Another wallpaper from Private Meowman… still no halo. Where’s that halo?

Pallor has written an article for The Corporation about the reaction of Bungie fans when the MS news hit. It’s not particularly flattering to Macintosh gamers. It’s spawned a couple of monster threads at Rampancy.net (here and here), and one smaller one on our own forum… lots of meat to chew on here. Do we have an obligation to support Bungie in a controversial move, or should it be the other way around? Pax.

Wow, talk about hardcore… Benjamin Ellison points out this page (originally seen on slashdot), devoted to selling a PCI card with one use: to speed up your SETI@home processing. For $129, you get a board with 6 processors on it, each having been designed to help the terrain following radar in PR-964 Cruise Missiles. There are currently linux and Win95/98/NT/2000 drivers available, with Mac drivers on the way. How serious are YOU about finding those Covenant? Pax.

SiliconDream is on a roll. After coming up with explanations for some of the odder signs shown at E3 (elucidated here), he’s done some more homework, and has postulated theories about the location of the Halo system. pretty good postulation, even. Worth a read.

Thanks, sort of, to David Oosha, who pointed out on our forum that Inside Mac Games has put up a video clip of Alex Seropian discussing the impetus behind the MacWorld announcement to continue support for a Mac version of Halo. 4 megs… definitely worth a listen. David… we apologize this sat for three whole hours without being noticed. We’ll try to do better next time.

There we were, minding our own business, and this funny video clip fell on us from out of a tree. (It’s also here and (very temporarily) here.) Apologies for any dents you find… those would be from our heads. Please send mail if you have trouble downloading this film… we’ll look for other places to mirror it. (It’s 18 megs, and a minute long.) Enjoy!

Seen on Rampancy.net… Cannibal Harry has clipped out a couple of the more entertaining events from the Bungie Fanfest last Friday, and put them up on his site. You can find them here.

The Halo SETI Marines continue to crunch through the night skies, looking for evidence of Covenant intrusion. They’re now within 500 units of the TidBITS team in the Club Standings. A big welcome to Mikeintosh (too bad the SETI servers have fixed the “old points come to the new team” bug!), and a big welcome back to NATO! Banzif II continues to burn up the charts, but La Crunch Honneur goes to a new name… Alxnet. Full details can be found on the 7-day stats page.

Craig Mullins, who got his start in the BungieVerse with his Marathon art, has continued to create astounding artwork for Bungie. He started to do some Halo art… but apparently, it wasn’t in the right direction. He’s sent us an early drawing… not the Halo that we have today, but we love it anyway! (It’s on our Miscellaneous Art page.)

There are a couple of new Halo sites on the horizon… and one new one online now. Halo-world.com is opening this Friday, although the link works now. HaloZone, a hosted site of ClanZone (which has moved), is “coming soon”. And Halo.ch (“The Legend of Halo”) is a new German site. The Halo community has been reborn with the MacWorld announcements!

Okay, I’m back, at least. (Still waiting on those other three slackers.) There’s a ton of stuff that still needs to be put together from MacWorld… but in the meantime, I can at least clear out the inbox and pass along some interesting info. First item: a new desktop pic from Joel Loukus, aka Private Meoman of the Radioactive Squirrels. You’ll find it on our Wallpaper page. Thanks, Joel!

Battleground: Halo gearing up for a makeover?Maybe PlanetHalo is finally going live? In any case, check ’em out… the number, as deduced by DogCow goes Moof on our forum, is the Julian Date equivalent of July 29. Another week to wait…

Once again… we’re without a net connection for posting. never fear, though… There’s an enormous amount of info from the fanfest that we have to share with you. Most of us should be back at home in the next couple of days… in the meantime, we apologize for the lack of updates!

Hmm. During the setup for the Bungie Fanfest yesterday, we ran across some signs left over from the E3 booth. Some had strange names… we speculated on them between ourselves, but couldn’t come up with any answers. SiliconDream, however, must have done his homework after E3… because you can find lots and lots of info about the more esoteric signs (not even shown in the photos Freewill put up last night) in this forum post. Have we gotten a big clue about the physical location of the Halo? (Seems mighty close to Earth, if you ask me…)

Thanks once again to Luxor, of the Vault Network, who found this Microsoft press release that confirms Bungie’s commitment to bring Halo not just to the Mac, but to PCs. Silly rumors going around… as Ed Fries says,

“We are particularly pleased to honor Bungie’s commitment to make ground-breaking games like ‘Halo’ available to gamers on all platforms, including the Macintosh.”

Shame on all you doubters!

For those who missed our MacWorld NY 2000 page,we’ll point you over to the Day 1 wrapup, which includes a movie capturing Alex Seropian promising Halo for the Mac to all b.org fans. Check it out!

fAT1 has posted a requeston our forum for someone willing to post Halo news to a British gaming site. Check it out… could be fun!

Light news day today… all day at MacWorld, with very little Halo news! Keep your eyes peeled, though, for tomorrow is the Fanfest!

Spotted by luxor, of Halo Vault: In the press release for the ATI Radeon card (dated July 17, 2000), ATI touts Radeon’s gaming prowess by listing some of its “unique features”:

“3 Texture Units – The only card on the market to support 3 texture units, RADEON will speed through games such as Microsoft’s Halo^TM since it can render multiple textures in a single pass”

Makes you wonder who they talked to, before this morning’s announcement…

Wow… hard to find a place to update from the show floor sometimes. As you may or may not have read on other sites, the news from the show is positive… Alex Seropian and Ed Fries HAVE confirmed that Halo WILL ship for the mac. I got a chance to snag Alex after the keynote, and he told me that their commitment to develop for the mac has never wavered, but that they couldn’t announce that before today. He said that while the Mac (and presumably PC) version won’t ship until after the Xbox version… they WILL ship. (He also suggested that Jason Jones might not be the project lead for the Mac port.) And to think we doubted them!