A little late, the morning’s been busy… The SETI server seems to be having some serious problems keeping up with submitted results, so it’s hard to tell where the Halo SETI Marines stand, but one thing’s for sure… they’re doing their part to find the Covenant! DarthFlounder continues to crunch those units, taking La Crunch Honneur for the seventh (!) week in a row. camw takes the Frogblast award for the second straight week, leaping up 75 positions to 255. Chucky must have turned off some of his computers for his birthday, because his output has dropped by half this week… or could the computations for Halo be using up those computers? You’ll find all the details on the 7 day stats page.

BluR sends word that a new Halo site, Halo Heaven, has come online. News, pictures, movie links, info. Take a look! Pax.

Haloplayers have put up an interview with one of their hosted squads… DnDs, the Death ‘n Destruction squad. They’re Dutch, they’re big, and their website is IE-only. (No, really, they’re keeping NS users out with a javascript.) First seen at R.net, cause we’re lazy tonight.

Andre Correa has submitted another piece of Halo-inspired art, this time of a random Bob. You can find it in our Miscellaneous Art section.

DRAVEN, of the Halo Information Network, sends in a simple and clean desktop image for our Wallpaper page. Great for those cluttered desktops that just need some eye relief…

Mock writes to let us know that airbornerangers.org are putting together a Myth tournament called ‘WWII: Risk Global Domination Tournament’. In Mock’s words, it is ‘by far the most ambitious Myth tournament to date’. Why are you reading this on a Halo page?

If all goes well, we will run a Halo Risk tournament, with a map of the Ringworld, if possible. We, of course, would have to wait until some orders get solidified… in fact this style of tournament is easily transferable to any multiplayer online game.

Sounds intriguing! If you’re interested, take a look at the Risk site. The Radio section has broadcasts worth listening to, for more info.

Luke Varley submits a… different sort of Halo logo. You can find it on our Logos page.

Happy Belated Birthday, Chucky! (We almost let it slide, even though it was mentioned on bungie.net, but Matt took us to task in his (weekly?) Halo update, posted to our forum this time.) Indoor goodness, AI improvements, and Wall-Hugging Hippos… it’s all there! See? And you thought they were just trying to stick forks in the ceiling tiles.

Hamish Sinclair does his typically thorough analysis of an Island Four post we mentioned last week. Lots and lots of details about Pablo Neruda… more Blake tie-ins… even some Smashing Pumpkins. The details can be found in today’s Marathon Story update.

Peter Askam sends word that Halo Command UK has a new Halo skin for WinAmp, the Windows mp3 player. You can find it in their Media section, under Sounds. Take a look!

Battleground Halo is combating the no-news-induced boredom with Halo Libs, a new feature based on the parlor game ‘Mad Libs’ created in 1958 by Roger Price and Leonard Stern. You fill a form out with various parts of speech, and these words or phrases will be added to a story. BGH will print the funniest ones each week. If it sounds like fun, stop on by!

Zero4 writes on our forum that his clan, Halo Death, is recruiting. Join up today! Pax.

[GK]ByteEater sends word that his clan, the GrailKnights, have added Halo to their roster. Take a look!

Iden has submitted to our Theories section an interpretation of a line of one of the Cortana letters… could ‘a Demon folded in black clouds’ be a W’rkncacnter? You be be the judge. (You can find other speculations about this William Blake-inspired line on the Marathon’s Story page devoted to Cortana. Suffice it to say this isn’t the first W’rkncacnter/Cortana tie-in.)

One back, one down: Battleground Halo returns with a new look, and Halo Central calls it quits. You win some, you lose some… (Thanks to R.net for the heads-up on Halo Central.)

Thanks to fire phoenix, of HC, who submitted another logo for our Logos page. Take a look!

Nothing to see here, move along…

We just got mail from Geert Roete, saying that there are some Halo shots posted at the Dutch site Ultimate Gamer. They’re just screen grabs from the E3 movie, though, and the text is very sparse (one sentence), so I’m not really sure what the deal is. You can go look anyway, though… there might be other stuff of interest. Pax.

The Halo SETI Marines continue to crank out units, slightly improving last week’s total output. DarthFlounder remains in the number one Crunch position, and last week’s Frogblast award winner, Trux, was surpassed this week by camw. All the gory details can be found on the 7 day stats page. Pax.

Okay, we goofed. Turns out the bit about Halo being released simultaneously on the Mac and the Xbox is somewhat old (and since superceded)… apparently, it was posted to a Mac gaming site in August, and 8/10/2000 was interpreted (understandably) by a European as October 8, not August 10. The eNewsletter in question had this to say, back in August:

During the keynote address [at MWNY], Steve Jobs welcomed Ed Fries onto the Macworld stage. Vice President of Games for Microsoft, Fries reassured the audience. Yes, Microsoft certainly will release Halo for the Mac. In fact, it will be released for the Mac at the same time it is released for the X-Box, Microsoft’s new videogame console.

This has since been, um… corrected by Matt Soell as overenthusiastic reporting by Apple. Sorry to get everyone’s dander up.