Thanks to Noctavis, of Rampancy.net, who uploaded a preview of Halo from the December 2001 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. The scan is small (540×706, 403K), but readable… Halo is top-rated among the Xbox launch titles – EGM loved it. (For those wondering about our posting this, given our general policy of allowing the issue off the newsstands first – this is part of a 34-page spread on the Xbox; there’s more Halo goodness elsewhere in the mag. This scan shouldn’t stop you from buying the dead tree edition.)

A bunch of new art recently – one Miscellaneous Art submission from Matt Baker, and three pretty slick desktop images from AEon. (These last can be found in our Wallpaper section.) Some days, you just get behind…

Thanks to Chanan, who was the first to point out that the Halo novel, ‘The Fall of Reach’, is appearing in bookstores around the nation. And it’s already receiving positive reviews on our forum.

Very interesting movie out there – FULL OF SPOILER MATERIAL. It’s filmed with a handheld off a small TV screen, with no sound… but it has some very interesting content, such as interface screens, help screens, the fact that you can have closed captioning of spoken text… It starts with the player turning over an upturned Ghost – and later an overturned Warthog. (How is not clear.) It’s hosted by an Italian site with a VERY fast connection… which is good, because it’s 42 megabytes. (Thanks to incude-stdlib, on the IGN Xbox forums, for the heads-up.) Update: Matt Soell points out that what I noted as ‘closed captioning’ is, in fact, the result of a developer build – some of the text is even status messages. (This suggests that pressing ‘X’ to overturn an upended vehicle might not actually work in the game you bring home… don’t get your hopes up.)

Wow – the stories circulating around the internet about crashing Xbox kiosks might just have some basis in reality! Matt Soell passed on this tidbit:

Stefan just heard this from one of the MS testers…apparently some of the software on the demo discs was accidentally built with an old video library. A conflict between the finished hardware and the old library will, under certain conditions, manifest itself as the weirdness reported over the last few days.

That probably doesn’t make the MS boys happy… but at least it’s easily fixed! (Read the rest of Matt’s post for more details.)

Thanks to Mavruss, for the heads-up: Matt Soell has posted a note over on the Bungie Sightings forums, giving details about the RSVP situation for the Halo Launch Party. He needs the standard stuff – who, when, why… okay, maybe not why. Go read it at BS, or wait a bit for it to show up on Bungie.net.

Whoa – very cool. Chanan has sent in 15 screen captures (720×480) from the features movies on the December 2001 DVD bundled with the Official Xbox Magazine – there are a few Halo snippets in there. Some of the shots are similar to what’s been seen before, some are mediocre… and some just make your mind spin. (This one, for example…) Check ’em out… and remember how cool the Halo community can be sometimes!

Halo showed up on TechTV today (a little after 4 pm Eastern Time). A couple of minutes of smooth gameplay… nice exposure!

TeamXbox has a story about the Xbox “Odyssey” Tour – a 40-city rolling Xbox circus; 50 Xboxes with plasma monitors and giant projection screens. There are a few pics, including one of a Halo game in progress. (Thanks to TomeOne for the heads-up.)

AEon wrote to let us know of a Halo desktop he submitted to Fileplanet last year. We’ve added it to our Wallpaper collection.

Uriel notes that the next issue of the German PC Games will have a ‘huge special about halo’ – it should be on the shelves on the 7th, and he expects to see it by next weekend. We’ll keep you posted!

Well… the Cinematics team said not to watch intro films posted to the net, because they would spoil the ‘first-time’ experience of playing for yourself… but many have said they’re waiting for the PC version of Halo, and in any case, we would be remiss if we didn’t tell you what’s out there. Fileplanet has posted what they call a ‘Halo Intro and Gameplay Movie‘ – it’s a 50 MB, 6 and a half minute film that contains footage similar to the GameSpot films released a week ago. It starts with the Halo opening sequence – this makes up half the movie. The rest gets the Master Chief from his cryo tube to the bridge. The player is very much a novice – in all the running around, they NEVER pick up a weapon of any kind! In a way, this is nice – your view of the scenery is not hampered by the gun in front of you… but a good chunk of the time is spent trying to get through obviously locked doors, and the like. Bottom line: it’s out there, it hasn’t been seen before. There – we’ve told you.

Now this is interesting. Several subscribers have reported that there was no Halo trailer on the December 2001 Official Xbox Magazine DVD… but greatdayne27, over at the TeamXbox forums, says it’s just a little harder to find:

While they are not in the trailers section if you watch the special feature “The Xbox difference” with Seamus Blackley you will see several nice, new clips of the afformentioned titles. They are really sharp and vibrant. I was disappointed in the trailers on the dvd it seems as they were rushed and are lacking punch that I have seen on mpegs.

(‘titles’ refers to Halo and Oddworld.) Very nice – anyone want to describe these clips?

Peter Askam sends in a pair of desktop images, based on the recent Craig Mullins piece – these are variations on a theme, and include the Pillar of Autumn, as well. Check ’em out in our Wallpaper section.

Robert “Apache” Howarth, of VoodooExtreme, presents some comments about Halo, and its length:

I’m still hacking away in Halo, and thankfully it’s continuing to kick major ass. I’m deep into the game at this point (chapter 7 out of 11) and well past what I can talk about without spoiling it for you, so I’ll just leave it at that. So, it should take me three days to win (not sure how many hours that translates into as I lost track, but its big).

11 chapters… that sounds good. The three day thing, though… well, maybe he’s playing EVERY WAKING HOUR.

An epilogue, of sorts… Vector40 turns in ‘Hawk Chronicles: Supplemental‘, to wrap up the series. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section. Don’t forget to let him know what you think of it!

Thanks to Geordie McCabe, who pointed out that some Xbox posters around his University campus are listing an Australian release date in January 2002, with the slogan “The Game is Over – Reality Begins.” Looks like folks Down Under will be playing before those in Japan (February 22) and those in Europe (March 14)!

Heh – sometimes, you just gotta get your content where you can find it… I was hunting through the Xbox.com.au site to see if I could find an official release date for the Xbox in Australia (no luck there) – and I happened across the Halo page. They have a pretty fun little Flash animation to show off some of the cool stuff in Halo… but the funny part was, it finishes up with a copy of this desktop image, created by a fan way back in 1999! Ken, if you’re still out there… you’re famous! 🙂

OrangeWarp mentioned yesterday that there was a Halo blurb in the November 2001 issue of Maxim magazine. He took pity on HBO and scanned it for us (45K). They call Halo a “staggeringly polished first-person shooter”… which almost makes up for calling the Xbox “an overgrown Atari”. Take a look! (OW also scanned in the cover of the mag… but as we’re not Incite, we aren’t gonna show you any breasts.)

New desktop from Enforcer, paying tribute to the Bungie programmers. Check it out in our Wallpaper section.