The Halo SETI Marines hold on to their tenuous position at number 43 in the Battle of the Teams, bumping the buffer to 23 units ahead of The IsraAliens, thanks in large part to our new recruits (hotpoo and greener) and to Banzif II’s increased crunching. Let’s keep it up! In local action, DarthFlounder increases his streak to 8 weeks for La Crunch Honneur, and Trux takes the Frogblast award. Details can be found on the 7 day stats page.

The secret of the wall-hugging hippos, revealed! Well, okay, not really… just the monkey-impaling ones. Matt Soell tries on his Rudyard Kipling coat for an afternoon. Personally, I think he looks better in purple, but it’s a hell of a funny read anyway.

Back on July 26, 1999 (a week after MacWorld NY 99), we snagged a logo off the bungie.org Hotline server. It had no identifying marks, so we put it up, and asked the author to mail us. Yesterday, he did. And he told us that it was a rough version of the final product. Therefore, we now bring you the final product, on our Logos page. Thanks, TypeleveN!

hmm… real, or imagined? Kosh drops us a note about an interesting Halo engine sighting. CheckOut.com interviewed Michael Hamlett, the lead designer of Strike Force, a Counter-Strike-like mod for UT. It’s still freeware (and not officially supported by Epic), but apparently, potential deals are in the works. At one point, Michael mentions future possibilities:

We even have some things in the works using the Tribes 2 engine and possibly the Halo engine. Errr, too much info there…

So… is he just talking about what his team is looking to do in the future? Or is there more going on behind the scenes than we know? In either case, it’s fun to speculate. 😉

BluR writes to say that Halo Heaven now has a mailing list, for Halo news. If you want the latest in your mailbox, check ’em out!

Heh… Simon Marek dropped us a line:

Just writing after seeing your re-post of Matt’s listing of the newBungie staff members. Couldn’t help but notice the presence of JohnHoward. Now I don’t know how many others have noticed, but the PrimeMinister of Australia is also called John Howard. Another step inBungie’s plot to take over the world? As Hamish would say: “Coincidenceor…?”

Doesn’t seem like THAT uncommon a name, but you never know…

We got an email from Erbium-=SUN=- that made us wonder… so we put together a little page to look at the development of the Halo jeep (and specifically, it’s weaponry) over the past few months. Take a look, and be sure to post your thoughts on our forum!

Thanks to Fire Phoenix, who announced (via our forum) that the iHalo Marine Corps is officially online now. Check it out (fp highly suggests using IE only)!

Rampancy.net has switched over to the new forum Ferrex has been working on for a couple of weeks. Looks a lot like the old forum, but 1) it’s MUCH faster, and 2) it’s much more configurable. And 3) (actually the most important, for some of us) it’s very searchable. Go check it out!

Hey, cool! A couple of days ago, we mentioned Halo-Australia’s short story contest… seems they’ve gotten a couple of celebrity judges for this thing! Matt Soell of Bungie and Steve Brown of PCGamer UK will be rating your work. Nice going, guys! (And that’s THREE news items today that mention Matt. Hmm…)

This week’s Halo update is over at Rampancy.net… not even on their forum. (Has Matt been reading the oni.bungie.org forum recently?) The news is, there isn’t much news… although they’re putting bullets back into the game. (We’re happy, how about you?) Thanks, Matt, for keeping to your weekly schedule! Matt’s Halo update, at R.net this time

A week ago, Matt Soell posted an update on the state of Halo, and in it, he said (among other things)

– Jason is splitting his time between AI work and story work with Jaime and John.

John? Who’s John? Well, we followed up, and Matt was kind enough to fill us in on the newest members of the Halo dev team.

John Howard is a new guy. He was part of FASA when they came over, and we kinda stole him away.

The rest of the new people are as follows:

• Ed Smith (art)
• Bernie Freidin (code)
• Stephen Okasaki (job unspecified)

Konrad Shirinian is no longer part of the team, and Stefan Sinclair is now a part of the online team (although he’s currently on loan to the Oni team… which is interesting, since Oni doesn’t have an online component any more…). There are lots of other new people at Bungie right now who AREN’T working on Halo; the whole organization is growing. Thanks for the update, Matt! (The rest of the Halo team were delineated by Matt at MacWorld SF almost a year ago.)

Another German Halo site overhauls their look: Haloweb is back with a new design. (Go look with Internet Explorer, because you won’t see much past the first page with Netscape… those pesky missing close table tags again.) Thanks to ToonSquad for the heads-up.

Ack! The Halo SETI Marines are about to be overtaken by the IsraAliens! As of this moment, they’re neck and neck… 136,674 units each. However, a week ago, the Marines had a healthy lead.. crunch time is here!

In other Xbox news, Daily Radar UK is reporting that Microsoft is planning to announce the final design of the Xbox on October 26, timed to coincide with the PlayStation 2 launch in the US. Thunder-stealing, anyone?

X-Dome has a rather enormous article on ‘the graphical prowess of the Xbox’… if you’re into the tech side of stuff, this article is for you. Go take a look at what Halo will have to work with!

Terror sends word that Halo-Australia are hosting a competition for the best Halo short story… winner gets a wireless mouse. If you’re interested, check ’em out!

Jesse Keenan sends in a nice desktop image using his tiger-striped marine… you can find it on our Wallpaper page. (The tiger-striped marine was submitted to the Miscellaneous Art page last month.) Hey… this marks our 100th Wallpaper submission! Thanks, Jesse.

In mid-August, we noted a new German site devoted to Halo, Halo-News. Well, they’ve revamped the site, and fleshed it out… and would love for you to visit it again. Take a look!

T/K posts about a new Covenant clan, The Arbiter. If you’re looking to play on the non-human side, this is one of the few groups that focuses on it. Check ’em out!