There are profiles of each of the sixteen Halo National Championship finalists up at Bungie.net. Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO.

Max Yeroen Hoberman at Bungie.net posted today that KingsGames.com will be starting the first Halo Tournament Season starting September 7. Details available from the Kings Games site.

Another interesting article mentioned by HBO's Louis Wu is at GameStudies. This one takes a look at Halo, and suggests that it's more genre breaking than it seems-- with an emphasis on the work break :

Peter Tamte of Destineer Studios commented in an interview with IMG that the goal for Halo on the Mac platform is simultaneous release, and that the project so far is on schedule.

Crux at HBO pointed out the article at IMG.

The boys at Electric Playground got their eyeballs on the Halo 2 trailer, and boy, they seem to have enjoyed it. They wrote up a summary, here, and commented on the progress that game's made from the original. A worthy read.

Thanks to the Junkyard for catching this. Not HBO. Ho ho ho.

It's possible that the Halo50k competition, so named because they plan to give out $50,000 in prizes, may drop the $400 entry fee they were going to charge. It seems they may be on the verge of getting corporate sponsorship for the tournament. To accommodate these arrangements, the tournament has been postponed from November 2002 to February 2003. Registration is temporarily suspended, and if the new schedule doesn't work out for teams that already registered, their money will be refunded.

Goodness. Remember Battleground: Halo, the once-proud but in recent times mostly dead Halo fansite? Whodathunkit, they've gotten a visual revamp and started posting news again. Go check 'em out.

BG:H updated today with the news on Halo 2; looks like they might (also) be getting more active. Also, in the process of cruising the BG:H forum threads, amidst the arguments about whether or not Halo 1.5 does or will exist (silly rabbit, Halo tricks are for Louis) we came across DarkHelmet.org, which has some interesting Halo content, and had heretofore escaped inclusion in our links page.

Michael Johnson of Monsters At Play has written a review of Halo's Original Soundtrack. It was one of the elements of the game he enjoyed the most. He felt it deserved a review of its own; and quite a positive review it is:

Bungie.net has posted information on a new Halo tournament in Florida. This one is special because it has a lower age limit than the Halo National Tournament; it's for players between the ages of 10 and 17. The rules are similar to those of the HNC but without an elimination round.

Elan Sleazbagano posted a silly trick in the HBO forum. Done on the level Halo, you can make the passenger and gunner in the Warthog scream like they're falling despite the fact that they are just driving around. Brian Josselyn was quick to get a video of the glitch.

We couldn't find the GameSpot poll mentioned at HBO-- perhaps it already closed with Halo named the undisputed victor before we got there.

However, we did find virtually the same poll running at Gaming Age. Currently Halo 2 is trailing The Legend of Zelda 371 to 231, but leading GTA: Vice City (159) and Doom III (81).

The winners of the regional HNC competitions have been posted at Bungie.net. The finals will be played next week in Los Angeles. If the winners are unable to play, there is an alternate from each center.

OZHalo.com has also apparently gone offline, and bears the same for sale notice as Creationgames.

There have been a few recent threads in the HBO forum about a remark that musicmeister Marty The Elder O'Donnell made at the E3 fanfest regarding Covenant Elite taunts . Basically, he said they were in the POA level but would be near impossible to find.

Surreptitious thinks he may have found them, and recorded a number of Elite vocalizations in the POA level.