News from around the Halo world:

• Battleground: Halo has built a Windows program that sticks a dynamic view of the Bungie Webcam on your desktop – grab it if you want your view of the webcam without keeping your browser open.
• Rampancy.net found an interesting Wired article that suggests that if you don’t buy one of the pre-order bundles (for hundreds of dollars more than the cost of the Xbox), you might not get an Xbox this year.
• Mac Halo picks up a new newsie – welcome, AJ.

Well, there might be more, but that’s all we could find. 🙂

Hmm. Drew points out an intriguing article at Xbox.ign.com, in which the developer of Dead or Alive 3 suggests that 1) the Japanese version of the game will have more features than the US version (they’ll continue developing it during the three months between US and Japanese Xbox launch dates), and 2) that

When asked about the online capabilities of the system, as well as the hard drive, Itagaki put out the olive leaf to US DoA gamers. “So again, to US gamers, don’t worry about the changes to the Japanese version,” said Itagaki. “US gamers should feel very safe when they purchase the game on November 8th.”

Itagaki (leader of the coding team for DoA 3) doesn’t go so far as to say explicitly that US gamers will be able to download a patch to bring the US version up to par with the Japanese version… but he strongly implies it. What this means for the down-the-road online capabilities of Halo can be wildly speculated on our forum.

Arch Angel sends in a new desktop image, using the Halo Marine and the Xbox – nice combo. Check it out in our Wallpaper section.

A little OT, but fun anyway: Eric Meyer sends in a link to an interesting Sci-Tech article at CNN… what caught his eye was the image at the top, but the article’s interesting, too. 🙂

Thanks to Adam Daniel, who noticed this little tidbit at XboxAddict.com:

Just wanted to let everyone know that my sources told me that the official halo site at http://www.microsoft.com/games/halo will be going up with new ingame footage, so keep a look out.

Nothing there yet… but we’ll keep our eyes peeled!

Blam!… the Halo Seti Marines climb back up to 52nd in the Battle of the Teams… but don’t start resting on your laurels, soldiers! As the 7-day stats show, total crunchage hasn’t climbed very much… it’d be easy to fall again!

Joel Day writes to say that he’s recently added a Halo desktop to his site, Third Coil. While you’re there, select ‘Bungie Studios’ from the navigation popup on the left – you’ll get an image-sized view of the Bungie webcam.

Dead men tell tales… sometimes. Mr Bill Jr V sends in a look at life (and death) before Halo… read ‘Hell of all seasons‘ in our Fan Fiction section.

Last week’s Halo Update has been added to the Halo Update Database. Search of the Week is ‘Hardy‘… in a month and a half, the guy’s gone from the beginnings of multiplayer logistics to all-out war. Not bad… (Note: We’re hoping Matt can drag these out until the October 5 update; we agree with Narcogen that a full year would be cool.)

While we’re uploading older scans… it’s about time to add the Rolling Stone image posted by Jesse Simko last month. It was pulled from the September 13, 2001 Rolling Stone, in an article about the Xbox, and it belongs in our Screenshots section.

As penance for missing the obvious signs of a Halo demo on the OXBM game disc, we’ve uploaded versions of the entire 4-page Halo preview to our server. They’re pretty much the same as the other versions you’ve seen floating around, but we’ve added the bottom tidbits (asides about Iain M. Banks’ novels, etc), and we’ve combined the first two pages into a single scan, the better to see the large tank with. Enjoy!

• Pages 1-2 (1500×983, 276K)
• Page 3 (750×978, 176K)
• Page 4 (750×982, 174K)

Time to put up a Press Scans page, I suppose…

Uh, oh… In the preview edition of the Official Xbox Magazine (the one included with October’s PC Gamer and September’s NextGen magazines) is a page devoted to the disc that will be bundled with each issue. The wording of one section scares me…

It only gets better
When you finally pick up that Xbox and a copy of Halo this November, there’ll be plenty of reason to rejoice. But let’s face it: one game is never enough. Grab our Dec. 4 issue of Official Xbox Magazine and try your gaming hand at the whole range of Xbox titles you’ll be drooling over. Only here will you be able to play jaw-dropping demos of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2X, Arctic Thunder, Dead or Alive 3, Cel Damage, Project Gotham, Lord of the Rings, Air Force Delta Storm, and NHL Hitz.

Now, maybe they didn’t mention a Halo demo because they were assuming you’d already BOUGHT Halo… but this scares me a bit. There are NO email addresses anywhere in the mag, so we can’t ask directly… if anyone from Microsoft, Bungie, or Imagine Media know (for certain) whether the Halo demo will be on OXBM’s first game disc or not… we’d love to hear from you. Update: Sam points out that the image of the disc on that same page shows ‘Halo’ around the edge of the disc, along with the other featured demos. My bad…

Mike Price submitted a new desktop using the latest screenshots… you can find ‘Halo Ice’ in our Wallpaper section.

We’ve updated the Screenshots section with the new shots from Xbox.ign.com. One of these days (soon!), we’ll add the remaining OXBM shots, as well…

It’s been in our Fan Fiction section for a month or so now, but we’ve finally gotten around to adding it to the Miscellaneous Art section (sorry, Jason!) – a piece of artwork created for the Fan Fiction story ‘The Wanderers‘ can now be seen on its own in the Misc Art section. Take a look!

Xodex sends in a minimalist desktop image for our Wallpaper section – very clean. Check it out!

Apparently, the Electric Playground segment shown last night on the Discovery Science Channel had no Halo information at all in it, despite what the online listings said. Thanks to all who pointed this out, and apologies to anyone who missed something else to watch it.

For those who want to be able to HOLD those Canadian Xbox commercials, and aren’t thrilled with the streaming .asf versions, you now have two download options: Ryan ‘Mhaddy’ Matthews has put them up at the Junkyard in .avi format (with DivX encoding) – they run about 20 megs each, and are 320×240. For Mac users, you might have better luck with the versions at Xbox.ign.com – they’re in .mov format, also 320×240, and about 4 megs each. (Thanks, Dan Rudolph.) Check ’em out!

Due to unforseen problems at Haloplayers, Matt has posted this week’s Halo Update to our forum. You should read it at HP as soon as it’s up there… but if you just can’t wait, it’s here, too. Lots of little tweaks (the end is near – it’s GOOD that there aren’t any really big changes), but the one that made me laugh was this one:

You can order Marines to get the hell out of the Warthog so you can drive it. This is a more humane alternative to the previous procedure for removing them from vehicles.

Check HP, then check here.