Mike Patton writes that he’s put up a Halo site for the Halo clan AoD (Angel of Death)… check it out! (The site might be moving soon, so no guarantees about the link.)

wod`asini writes to tell us that he’s formed a new Halo order called Blam! Right now, you can find info on his personal page… but they’re putting up a new site soon. They’re looking for players “who will really want to participate in the Halo community and at the same time dominate ranked halo.” If you fit the bill, stop by!

$erial-ki!!A writes to let us know that a new Halo mailing list has been started up at theglobe.com. Swing by and take a look!

fire phoenix of Halo Center sends word that the XBox 365 site which ran the “Halo commercial during SuperBowl 2001” news item is using a third party image of Halo rather than an official one. What’s wrongXBox 365? Don’t have an official one?

HBO Spin: We’re probably going to see alot more of this given the present lack of new’official’ Halo material and alot of fan created material. Only yesterday we reported that Compuexpert.com were passing off a fan-created, Bryce-based piece of original art as a Halo screenshot.

Hawk, from Halo Center, sends along an interesting rumor from XBO365. Seems one of the commercials for the Xbox to be shown during the Superbowl (January 28, 2001) will focus on Halo:

The second commercial pushes a lot of Promo for Halo but I don’t have the details on that one yet. I’m told they do half of it as if the viewer was actually in the game and looking around at the action around. Stuff crashing and blowing up all around – characters talking to you and getting shot etc.

There’s been no official confirmation of this, so it’s easily just a rumor… but hey, January 28 is less than 4 weeks away!

Thanks to Phalynx, who submitted a nifty new logo for our Logos page. Check it out! Pax.

Wow… you think you’ve gone through every screenshot ever released a million times… you think there’s nothing left to find. You’re wrong. 🙂 Khaine pointed out to us that the second covenant rifle, which has been discussed recently on our forum, has, indeed, been seen fired… almost 8 months ago! We’ve put together a quick page to show what’s currently known about this gun (minus the four frames in the Incite movie – check our Weapons Rundown for details on that). Thanks for the heads-up, Khaine!

Xerxes writes to tell us that Halo Orbit (the German one) has been totally redesigned. It’s utterly broken in NS… but looks quite nice in IE. Go and take a look!

Rony Sanchez writes to tell us that Compuexpert.com, a software retailer, lists a Halo release date of 5/29/01. While this would normally not be worth a mention (release dates that don’t come from Bungie aren’t worth the pixels it takes to display them), this one’s intriguing because of the Halo page itself. In the bank of 10 screenshots used to display the glory of Halo, they’ve used 9 of the original screenshots… and this image, a fan-created, Bryce-based piece of art originally visible on our Miscellaneous Art page! Guess Ken should feel flattered…

eldar-colonel writes to say that Halo HQ is having a wallpaper contest. Stop by and read about it.

As noted on Islandfour.org and the Marathon’s Story page, there’s been another update over at cortana.org. Scorpio and Orion…

Thanks to Chris Cox, who dropped in yet another chapter in the ongoing Warrior saga, told from the Covenant perspective. You’ll find this latest intriguing work in our Fan Fiction section. Remember – you can always read the entire saga, in order, by following the ‘More by this author‘ link in the entry. Chris got this to us before the clock rolled over… but we were out. Congratulations, then, on the first post of the new millenium!

Speaking of seasons… Happy New Year to all of you! And while we’re at it, we hope the end of the second millenium was good for you… and that you find plenty of Covenant to beat up on in the next one!

Mikkel Eriksen writes to tell us that our latest posted theory (No Seasons on Halo) is incorrect. Read his reasoning in our Theories section.

We’ve received word that Halo Command Central will be closing until sometime in May or June. The reason given was lack of time before then for all the maintainers. Pax.

Thanks to Mads Søndergaard, who submitted another desktop for our Wallpaper page. Dark and brooding… Pax.

Vying with BGH for the title of ‘Most Redesigned Site’, Halo Tip throws up another new design, going for the green-and-grey look. Stop by and take a look!

Xbox tidbit – last week, Microsoft downgraded its performance sheet with a 250 MHz graphics processor instead of a 300 MHz one, which drops its polygon performance from 150 M/sec to 125 M/sec. (This is still twice the performance of the PS2.) For reference, here’s the old spec card, distributed to dealers recently. The spin from MSXbox (a fansite) is that these new numbers are more in line with the ‘real world’ performace of the system… sounds like a copout to us. (Thanks to BGH for initial heads-up on tis one.)

Thanks to Brian Norton, who sent in a treatise on offplanet seasons, explaining why Halo won’t have any. You can find it in our Theories section.

Thanks to fAt1, of MPZ Halo, who sent along a link to this Video Business article containing Xbox details. Though some of the info is a little confused (they mention a 64 MB hard drive), much of it looks solid. Among the more interesting tidbits: the current launch window is reportedly September 15 to November 15, 2001, and Microsoft is finding that it needs to restructure its launch plans:

VB has also been told that development for Xbox is so easy that Microsoft is actually restructuring its launch plans, because it literally will have too many games ready for launch. The company is talking to key publishers about holding back some of the launch titles to fill the second and third wave of game releases for 2002.

Not a bad position to be in! The most disturbing bit is the quote at the end from MS’s Marketing Director for WebTV, who suggests that a future box might bundle what’s in the Xbox with what’s in the next generation of WebTV, directly contradicting what Seamus Blackley stated a few months ago. Worth a read!