$erial-ki!!A has added a fifth chapter to his ongoing Halo saga; you’ll find “The First Wave” on our Fan Fiction page. This might be the last chapter for a bit… summer holidays and all.

Jonathan Haas, a former Bungie employee (who left a few months ago to join a startup), weighs in on the MS/Bungie firestorm, with some very level-headed views. Worth a read by all…

Jerry Nummi writes to tell us that Halo Mac is a new clan page. There doesn’t seem to be anything there but a Flash front page so far, but maybe the other pages are coming soon.

Scytale writes to tell us that Planethalo.de is online. Check it out!

The Halo SETI Marineshold tight to position #49 in the Battle of the Teams. We might take the SETI-Hispano team this weekend but we need more marines in the field. Still only a third of the team on active service. Jjaro tech and ABordner take top honors again. Full details on the 24 hour stats page.

More rumors for your money. Thanks to PUnk for spotting two alternative views to the rumored Microsoft-Bungie buyout one at PS2IGN and the other at XBoxIGN.

Halo in PCGamer (UK). Haloplayers have posted a small pic of the cover of the July edition of PCGamer (UK). It sports the Halo marine in action. According to Jenkz of Haloplayers the July edition will have some exclusive Halo coverage.

Daily Radar weighs in, too.

Speculation intensifies about the Microsoft rumors. GameSpy devoted almost its full news page to the conjecture. (Thanks to ax for the heads-up.)

Halo in MacFormat (UK). Kudos to Phish who sends word that Halo features in the latest issue of MacFormat (UK). Not only that but Phish scanned in the front cover and transcribed the text. We can’t put it all up but here’s the first paragraph:

The game that generated the most excitement at last month’s E3 show in Los Angeles was undoubtedly Halo, Bungie Software’s eagerly anticipated sci-fi combat spectacular. The good new is that, despite many rumors to the contrary, Halo is definitely real and definitely coming to the Mac – a simultaneous Mac/PC release is expected early next year.

Thanks Phish. 🙂

Edgecrusher sends word that pcgames.de have a gaming poll to crush. Lots of games to choose from but there can be only one!

Louis did some HBO server stats and posted the percentage of Windows and Mac OS users to theforums. We felt the figures were worth repeating here:

45.4% MacOS
50.8% Windows (31% Win98, 11% Win95, 7% NT, 2% Win2000)
The remainder is various flavors of Unix, and 6 WebTV hits, and 3 Amiga hits. (!!)

Ok who has the Amiga? 😉

Believe it or not! Matthew Liebhold reports thatmacslash.com claim they were hacked last night and their Bungie-MS buyout details were deleted from their server. Yeah right. Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.

The SETI team ranks still haven’t been updated so we don’t know where the Halo SETI Marinesare placed at the moment. Some fine crunchin’ by Jjaro tech and ABordner takes the Frogblast award. Still only a third of marines are doing active service. We could do with some back-up people. Full details on the 24 hour stats page.

Joel Page (aka Ironfist) has written an interesting article on the MS rumors. Worth a read, just for the level-headedness.

The MS rumors have made it as far as MacAddict, a major Mac print magazine. No new info, but they point to As The Apple Turns for a distinctly Mac viewpoint on the potential truth to the rumors. Thanks to Formerly Wu, over at the R.net forum, for the heads-up.

The Movies page has been updated with a list of mirrors for the E3 teaser. All locations currently known, in one convenient place! Enjoy.

Fire Phoenix drops us a line to let us know that PCGameWorld is also mirroring the teaser; both the hi-res and low-res versions are available.

Manuel Blaschek has sent in another wallpaper for our Wallpapers page. Does it seem like the Halo-Marathon links are getting stronger?

Geez… first Macintouch, now MacSlash… the MS rumor is spreading.