated. (When the demand for the Evolution of Halo drops off a bit, we’ll add these to mythica.org, at least…) Dan’s site has a full description of the video. Movies, movies, everywhere!

Sunday afternoon Fan Fiction offerings…

• The Brethren of Saturn, part 1, by Lynnada
• Earth’s Last Hope, parts 1 and 2, by Dark_Elite

Get to readin’!

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. Some very, very insane Halo fans decided to test the limits of a system link game… they sent pictures. They’re still alive – if you try to copy this, you might not be. Enjoy the insanity, but don’t participate in it. I really don’t wanna be reading about you on CNN…

Gonna be anywhere near Boise, Idaho on July 7th? HALOID (a 7th Column Chapter) is planning a Northwest Halo Tournament. Details can be found in this forum post.