A literal flood of Fan Fiction – here’s what went up tonight:

• The Flood (a poem) by Gasmask
• Earth: Combat Evolved Chapter 2 by drexx
• Renegade Marines Part III – The Evac by Shadow
• What Legends May Fall by Vector40
• (Untitled Poem) by Gi’Tbad’Eovad’Dvan

There are at least 3 more which didn’t make the cutoff laid down by yesterday’s new rules – we’d be happy to look at these again when they’re bigger. You folks are on a writing binge!

A rather strange size, but a pretty nice pic… Germain Couët drops off another fun desktop – you’ll find it on our Wallpaper page. Check it out!

Kudos to Freewill, who posted the text to a fun little blurb in Entertainment Weekly this week on our forum. Nice to see Halo lanfests getting recognized as ‘the Next New Thing’ by a mainstream magazine! (The scan will be posted next week, when this issue is off the shelves.)

Later today (or possibly tonight) there’ll be a large Fan Fiction update – there have been a number of submissions over the past day or two. However, I’d like to make a new policy – or at least codify a current, unofficial policy, so that submitters know what to expect.

A Fan Fiction submission, unless it is poetry or a novelty item, must be a minimum length for acceptance. Since some submitters can’t seem to deal with a vague description like ‘long enough’, we’re putting a word-count minimum on submissions – items of less than 500 words will not be posted. In the Halo inbox right now are two submissions of fewer than 100 words, both ending with ‘to be continued’ – here’s my advice: continue them before you submit.

We don’t like to reject submissions – of ANY type, from fan fiction to artwork to videos… but “The master chief is cool. The end.” does nothing but dilute the value of the entire Fan Fiction section. If you’re writing in chapter format… write two chapters, combine them into one submission, and THEN submit. I hope this helps both submitters, and readers.

iBonk.com begins to branch out – they now have a reader-submitted collection of pics of a warthog balancing on its front bumper on Blood Gulch. (Hey! Gameplay Tricks is OUR bag! 🙂 ) Check it out – that’s some nifty balancing! (Thanks to MaTT for the heads-up.)

Aerothorn writes to point out that The Cole Protocol is running a contest – the winner needs to submit a picture with the most copies of Halo visible in it. Check out their news page for March 4th and 5th for details on rules and prizes.

BarrysWorld has put up their Halo review – and it glows. Check it out – we’ve added it to our Reviews Database. (75 sites have reviewed Halo – the average rating is 94.7%. Are there any other games that can say this?) Thanks to The Junkyard for the heads-up on this one.

Whoa – gone for two days, and the news backs up to the roof! There isn’t time to post it all right now – I’ve got a birthday party to organize – but I’ll put a few things up. First up: a relatively new feature on our forum has been the HBO Weekly Review. I’ve held off mentioning it, but it’s time now – a nice synopsis of the week’s posts, organized nicely for your reading pleasure. If you enjoy it, search for other posts written by ‘Weekly Review’ – there have been 5 of them so far.

Whew! Back from Pennsylvania, after some rather excessive driving speeds and 17 hours (!!) of straight Halo playing – 16-player carnage with almost 25 players rotating through. More updates later, as well as text and pictures from the fest itself – but suffice it to say, we’re happy.

I’m headed to Pennsylvania for *Ar-Isildur’s End of Chemo Party, so updates will be rather sparse for the next couple of days. Be patient – I’m playing Halo!

Ian Barnes sends in Chapter 4 of his Operation: False Prophets saga. If you haven’t read the rest, you can read the series in one shot. Our Fan Fiction collection grows.

Slayer31 sends in some new pics of Sidewinder, with everything – jeeps, ghosts, and tanks – off the map. That’s a first, as far as I can tell… we’ve added it to our Gameplay Tricks section.

Due to yet ANOTHER obnoxious hacking attempt, anonymous logins on our ftp site have been suspended until I can get in and clean things. Sorry. If you have submissions, please mail them. Sorry.

ElectricSheep thought he had it – the mystery image with the Marathon logo was, in his opinion, Captain Keyes’ pipe. Preliminary investigation suggested this might be the case… but the context was all wrong. (The blue stuff around the object is nowhere to be seen in the first level.) Dave Candland confirmed that we had NOT, in fact, found the image… but folks weren’t ready to give up. AmechWarrior suggested that maybe it was near the Keyes flood creature… and Strykerwolf confirmed that it was there. We have no pictures, however – hopefully, they’re coming soon. Congrats to all involved!

Two new submissions by Germain Couët – a Miscellaneous Art piece with some fun reflection work, and a desktop image for our Wallpaper section. Check ’em out!

poena.dare #CP#g brings attention to some interesting Halo schwag at eBay – there’s the Making of Halo DVD, a cool poster, and a collector’s card (made of metal). Matt points out, though, that the Making Of video will be available Soonâ„¢ at the Bungie Store… likely for far less than you’ll pay on eBay. Worth a look!

Bonk dropped in to our forum, explaining that iBonk.com has gotten an update – all tricks now have descriptions in words and pictures, in addition to the movies that were there before. They’re very nicely done, too – check it out!

Some may wonder why the largest hunt since the Glyph puzzle went uncommented-on by the maintainer of this site… chalk it up to vacation. 🙁 Two weeks ago, our forum was inundated with wild speculation about hippos, and their potential representations in various parts of Halo. Finally, on February 21, Frogblast found a REAL hippo – drawn in loving detail on the outside of the shotgun shell. Matt Soell, the instigator of the Hippo search, was kind enough to send along (first to Battleground: Halo, and then to us) a hi-res version of the shell artwork – we’ve added it to the Easter Eggs page, for posterity. Congratulations to Frogblast… and a happy hippo hello to Matt, whose obsession was so enthusiastically picked up by the HBO Forum denizens.

Whoa – bizarreness. Haloplayers has lost the haloplayers.com domain, and can now be reached at www.haloplayers.net. They’re working on a complete site redesign, in anticipation of the release of the PC version of the game, and plan to support all the extras (squad hosting, email, etc) they supported in the past. In the meantime, their messageboard is still up and running. Drop by and commiserate on the loss!

Regarding the new images posted at Tru7h and Reconciliation yesterday – Dave Candland has thrown down the gauntlet, with respect to this picture:

Regarding scrn_084.jpg, you’re going to have to scrutinize very closely to find this one. The hippo was all over the place. This image can only be found in one location. I’ll be surprised if this is discovered by Easter.

Will it be you that finds it? Where will you look? The race is on!