Where’s Louis? Concerned HBO staff are to start wearing thought screen helmets after Louis scores 25 in the Alien Abduction Survey.

HBO spin: We couldn’t think of one.

The SETI team ranks page hasn’t been updated since Sat (Dec 9) so NO we haven’t been slackin’ on the SETI stats. The Halo SETI Marines are still crunchin’ away and team membership is solid. Help the war effort this Christmas… buy Covenant bonds. Pax.

While a number of sites have already mentioned the games.macnn.com editorial on the lack of ‘realistic violence’ in Oni the Story page goes further and asks what effect this will have on Bungie’s Halo? If the editorial is correct in suggesting that the ‘realistic violence’ was removed to achieve increased sales in the console market then won’t the same happen with Halo? We hope not but if Microsoft want to reach the widest possible demographic with Xbox then who knows what could happen. Keep watching those screenshots! Pax.

We’ve had a couple of recent desktop submissions… we apologize for the delay in getting them up. One is a beautiful gas-cloud pic, the other an enhanced screenshot. You’ll find both of them in our Wallpaper section. Pax.

As noted by Electric Sheep on our forum, cortana.org has gone live with some intriguing info. A quick registry search shows that this domain was registered on December 5th by Steve Campbell, a long-time Bungie fan with some interesting contacts in and around Bungie Software… one wonders, what’s behind this domain, and where is it going? Pax.

Bitner Blitz! Nathan Bitner returns with another posting spree. One postcaught our attention. It concerns cooperative play on Halo’s solo levels.

“We REALLY like cooperative play on solo levels. REALLY like it. A lot.”

But as Nathan says “Don’t count on ANYTHING until Bungie announces it”.

Looks like next Friday’s Halo update will be going to Haloplayers. Leastthat’s our reading of Matt Soell’s cryptic post on our forums. If any new site deserves it Haloplayers do. They’ve been around for a long time now and regularly update. But what of this line?

“Someday soon, we’ll all be hangin’ ten and none of this will matter a whit!”

Has Matt taken up surfing on the North-West coast?

Matt Soell takes time out to help clarify Jason and John’s involvement at next year’s Game Developers Conference on our forums and goes on to hint at the possibility of seeing some new Halo stuff before March 2001.

“A lot could happen between now and March.”

We live in hope.

fire phoenix informs us that Halo Center is now undernew management. Yrro left and fire phoenix is the new site manager.

According to a report over at the Marathon’s Storypage Jason Jones and John Howard will be talking about Halo at the Game Developers Conference 2001. Their talk is entitled Halo: A Case Study. No other details are available yet but an abstract is forthcoming. Kudos to Sean Phelps who sent this in to the Story page. 🙂

Hamish “Godot” Sinclair over at the Marathon’s Story page has spotted a similarity between the Halo story and Vernor Vinge’s “A Fire Upon the Deep”. A genocidal alien alliance attempts to wipe out humanity and a lone human ship escapes with the alien fleet in hot pursuit! Weeee doggie! Another book to add to our Christmas list. 🙂

Kaidu informs us that the Halo Tip site has changed their URL to http://www.halotip.com.

With all the palaver over bungie.net voting, the identity of the Bungie Webmaster and Nathan’s Island Four gaming company weforgot to mention an interesting article over at MSXbox on the subject of keyboard and mouse for the Xbox. Microsoft has said no in the past… but people are still asking. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Matt’s weekly Halo update went to Battleground Halo this week. We all expected it to go tor.net but it’s “pie for all” policyat Bungie. As Ding said “It should encourage BGH to update more”. Let’s hope so.

Did Louis leave? Cool!

Wha…? I’m right here, ya bastard. I’ve been doin’ your dirty work (and your laundry) for months now… ‘remedial web maintenance’ my arse. See if your precious SETI stats get posted while you’re gone, ya skinflint. Hey… while I’m here… we just learned there’s ANOTHER Polish Halo site out there… Sebastian ‘DZASKUL’ Jaskula tells us that fpp Halo have been online for quite a while. What’s the deal with all these Polish sites, anyway? Anyway, go check it out. Colors are easy on the eyes. (Important after slaving away in the cellar on those stats.) Pax.

On the subject of submissions – I’m heading out of town for a few days, which is why Ding and Wirehead have come out from under their rocks. (Where’s Crux, anyway?) I’m hoping they keep up-to-date on news… but submission are a little out of their league. (“Which button do I push?”) So feel free to submit new artwork, fiction, whatever… but don’t get annoyed if it takes us a few days to actually get it up on the site. Hopefully, our bake sale will bring in enough money to send Crux back to remedial web maintenance school. (Mmm… Covenant cookies…)

Whoops! We just noticed that we’d forgotten a submission yesterday! (Sorry, GeForce.)It’s a pretty nice desktop image… check it out on our Wallpapers page.

Eep… we almost missed this, buried deep in a forum post – a fun little flash animation created by a fan. Check it out!

Wow – a very cool new Halo desktop has just been created by Ken Charron, over at MacGamer’s Ledge (aka macgamer.com). It’s available in everything from 640×480 up to 1600×1200… so go check it out, and grab a copy for your viewing pleasure!