Blam! The Halo SETI Marines climb past Team Slashdot to position 43, despite the defection of a one-time bungie.org staffer (and his 400+ units). Total production is up almost 10% over last week! Darthflounder takes La Crunch Honneur, and SHARkY blasts past 74 teammates for the Frogblast Award. Full details can be found on the 7-day stats page. (These were crunched yesterday, but somehow, I forgot to upload them to the server.)

Picky sends word that Honest3d.com has an article on the Xbox, and where they (Honest3D) think the Xbox fits in the console world. One interesting quote had to do with the rumor of a RAM upgrade (to 128 MB):

The Microsoft rep said flatly that in fact the X-Box was still going to be sold to gamers with only 64mb of RAM and that the reason for the rumor was the fact that the X-Boxes that are going to game developers will indeed actually have 128mb of RAM. This is due to the fact that the game developers need the extra RAM.

You can read the rest of the article here. Pax.

Rob McLees, on the current state of Halo:

“Halo in its current form takes the old stuff that everyone was so impressed with and holds its head under the filthy waters of a public menÂ’s room toilet.”

That doesn’t sound like a disheartened art staffer… That, and more, was posted to our forum by Matt Soell today, who went on a writing spree over at R.net, as well. Stop in and read all of it… there’s a TON of good info there.

fAt1 sends word that he’s got a new Halo site up and running: Halo Multi Player Zone. You’ll need to register with MPZ to get in, but it doesn’t cost anything. fAt1 says there’s lots of help needed, so if you’re interested in helping out on a Halo site, drop him a line!

Thanks to Bounty, who clears up the “Planet Halo” issue:

The site is registered to Angellcom, and will serve to be a corporate page for their new pager 🙂 Although, it does have the words “Planet Halo” on the pager, it could be the desire of some maniacal Bungie fan, don’t expect to see any new info pop up at that domain :p

Thanks, Bounty! Ah, well… saves us writing a line into the Links page. 🙂

An alert reader noticed this site, which was registered a few weeks ago. It might not have anything at all to do with Halo, the game (the site is registered to Angellcom, so it’s possible that it’s simply a play on the owner’s name)… or it might. (This is not Gamespy’s Planet Halo, which currently resolves to Battleground: Halo.)

Crovax sends in a new wallpaper for our Wallpaper page, using (almost exclusively) old-style Marines and Covenant. If you pine for the days before the switch, take a look at this one! Pax.

Ironfist mentions on our forum that he has updated the Bungie Coat of Arms, and brought it into the Halo age. The QuickTime movie weighs inat just under 2 megs. And it looks a little better in IE than it does in Netscape (has to do with the placement of end-of-line returns). Go take a look!

Psyrixx writes that there’s an interview with Durandal, Project Lead of the Marathon: Resurrection project (a project to bring Marathon to the Unreal Tournament engine) over at the Psyjnir Complex. (If you’re having trouble getting in to find it, here‘s a direct link.) This is only marginally Halo-related; it’s here because of the (so far implied) links between Marathon and Halo. For those poeple who never saw Marathon in its original form, this might be a great way to introduce yourselves!

Sokar writes to say that HaloEmpire now has a Halo screensaver (created by GCA) for download. It cycles through Halo screenshots with various fades and cuts between them. (Windows only.) Go take a look! Pax.

Lord of flaw sends word that his new German Halo site is online: Halo Universe. Swing by and take a look!

Oh, my. I’m not even sure how to explain this. Well… first read the thread (it actually gets relevant here), then look at the picture. And then wonder about the free time Halo fans have… and be afraid. Be very afraid.

Three different X-boxes? Daily Raider UK have an interview with J Allard of Microsoft concerningX-box’s global roll-out. Here’s a quote:

DR-UK: If you buy a game in Japan, will it work on a UK X-Box?

J Allard: That’s up to the publisher. We’ll build three different boxes, one for each territory, and what thepublisher can choose to do is: they can make one disc that runs worldwide. Or they can make a disc thatonly runs in the US. Or they can make a disc that runs in Europe but has all the languages. Or they canmake a different disc for every language in every territory – it’s really up to the publisher. We hear frompublishers that there are a couple of reasons why they don’t want all games to run always worldwide.

The HBO Spin: Different boxes for different territories? Sounds like DVD region specific players. It’ll be interesting to see if Bungie fans outside the US will get Halo at the same time as those in the US.

In case anyone was unsure (and if you were, you should be ashamed of yourself), Matt Soell lays to rest the “Halo is ready” rumor in no uncertain terms. Turns out even the bit about Halo running on nVidia cards on Macs ain’t true. Watch that bull flying…

Geez. Thanks to Carth for the heads-up… Macrumors.com is reporting (reporting?) that

“HALO for the Mac is ready but Microsoft are holding it back till at least 2 months after the X-Box is released. Although the game is ready to ship for both the Mac and the PC the game will be most marketed on the X-Box with a demo being bundled on the DVD that comes with the machine. Bungie confirm they are now using nVidia card on their Mac machines with the new beta drivers as the Rage Pro was getting too slow for higher resolutions. “

Folks… don’t believe everything you read. Time to batten down the hatches against the flood of email this rumor’ll bring…

A rather spartan email from Pureblood announces HaloPort… which is, apparently, a new Halo site. I say ‘apparently’ because it requires a username/password combo to get past the opening screen… but provides no way to obtain one. More as we know it. Pax.

Heh… in case anyone didn’t realize how important the Marathon’s Story page is to the fans of Halo… several Story page fans noticed some quotes from Nathan Bitner (first made on our forum, here and here, over a week ago, and posted to the Story page yesterday), and the source of both sets of quotes are now known. Khalil Gibran and Smashing Pumpkins… let no one say Nathan’s not well-rounded. Thanks to the Story page fans for unearthing these!

Ack… very good question posed by PsychoBean on our forum. The Bungie job offering mentioned yesterday states that the mission editor will be developed in MFC (Microsoft Foundation Class)… does this mean the mission editor will be PC only? Or will Tamte’s group be porting this, as well? Hopefully, a Bungie employee will chime into this thread and clarify the matter.

Kudos to TomeOne, who noticed another job opening on Bungie’s page: They need a Tools Programmer to build a mission editor for Halo! Wonga.

Sebastian “The Tiny Toad” Brytting sends in a theory on the builders of the Halo. We don’t rate ’em, folks, we just publish ’em. If you like this one, let Sebastian know on our forum.