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!

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.