Thanks to Maestro, who sends in this link from CNN.com, discussing game testing. The last third of it is about Halo.

[…] Creamer’s team created a written overview of its various elements, assigning a tester to each of them. One tester, for example, is responsible for the game’s multiplayer aspect, making sure that different types of controllers, or joysticks, perform the same way in the console’s plug-in slots.

An interesting peek at the inside – nice to see that all bases are being covered. Check it out!

Important: You guys get another shot at questioning the team. We were contacted by a representative of a company that “helps Microsoft keep in touch with the online communities”… and they want questions for a fan-conducted interview. You guys send us questions that cover what you’d like to learn from the Bungie team, and we’ll pass the cream on, and get them answered (hopefully) before E3. Now here’s the rub – we need all submissions in by Monday. So get cracking – mail us your questions!

Thanks to Aginor, who pointed out an interview with Cliffy B over at XGR.com. In five large MP3s, he expounds at length on game design, platforms, and the future of gaming… Part II (a 9 MB chunk) contains a discussion about the Xbox (“Xbox is either gonna be Titanic or Heaven’s Gate”) and then a minute or so on Halo:

“That game looks great… it’s just, uh, Microsoft, trying to push it out for launch, you know, I read their online updates, and they’re like, oh, we got the jeep working again, like, a couple weeks ago, and I’m like, guys… you guys are gonna be, uh, you’re not gonna get any sleep between now and launch of that thing… it looks like a great game, but they’re really gonna have their balls to the wall to get it done for launch…”

He goes on for a bit longer, picking his words very carefully, then moves on to how sad he is about the fact that multiplayer won’t be in place at launch. In general, it’s a good listen… apologies to Cliffy for the literal transcription above (I figured it was easier than cleaning it up 🙂 ). Let’s hope he’s wrong about his ‘6 months of crunch time’ estimate.

Pelican? Matt’s weekly Halo Update went to Battleground: Halo this week – and there’s lots of tasty stuff there. Multicolored cyborgs for netgames, some Halo moments, and speed increases… but the one that got me was this:

The Pelican and the Covenant dropship are working in-game, and now have ground effects (i.e. when taking off they displace lots of dust, etc.)

Either the human dropship got a name… or there’s a new human flier on the block. Check it out!

A new wallpaper from Bongo, of Onishots – check it out in our Wallpaper section. Blam.

Okay, it didn’t take so long – the new screenshots from the GamePro May 2001 Halo article are now in our Screenshots section, in higher resolution than you’ll find in the scanned article mentioned below. NextGen coming soon. 🙂

Speaking of adding dead tree articles, we’ve also scanned in last month’s GamePro article (it’s only one page, but weighs in at a hefty 382K) – short, but again, there are new shots, and the info is mostly on target. If only they hadn’t used that nasty ‘X’ background… Higher-res versions of the new shots here, too, will be added to the Screenshots section soon.

Don’t take this as a shot at Free… but we rescanned the May NextGen article, in a size that’s intermediate to the two he offers on Bungie Sightings, and at a higher image quality level. You’ll find it on our Press page. (We’ll be adding hi-res versions of the actual new screens to the Screenshots section in the next few days.) There’s some great info there, if you haven’t read it yet… and some nice pics.

Well, almost buried in the 100-odd posts of the most amusing flamewar to happen on our forum in a long time, Anonymous Coward has posted the first four paragraphs of what he calls ‘Work in progress…‘. I’m gonna hold off adding it immediately to the Fan Fiction section, in the hopes that he’ll add to it first – but it’s a pretty nice start, go read it!

Seems there’s a new Halo site out there – The Coalition of the Ring. Check ’em out.

Woohoo! Our first mention in a fan’s wallpaper (I think). Dinosurfer has sent along ‘Joyride’ for your perusement – you’ll find it in our Wallpaper section. Nice and clean…

arcarsenal dropped us a line to let us know that Halo made Rolling Stone magazine – it’s just a tiny blurb, describing Halo as a ‘long-awaited 3d shooter’ on the Xbox, and displaying the flying jeep screenshot recently released… but hey, mainstream press is mainstream press!

Ryan ‘Mhaddy’ Matthews writes to say the Junkyard is finally back up – and will be posting one new exclusive item per day for the next two weeks. Dunno how many of those will be Halo-related… but stop by and take a look!

Thanks to Iden, who pointed out to us that Xbox.com has an article describing a team meeting a couple of months ago in which the first prototypes of a real, working Xbox were demoed… and the statement that

Progress has been great since then and we’re poised to deliver the first kits to game developers before E3.

If so, it looks like lucky E3-goers will get to see Halo running at full speed in a couple of weeks… woohoo! We’ll be there… will you?

Early last week, we got a Fan Fiction submission with a subject line of ‘stupid fanfic I wrote’. Wirehead figured, if the AUTHOR thinks it’s stupid, how good could it be? It got resubmitted a couple of days ago, with an altered subject line, and I found it this morning. Moral of the story – don’t tell us your work sucks – we’ll believe you. 🙂 That said, go read our latest Fan Fiction, ‘Ambush!’.

We’ve added a couple of new wallpapers that have been sitting for a bit in our uploads directory – there’s one from Scythe, and one from B-Sharp. Check ’em out!

Picky informs us that he’s put a couple of Halo WinAmp skins up for grabs here – to get them, you’ll have to log in to the MSN network, but they should be up at WinAmp.com as soon as they’re reviewed.

Thanks to Ph.D., who pointed out a new Halo preview at Gamespot – there’s not really any new info there, it seems to be a pre-E3 prep piece, but press is press, right? (Well, don’t tell that to Daily Radar, who went under yesterday…)

Dink!… despite the infusion of 16 new members, the Halo SETI Marines lost a position in the Battle of the Teams, dropping out of the top 50 for the first time in almost a year. Ouch! Part of the blame can be placed on the four deserters, who, between them, pulled almost 2000 units out of the Halo coffers… but a big part of the problem is the low crunching action of the majority of the team. (Don’t blame DarthFlounder – he’s pulled within 121 units of the top spot…) The rest of you… turn that SETI screensaver back on! To see how YOU are doing, check the 14 day stats page.

Woohoo – the mail guy’s back! For all those who wrote in the past week and a half, and expected a reply, I’ll be getting to them in the next day or two. Meanwhile, I’ve added Friday’s Weekly Halo Update to the Halo Update Database; the word of the week is Cortana. How long did it take the Halo team to bring her to life?