My Halo News.com

The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft

  • More mirrors for the TeamXbox movie

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    Louis Wu
    in
    Seems we missed a source for the TeamXbox movie yesterday – you can find another two mirrors of the 20 MB mpeg at 3D Gamers. Thanks, Frans!

  • German Fan Fiction… Ach!

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    Louis Wu
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    In a first for HBO, we’re putting up Fan Fiction in a non-English language – Uriel has submitted ‘Beyond the Paradise, part 1‘, in German. Be sure to let us know how this works for you – the Comments page can be found in our Fan Fiction section.

  • Movie list finally updated

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    Louis Wu
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    Took us long enough… but we’ve finally added the two latest movies (the Bungie Commentary movie available at Microsoft’s official Halo site and the TeamXbox gameplay movie) to our Movie list. You’ll find all the current mirrors (in all the various formats) that were still active as of this morning, as well as links to screen captures for the bandwidth-impaired. If you haven’t seen these films… grab them now!

  • Gotta watch them Covs…

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    Louis Wu
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    Drawing over the shattered, and dying SolCore vessel, the mammoth alien cruiser slowly begins to pull Percipere up into it’s giant docking bay, her hull turning green in the eerie glow of the ships interior. The bridge command crew, watching in terror through the transparent titanium viewports as they are sucked into the belly of the proverbial beast. Captain Ricter, wincing from cracked ribs, and a broken nose, slowly stands, and turns to his crew.

    Gordi sends in ‘Backstory‘, an early history lesson for Halo-ites. You’ll find it (and be able to comment on it) in our Fan Fiction section.

  • Nordichardware preview translated into English

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    Louis Wu
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    Thanks to Vid Boi, who sent in a translation of the Swedish Halo preview mentioned earlier. Lots o’ work… check it out!

  • Command THIS!

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    Louis Wu
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    Occasionally, mention is made of Halo’s ability to take absurdly high-resolution screenshots. We thought, when we saw the 1920×1440 shots posted by Daily Radar in March, we thought we were seeing an example of this. How silly we were… Bungie has kindly sent along an absurdly high-resolution shot – the original (440K) is 2664×2562 – and this one is obviously shrunk from its original size. Here’s the new yellow commander, in all his multi-toothed glory… for those who want more manageable sizes, we’ve created a 1024×768 version (92K) and a 1280×1024 version (178K) – both padded with black to make the non-standard size fit your desktop. Enjoy!



  • Swedish Halo preview at Nordichardware

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    Louis Wu
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    Magnus Esko, aka Dead Glory, an HBO Forum regular, has written a preview of Halo for the Swedish gaming site Nordichardware. We’d give him a hard time about how he got the story all wrong, just on principle, except… well, it’s in Swedish, so we have no idea what he said. There’s one part, though, that seems to suggest that the Covenant are really refugees from the planet Zebulon… we think that might be a stretch. If you’re Swedish, or can read Swedish… go take a look! (It’s probably right on target – we’re just joshin’ DG.)

  • Halo SETI Team 7 day stats posted

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    Louis Wu
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    There’s a fight at the top of the Halo SETI Marines! charleya and Int_21 duke it out for top crunching honors, with Charleya narrowly edging Int_21 out, 168 to 165. (Int_21 takes the consolation prize of the Frogblast Award, leaping over 101 of his fellow crunchers to climb to 168th position.) The Marines lose ground to SETI’s math-munging servers, but remain undaunted. Are YOU crunching your best? Check the 7 day stats page to see.

  • Halo. Halo. Halo.

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    Louis Wu
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    Everyone’s getting in on the Mike Salmon action – TeamXbox has just posted an interview with the OXM Editor in Chief. Most of the questions are pretty general… but this one made us smile:

    Having played nearly all the Xbox launch games, which ones are your favorites?

    Mike S: Halo. Halo. Halo. The latest build of Halo is so much more then we ever thought it would be. Amazing. It is very rare that a game (or a movie for that matter) not only lives up to the hype, but blows it away. DOA3 is also astonishing (best fighting game ever, without a doubt), and we’ve been having a lot of fun with Transworld Surf (surprising, but true).

    Not only lives up to the hype, but blows it away… nice words. Thanks, Harry, for the heads-up!

  • HUD and Screenshots updated

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    Louis Wu
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    Last week’s Halo Update has been added to the Halo Update Database… word of the week is ‘screenshot‘. Not bad – only two updates between the promised screen and its appearance! (The shot itself has been added to the Screenshots section, as well.)

  • How much do YOU see?

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    Louis Wu
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    Wow. I can’t remember when a single screenshot was subjected to the sort of scrutiny that the ‘Cortana shot‘ is enduring… there are threads on our forum, at Rampancy.net, the Marathon’s Story page, Battleground: Halo, and probably a few other places around the net. Add your thoughts to the discussions! (Or simply marvel at the effort going in to the analysis of one single screenshot…)

  • Fan Fiction story gets updated

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    Louis Wu
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    Vector40 sent in an update to ‘The Sixty Minute War‘, a story dedicated to the September 11 victims. Upon the author’s request, we’ve updated the existing entry, rather than add a second chapter – go on, read it again, it’s worth it. It’s not very long. Don’t forget that all stories in our Fan Fiction section can be commented on!

  • Halo Update comes with a screenie

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    Louis Wu
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    The Weekly Halo Update, now one week shy of its first birthday, was over at Battleground: Halo this time around… and while it’s short (mostly tweaks – Halo is currently at Release Candidate 2, there’s not much left to do), it DOES come with a new screenshot – you can finally see what Cortana looks like. Go read it for yourself… and check out the shot!

  • Gaming manager says Oct 9 in stores

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    Louis Wu
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    Someone claiming to be a manager for a major US gaming chain showed up on TeamXbox’s forum today with more info about the Xbox kiosks in game stores. Apparently, Microsoft is doing some retail training on October 8, and playable boxes will be moving into stores no later than the 9th. They’re rolling out by state, and Texas and Georgia are two of the earliest. (Again, this is all unconfirmed… but it FEELS authentic. 🙂 ) Farther down, he expounds a bit more – definitely worth a read.

  • More Fiction in the coffers

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    Louis Wu
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    The fighting heats up in the second installment of the ‘New Wave’ series by The Emperor – check out ‘The Battle‘ in our Fan Fiction section.

  • Graphics Gap

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    Louis Wu
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    Not unexpected, or new, even… but something we should all keep in mind. Ferrex reminds us that PC hardware will NOT perform as well as Xbox hardware – Especially near the Xbox launch date. People shouldn’t be expecting hardware in their machines today to play Halo (or any other Xbox game that comes out for the PC) anywhere near as nicely as the Xbox will. Something to keep in mind, if you’re on the fence between which version to buy… (The consensus here is that the time gap between the versions will be great enough to warrant buying both.)

  • OXM editor weighs in on updates

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    Louis Wu
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    Hmm. This has been speculated before… but not, generally, by someone with the inside connections present here… Mike Salmon, Editor in Chief of the Official Xbox Magazine, answered a fan question on OXM’s forum about the upgradeability of launch titles:

    When MS goes online it will be in a big way and yes games that are releases at launch can be “upgraded” to include internet play.

    Will Bungie make an online patch available for Xbox Halo down the road? We can only hope!

  • Chosen, indeed.

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    Crux Fidelis
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    raVen creates a new desktop for our Wallpaper section, in 4 flavors. We are unclean… Pax.

  • So who’s Damuis?

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    Crux Fidelis
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    Hmm… our fearless leader seems to be napping – guess it’s time to put the prayer blocks down.

    A voice responded. As it spoke it became clear that it was not one voice but hundreds of voices, each one echoing into infinity.

    “Damuis?”

    Mr. Bill. Jr. V© drops us another story, introducing… well, read it. You’ll find ‘The Spirit‘ in our Fan Fiction section. Be sure to comment on it! Pax.

  • Those kiosks are gonna show movies

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    Louis Wu
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    For those following the story of Xbox kiosks appearing in stores in the last few days… it looks like your chances of playing Halo on them in the near future aren’t very good. An Electronic Boutique employee posted the following tidbit to the usenet newsgroup alt.games.video.xbox today:

    I work at EB and opened up our X-Box demo thingy and helped install it, only to find out that there was no X-Box in there, just a TV, two controlers, and the cool looking stand w/lited up posters and stuff.
    There was a number for installation instructions that I called, and told them that we were missing our X-Box, they told me that the X-Box’s would arrive “at a later date”. They also told us that EB was the only stores that got these units today. Then I asked him what game would be in it, and he said as far as he knew it would be a video that showed previews of a bunch of different games, then “at a later date, closer to launch” we would get playable demos.

    So, movies on the kiosks now, games ‘at a later date’. Bummer. (Thanks to Harry Al-Shakarchi for the heads-up.)