In what’s quickly turning into Ph.D. day here at HBO, he points us to an MSXbox.com article that showcases some of the screenshots we took for the Fanfest V page and our E3 2001 coverage page. One that’s worth a second look – the Xbox controller diagram. Never mind the errors… the diagram makes it clear how simple control really is.

Whoa – not sure how we (and every other Halo site out there, it seems) missed it, but Ph.D. posted an interesting link to our forum last week – xbox.ign posted a direct feed video (not filmed off a screen with a camcorder) of some Halo gameplay last Friday. It’s in QuickTime format, and it’s a bit dark… but definitely worth the 8 meg download.

Ph.D. pointed out a nice little article over at xbox.ign.com, which wonders what really got shown last week. After reading it, Ph.D. pondered the sagacity of forcing Halo to be a launch title. Do you agree with him? Talk it over on our forum! Pax.

Koontzy has submitted part 3 of his ‘Land of the Unknown‘ story to our Fan Fiction section – remember, you can read the story in order by using the ‘More by this author‘ link on the Fiction page.

Harry “Organizer Man” Al-Shakarchi sends word that several new mirrors have turned up for the Fanfest movies, including two that have put up the new MPEG versions. (These scale up better than the QT versions – they look better doubled. The tradeoff is their very large size.)

Battleground: Halo has mirrored the .mov versions: 1 | 2 | 3

Monte VI and Tim have mirrored the .mpg versions:

• Men of Rohan: 1 | 2 | 3
• Maserati.ca: 1 | 2 | 3

Thanks to all involved! (A comprehensive list will go up soon – today, probably.)

Koontzy has submitted the second of his multi-part story, Land of the Unknown. You can find it in our Fan Fiction section.

Sol from the MSXbox Team has posted his E3 Hands On report of Halo over at MSXbox. Head on over for his Halo impressions.

Thanks to Gecko_2k2, of Xbox Campus, who sent in a new desktop for our Wallpaper collection. It’s available in an awful lot of sizes – you should find one that fits your desktop.

Kudos to Aginor, who noticed that CoreMagazine.com posted a Halo impressions article, complete with movies. They had a bit of trouble with the jeep, but overall loved the game. There are three movies, all filmed with a camcorder off the plasma screens above the gaming rigs. The first two are solo play, the third is multiplay. (The multiplay shows four people obviously getting used to controls… hardly worth watching, except to see how splitscreen works.) The second movie shows the jeep driving in the ocean – you can see that the physics of vehicle/water interactions aren’t finished yet. 😉 All three films are 6-7 megs, in MPEG format, and showing roughly 30 seconds of gameplay each. Check ’em out!

Freewill has crunched down four days worth of conventioneering into a single first-person perspective, and posted it to the Bungie Sightings Fanfest V page. Goodly chunks of it deal with Halo – though there’s a lot of other stuff in there, too. Check it out!

Char drops us a line to let us know that Xbox Campus has confirmed with Matt Soell that some of the problems folks at E3 saw with Halo are due to a weird mistake:

“For some reason the build we brought along was the one from last Thursday (I think). Definitely not the most recent build at any rate. There were some bugs that we fixed specifically for the show that we ended up showcasing.”

Char also wanted to point out that Xbox Campus is planning a post-E3 interview with Matt next week, and is now soliciting community feedback about the questions to be asked. Drop by their forum and speak up!

Amazingly, the Halo SETI Marines didn’t lose any ground this week – but it’s coming. Three important team members – SHARkY (1927 units), baldrik (1621 units), and blitcz (552 units) have gone AWOL – we haven’t been penalized for their absence yet, but experience says it’s coming. The addition of Noah (1712 units), NEO (272 units), and a number of other new recruits offset the damage a bit… but make no mistake, the team has taken a blow. Overall, the team added 1287 units for the week… and another 205 since yesterday morning, when these stats were collected, but it’s going to take real work to hold our place. Are you doing YOUR part? Check the 7 day stats for all the details.

And another clan site pops up – The Lords of Divinity make their debut. The site looks great in IE, but for some reason, Netscape is showing me source code only. Lixtrim says they’re working on it. Check ’em out!

Oops, we’d like to apologize – this got lost in the E3 crush. Last week, Bosskiller51 sent us a note about a new French Halo Clan – Halo French Clan (HFC), in fact. There’s not a lot there right now… but we’re sorry we missed the link anyway. (Blame Crux.)

Thanks to XNOR, of HaloPlayers, who mentioned (on our forum) that the Tritin Films remake of the original Halo trailer (dated now, but still very fun to watch) has been redone in Real format. The filesize on the .rm version is 7 megs – less than a quarter of the original .mpg. If you’ve never seen this (we added the original Tritin version in January, 2000), you might want to grab it. (Our Movies page still contains a link to the original mpeg version.)

Sometimes, they just don’t stop. I was about to call it a night, when a short but sweet fanfic dropped into our inbox – Chess, by Jasper. Check it out.

In addition to our overflowing Fiction coffers, we have a plethora of Miscellaneous Art submissions, as well. Steen Nielson sends in a pair of composite pics for your enjoyment. Check ’em out in our Miscellaneous Art section.

Whoa… the content just flows in. We’ve got 2 new fanfics for you this evening – one is a second offering from Anonymous Coward, called ‘Rescue Mission‘… the other is the debut of Koontzy, called ‘Land of the Unknown‘. Read ’em, then go through the REST of the Fan Fiction section and see what you’ve been missing!

It is astounding to me how much mail we receive from people who are ready to believe the worst, despite all evidence to the contrary. To wit: in the past few days, we’ve gotten an enormous number of notes from people who are sure the PC version has been scrapped. Matt Soell popped up last night (LAST NIGHT – not last week, or last month, or last year) on the Rampancy.net forum, to say among other things) this:

I will take this opportunity to remind the more easily shaken members of the community that THERE WILL BE MAC AND PC VERSIONS OF HALO, no matter how many posts you might see from malicious dolts who “confirmed with a Bungie developer that Mac Halo is dead” or whatever. Don’t let anonymous jerks ruin your day with lies.

Again – if you didn’t hear it from BUNGIE, don’t count on it. (Even if it comes from ‘The Official Xbox Magazine’…)

Thanks to carbon, who noticed an E3 report over at somethingawful.com. Lowtax didn’t like Halo very much:

The climax-inducing title Halo, which has been causing gamers across three universes to collectively wet their Spider-Man underoos, looked like crud. Take a generic FPS, add the maps from Giants, subtract 80 frames a second, and you’ve got Halo. But hey, you get to drive in a JEEP! Around a LAKE! Wow! It’s as revolutionary as everybody claimed it would be! JEEP + LAKE + ALIENS + GUNS = GOOD.

It’s a funny read, even if it’s silly.