Halo for the MacOS platform (MacOS X only) has now shipped in North America; news has spread around the Web from MacCentral, Blue's News, Break Point Halo, and, of course, HBO.

MacCentral has two notes on the Mac gaming scene, which will certainly be getting slightly more attention from the gaming press as Halo finally "returns home" to the platform it was originally announced for more than four years ago.First, Duane Johnson, formerly of Westlake Interactive (the company that ported Mac Halo, as well as countless other games) is becoming the fourth programmer to join the newly-formed

Louis Wu at HBO passed on word from RavenEA that this week's MacGamer Giveaway features five copies of Mac Halo; the subject of the contest is creation of an image of the Master Chief on vacation. The five funniest win.

News of the Mac Halo Gold Master spread everywhere over the past few days; it seems the disc went to duplication on the 5th and is expected to hit store shelves on or near the projected target date of December 11; news broke at HBO, Subnova, Bungie.net,

Under the headline "The Circle Is Complete", MacSoft has put up a page on Halo for the Mac, which will be released on December 11. In addition to the official release date, as well as information on the new maps and weapons (same as in PC Halo), the page has the Minimum and Recommended system requirements:

Gholsbane tipped us off at RHL that Michael "Blades" Bagnall of MythDevelopers will appear on The Gamesome Mac, a show on MacRadio.com. It will be broadcast tonight, between 9 and 11 PM Eastern, and will be available on-demand after that.

Listening requires QuickTime 5 or better and a minimum 28.8 Kbps Internet connection.Further details can be found at MythDev.

Louis Wu at HBO, tipped off by Toxicoman and Howie, posted that there are system requirements for Mac Halo listed at the Apple Store. Look on the right hand side, in the "New to the Store" column, or do a search for "Halo". Nevermind that MacSoft's Al Schilling said only yesterday they weren't determined yet. Here's what the Store says:

MacSoft's Al Schilling told IMG that although the hardware specifications for Mac Halo aren't known yet, the boxes are going to be printed very soon.

Shades of Marathon? Hmmm.... Thanks HBO.

SketchFactor posted at Bungie.net about a note sent to him by Destineer. They claim they've had a breakthrough in performance, netting about a week's worth of improvements in a major late-night session. Beta 4, with network play, is supposedly coming soon.

As of this moment, trying to load the Mill's url, http://fileball.net/mill/ just redirects you to Fileball's front page. Looks like it's gone, perhaps for good this time.

The Lh'owon Ar'kives, containing files for players of Bungie's earlier shooter, Marathon, also hosted at Fileball, is still there.

On top of all the peace pipe smoking that seems to be going on around the Myth community fire tonight, Blades at MythDev has posted that new versions of the Myth clients are available (Mac - Windows), making the game compatible with Mac OS 10.3 (Panther).

Louis Wu at HBO noticed two articles, one at Inside Mac Games, and the other at MacGamer, placing the ship date of Mac Halo as December 3. Both quote an official press release from MacSoft, publishers of Halo on the Mac platform. Both mention a reference in that to resolutions of "1600 x 1200" pixels and "beyond".

Doobie at Marius.net writes that due to some server issues, they've had to change IP addresses. Because of that, the EEL file for Myth 2 that you need in your Myth II folder for Marius.net connectivity to work under version 1.4.x no longer works, because the old IP address is hard-coded into it.

SketchFactor has put up a little mini-update on Mac Halo, providing links to the recent interviews with Peter Tamte of Destineer and Phil Sulak of Westlake Interactive (both at HBO), as well as adding new comments by Al Schilling, the General Manager for MacSof

[image:4306 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]In an HBO Forum thread, David "Evil Otto" Candland gave some info from his personal experience with the version of Halo for the Mac, currently in beta testing.