For those who haven’t visited yet… the 7th Column site shows an almost Marathon-like glyph, a counter (it’s down to 6, from yesterday’s 7), and (hidden in text the same color as the background) “NON FACETE NOBIS CALCITRARE VESTRVM PERINÆVM” (which, loosely translated, means “Don’t Make Us Kick Your Ass”). Coming Soonâ„¢…

TeamXbox noted that there seems to be a Munch’s Odyssey demo on the Halo DVD… decent marketing ploy, no? Thanks to Paul Roberts for the first heads-up.

No7orious noticed that the Halo Launch Party has made it into the news at Xbox.com. Remember – this is a site that saw 580,000 unique visitors last week… so if you’re planning on going, and haven’t yet sent your RSVP to halofest@microsoft.com… well, there are only 250 spots…

Because the subject (rumors that PC Halo is dead are BULL) is so important to so many readers, and because we posted this late in the day yesterday, we’re going to direct your attention to this news post – Matt Soell, once again, stomps on the rumormongers. Read it. Show it to your friends. Beat forumgoers at other sites over the head with it.

Solid Halo preview from PlanetXbox – they got the date wrong, but otherwise it’s a nice summary of the game. Thanks to Charles Clifford for the heads-up. Update: Oops, careless – this is the same article that was posted at PlanetXbox’s host, Gamespy, a week ago. My bad. Djof gets the first-noticed kudos.

Many thanks to Kbjlake, who has kindly mirrored the manual scans that have had such a difficult time finding a home. You can grab them individually, or get the whole shebang, zipped (3.6 MB). (And thanks again to Final Solution, who scanned them all in the first place!)

Five gorgeous hi-res screens at VoodooExtreme – go get ’em. First notification props to jan luow. (Who loves ya, baby?)

Okay, for most regulars here, this is a broken record. However, with the proximity of the Xbox launch, there are many newcomers… and this issue has become hot recently. A few days ago, Matt Soell, in response to a forum post in which an Xbox Germany representative was quoted as saying that PC Halo would be released in late fall 2002, said this:

If Jason Jones is still unsure how we’re handling the PC version (and he is – I talked to him about it two days ago) then it’s pretty unlikely that some MS guy in Germany has the inside track.

Some jumped on this as proof that Bungie was waffling about doing the PC port in the first place. Matt has posted a new missive on our forum, in an attempt to be perfectly clear about one thing: a PC version of Halo is still in the works.

I have asked many questions about the Mac/PC versions in recent days, because I want to know what’s going on so I can get the “I have confirmation it’s never coming” wankers off the community’s back. I have asked people who are in the best position to know what’s going on, like Alex and Jason. They don’t have answers to all the questions yet, and they don’t want to say anything until all the ducks are in a row, but they know what they have to do. If pressed to choose between an “anonymous source” referenced by some random guy on a web forum, and two real people with names who have confided Bungie secrets to me for years, I’ll pick the latter. And I cheerfully invite the anonymous sources, if they actually exist, to come on over to Bungie HQ and chat with Alex and Jason and myself so we can eliminate the communication breakdown.

The short version? BUNGIE HAS NOT SCRAPPED PLANS FOR A PC PORT. This, of course, will not stop people from speculating that they have, indeed, scrapped plans for a PC port (or even better, haven’t been told by their Microsoft overlords that the PC port is history, and are toiling away in ignorance)… but as of today, a week before the Xbox launch, the PC port is officially in the works.

The Gameplay page of the HBO FAQ has been updated. Old info has been pulled, new info added… one more question (coop splitscreen play) is there. This is a work in progress… more to come. Update: The Weapons and Vehicles pages have been updated, as well, this time using information from the Halo Manual.

Final Solution writes again – the Halo manual pics he put up yesterday (down on his original site, for bandwidth overflows – he can’t even log in to remove them) have been re-upped – to a Geocities site. Dunno how long THAT one’s gonna last… but if you haven’t gotten ’em yet (and want ’em), give it a shot.

genohunter writes to let us know that a second Halo french preview has come out, at GameKult.com.

For those whose french is as clear as the covenant language, I’ll just say that the Gamekult team found the game quite exciting, and, of course, really wonderful (especially all the bumpmapping effectsÊ·ith dynamic lights). They tested it on a beta version, and they deplore the framerate problem that we heard telling about (too) many times. As a conclusion, they think that Halo is one of the best Xbox first games, and, apart of the framerate problem,Ê´hey really enjoyed playing it.

The fact that it’s a development build is clear from some of the 57 (!!!) screenshots included with this article… some of which could be considered SERIOUS spoilers.

jeremedia notes that his recently-purchased retail copy of Halo is missing the training sequence seen in the O’Donnell/Staten commentary film and GameSpot’s Xbox movie 2. (He mentioned this before, a few days ago… but then he was playing at Xbox Unleashed, and it wasn’t clear if there had been some way to bypass it that had been chosen.) Bummer… seemed like a fun section, and useful for continuity. Update: Both Mat Noguchi and Jay Weinland (tools programmer and Cinematics team member, respectively) have jumped in to suggest reasons why jeremedia might not see that sequence. If the game is saved after the training sequence, you won’t see it again… and in any case, it’s only shown on Easy and Normal difficulty settings; it’s skipped on Heroic and Legendary. Thanks, guys!

Overnight forum doings… the Xbox manual scans we mentioned last night got crushed from the demand – Final Solution’s monthly bandwidth allotment has been used up… so Funky J has kindly put them up on his hotline server. Psyrixx has created a new Mastercard ‘Priceless’ parody – you can find it at The Psyjnir Complex. (5+ versions of browsers, please.) Jester explains how to save Real Audio streams (this is illegal in the US) – a little too late, since the Halo commercial mentioned a couple of days ago had disappeared from the net. (It seems to be back now, though… hmm.) And another new thread popped up over at IGN, in which someone is claiming to have gotten from their MS buddy the news that (once again) PC Halo is dead and buried. (It’s mentioned here, here, and here.) Thanks… but until we get word from Bungie that they have, in fact, decided to bag it… we’ll pass on this rumor.

Hmm… Matt Soell drops hints about new media to be released at the Halo Launch Party…

Almost missed this, because of the ridiculous traffic the forum is getting these days… but Adam Daniel noticed (in an obscure location on TeamXbox’s site) that futureshop.ca is selling a CD called ‘Definitive Xbox Compilation’. Along with the music comes a Bonus CD:

The disk contains band EPKs, Xbox title movies and previews, and The Making Of Halo, a behind-the-scenes insider’s glimpse into the development of this Xbox title.

Release date is November 13… and if you buy before then, it’s $14 (canadian) – a steal!

Hermes Trismegistus, Chapter 15 – dead men tell tales, and whatnot. Read it (and more of Tursas’ stuff) in our Fan Fiction section.

Whoa – bizarreness. Matt (no, not the Matt) found a way to see the IGN Multiplayer game guide, even without Insider access – apparently, GameFixx mirrors the stuff somehow. It’s slow loading… but it’s all there. Check it out! (They seem to be related to IGN in some way, so this is probably on the level… maybe.)

Spoiler alert – Final Solution has scanned in the entire Halo booklet that comes with the game. Full of information about weapons, vehicles, monsters… very, very high-res scans. Grab ’em now before they’re gone! (Or don’t, if you want to be surprised on launch day…)

Jason Yates has picked up an interesting bit of trivia, over on the Marathon’s Story page forum: in the small print of the manual that came with his CD was this snippet:

Brothers and Sisters: the time is nigh. There is strength in numbers. Unite and the planet is ours: www.seventhcolumn.org

(The URL doesn’t resolve yet.) Jason did some sniffing… and found that the site is registered to Max Hoberman, aka Yeroen, the Bungie webmaster (not to be confused with the Webmaster). (What Jason DIDN’T notice is that seventhcolumn.com and seventhcolumn.net were ALSO registered by Max.) Things that make you go hmm…

Final Solution writes to say that he picked up his Halo disc today – you can find scans on his site. Hmm… ‘Do not make illegal copies of this disc’… that’s still non-trivial, right? (Duping 8.4 GB discs still takes big hardware, right?)