Because of the outage we experienced last night, at least one submission that MIGHT have been repeated wasn’t – to compensate, we’re extending the submissions deadline for Maw 700 contest entries (the first half) until 12 noon UTC on March 15, 2002. (This is 7 am EST, or 4 am PST.)

Ferrago.co.uk, a UK gaming site, kicked off its full Xbox coverage today… and Halo got a nice review. They weren’t thrilled with the plot… but they liked the rest. They gave it a solid 92%. We’ve added it to our Reviews database.

The Renegade Marines gets a fifth chapter today – ‘The Assault‘ looks at some hard action. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section!

Yesterday, we posted a cool Gameplay Trick that uses the ‘force field’ around the tops of trees to create a bridge of bodies. Frogblast had made a movie, as well as the still shots we showed you… but his server was having some trouble. The server’s fixed, and the movie has been posted. Check it out!

Psyrixx, of the Psyjnir Complex, dropped off an interesting bit of speculation, packaged deceptively as Fan Fiction. (Or was it an interesting fan fiction, deceptively packaged as story speculation?) In either case, you can read it (and comment on it) in our Fan Fiction section.

Sorry for the downtime, folks – the telco people are doing their best to fix a long-standing problem with our internet connection. I took advantage of the lull to put up another pair of tricks in our Gameplay Tricks section. No real spoilers here – one is multiplayer, the other is just fun. Check ’em out!

Well, the first issue of the UK’s XGamer magazine is officially off the shelves – so (thanks to Ghôlsbane), we bring you the 12-page Halo spread that graced its pages. It’s part of our Press Scans database. It’s an interesting read!

Four new inclusions for our Gameplay Tricks page – some pretty cool stuff. Frogblast/Metafire does some serious Library exploration, brad discovers a bizarre little bug related to spawning, and Gabe Harris shows us how to build body bridges. (Oh, man, what people are gonna do with that…) Check ’em all out!

Dave Riley, of Fan-service.com, has added another mirror for the Montage Video. You can grab the movie here. (20 megs, remember…)

Three months ago, it was discovered that a piece of music written for the Bungie game Myth could be heard from a difficult-to-get-to spot at the end of Assault on the Control Room. Recently, it was learned that the same piece of music could be found in another, also-difficult-to-get-to spot at the start of the same level. We’ve added this information (including video documentation) to the Easter Eggs page. Interestingly enough, that particular piece of music, in sheet form, showed up on the Bungie webcam almost a year ago – does this mean we can date the inclusion of this particular pair of eggs?

Akira has actually translated the Nokia ringtones discussed yesterday into a .WAV file, so even folks WITHOUT Nokia phones can hear it. (He also provided step-by-step instructions on creating this tone for your Nokia phone that’s easier than the manual way.) And to think, my phone just rings…

Frogblast was exploring (the net, not Halo) and stumbled across this forum post – the image leads back to this nicely done page at a NASA site. If you’re still confused about Lagrange points (Halo occupies one around Basis), take a look!

Firfin, of Halo-Game.com, has translated the Nokia ringtone information submitted by Rage Reset into standard tones – I tried it, and didn’t hear the Halo theme… but my meter was probably off. Take a look!

Heh – the digging has started. Someone hacked around with their Halo disc, and found some interesting strings buried deep in the code – check ’em out. Evidence that cheats ONCE existed, at least… and some pretty funny (if colorful) error language. Definitely PG-rated for strong language. Thanks to Ray Rose for the heads-up on our forum!

Not long ago, we added an interesting One-Shot from Bonk, showing a rather unusual pose for a marine. Recently, he’s added an article to his site, iBonk.com, showing the full experiment – this is another example of the Frozen Stuff bug, but there’s a movie, and a step-by-step reproduction guide. Check it out!

It’s Launch Day in Australia… thanks to that International Dateline, they’re a few hours ahead of Europe. Stores should open in 7 or 8 hours… and then I’d guess we won’t see our Australian friends for a few days. Wish ’em luck!

Ask and ye shall receive. Three kind bandwidth mavens have proffered up connections for the newest Halo vid – we can call it the Montage Video. You can grab it at:

• Mythica.org (Thanks, Brian!) – HTTP
• The Repertory (thanks, Vector40!) – HTTP
• Psyjnir.com (Thanks, Psyrixx and *Ar!) – Hotline

More when we hear about ’em! (Remember, this puppy’s 20 megs large, 320×240 in .wmv format, and just under 4 minutes long.) Be sure to option-click or right-click the http links – otherwise, you might get a load of junk on the screen.

Halo-Game.com, a French Halo site, has put up a Halo review. I can’t really add it to the Reviews database, since it has no score I can assign… but they seemed to mostly like it. 🙂 (My french isn’t good enough to figure out more than that, and without an overall rating, I’m just guessing.) If you read French, though, check it out! (Don’t bother with Babelfish or Google’s translators, though… they’ll just make you laugh.) Update: Due to popular demand (hehe), they’ve added a summary section – and Halo pulled out a 19/20. Not too shabby! We’ve now added this review to the Halo Reviews database. (It’s review 77…)

Chapter 4 of Corbantis’ ‘The Tides of War‘ showed up tonight – go read it in our Fan Fiction section.

A few days ago, Dan Chosich posted to our forum about a new movie he’d made. The problem was, he put it up at Angelfire, which severely restricts the number of downloads this will ever see. It’s basically a collection of clips of fun/entertaining gameplay, an interesting (if somewhat disjointed) montage with some pretty cool sights. It’s also rather huge. (Just under 20 megs, in .wmv format) So: we’re calling for mirrors, again. If you can handle this, drop us a line – if the Angelfire site is down, we’ll give you another location (or upload it for you). Thanks!