Cortana in German? Huh. Ryan Wilcox submits an interesting picture to our Miscellaneous Art section… now if only I spoke Latin…

The German update: Seems Massa and the crew at Halo Network.de respond quickly to problems – the viewing problems I mentioned yesterday have been fixed, and the site is quite nice to look at. (I still can’t read it very well – it’s in German, after all – but it’s nice to look at.) And thanks to them, I now know of a new German Halo site – halogamers.de (also nice to look at), and of a German Wallpaper competition at Halo Orbit. If you speak German, check these sites out!

As noted on the Marathon’s Story page”Halo: A Case Study” is no longer listed as a presentation at this year’s Game Developers Conference. Jason Jones & John Howard of Bungie Studios were originally scheduled to give thistalk under the Game Design category. See our earlier news item on this.

We hope you like to re-read. IGN Xbox have posted a Halo article which traces the development of Halo. Actually it’s a collection of old Halo previews dating from 1999. The screenshots are really old too. Here’s a piece of the intro:

The whole development cycle has been more akin to Gone With the Wind than your average game, thanks to “less is more” philosophy that Bungie has taken about revealing information on the game, not to mention the changes the company has been through. So let’s begin at the beginning — E3 1999.

Pille writes to say that HaloNetwork.de, a German Halo site, has been completely overhauled, and several sections have quite a bit of info (screenshots are explained, graphical features are outlined, etc). I wasn’t able to make the site work on Mac NS or IE, but it looks great on IE on Win98.

There’s been some speculation about our sister site, phoenix.bungie.org, on our forum today. Bachus did some image analysis… and the results may surprise you.

Thanks to Jerry Nummi, who sent in a new piece of artwork for our Miscellaneous Art page. Looks like it could be a nice web front end! Check it out. Pax.

For those who missed this the first time (or the second, or the third, or…) Matt Soell, Community Guy, has gone on record yet again on the issue of the PC version being cancelled:

It’s a load of bollocks. There WILL be a Mac/PC Halo.

(Read the rest of the post for further elucidation.) As we said… if it didn’t come from Bungie, you don’t know it.

Blam!… The Halo SETI Marines climb their way back up to 48th in the Battle of the Teams, despite lower yields from the latest SETI client. DarthFlounder pushes up the output even more, taking la Crunch Honneur yet again… but Iden, a newcomer to the team, blasts out 104 units, putting him in second place for the week (and with the 202 positions he leapfrogged, the holder of the Frogblast Award). And we couldn’t have done it without Andrew Moll, an the 505 units he brought in this week. You can read all the gory details on the 7 day stats page.

eldar-colonel writes to say that Halo HQ‘s wallpaper competition is over, and the winner has been chosen – Wade Clisby, who submitted more than 10 different desktop images. You can see Wade’s entries here, and some other competitors here.

Oh, man… it’s starting again. Eric points out that VoodooExtreme has a report that EBWorld is no longer accepting preorders for Halo… because the PC version has been cancelled. Look, folks… if the PC/Mac versions get cancelled, you’ll hear about it from Bungie, not from some tipster to a big gaming site.

DRAVEN writes to tell us that the Halo Information Network (or HaloNet) has moved to gamesweb.com. Check out their new digs! Pax.

Matt’s weekly Halo update is back up and running, and it’s over at Rampancy.net tonight. Alien unit variations (we wanna see that energy shield!), indoor vehicles (jeeps on stairs? The mind boggles), and THE HALO TEAM WON THE PENTATHLON! Go Halo! Go read the gory details for yourselves.

Wow, we hit the motherload. Jay Faircloth, who burst onto the Bungie art scene only a couple of weeks ago, has submitted an enormous Halo piece (we’ve only posted his scaled-down version) to our Miscellaneous Art section, and three desktops in the same theme to our Wallpaper section. These are truly gorgeous… check ’em out.

Diogo Barbosa sends in another pair of desktop images for our Wallpaper page… the theme today is blue. Check ’em out!

Seen at the Marathon’s Story page: seems there was a front-page article in the Los Angeles Times a couple of days ago discussing the links between video games and violence. Marathon 2 was mentioned by name – a study cited in the article claimed that students who played the game generated 43% more agressive responses in later tests than those who played a nonviolent game. This isn’t just another newspaper puff piece – the US Surgeon General is behind the report, and the ramifications for the entertainment industry might be far-reaching. Will Halo be targeted, because of the singling-out of an older Bungie game? (The immediate Bungie response would suggest they aren’t taking it very seriously…) Pax.

The Annual Bungie Pentathlon takes place today… and the new QuickPoll at bungie.net asks who you think is going to walk away with the prize this year? The Halo team is currently tied for first (with the ‘CinemaOnline’ team, made up of the Cinematixxx crew and the Online crew) – go see if you can bump up their lead! Pax.

Andrew Paul has submitted a new desktop for our Wallpaper page – this one’s a real work of art, and came close to getting put into the Miscellaneous Art section, instead, but it looks great on an 800×600 desktop, and that’s what it was submitted as… Check it out. Great battle scene!

Thanks to Miguel Santiago, who sent in another Halo drawing for our Miscellaneous Art section. We like the marine a lot… but what’s that dog doing in there?

Lloyd Wright popped onto our forum to ask how Halo handles terrain. Since we didn’t know, we asked Bungie. Jaime Griesemer, Halo Designer, pointed out this article at Gamasutra, published last April. Warning: this is a pretty technical read.