Registrations for the Halo competition in Cyberathlete Professional League's Winter 2003 event starts today. 32 teams, first-come, first-serve. Thanks Blue's News.

There's a new, albeit short, preview of Halo on the PC done by Gamer's Pulse; it's got a quick rundown and some screenshots that suffered the usual fate. Their take is basically that it's worth it for the Internet multiplayer enhancements:

Halo's multiplayer on PC is distinctly more strategic than on Xbox, offering additional maps and weapons, as well as more strict gameplay parameters. When hosting a game, you'll be given a multitude of options regarding game parameters such as armor strength, starting health, the number of vehicles placed on the map, etc. You'll be allowed to hold two weapons and two types of grenades during play, forcing you to strategically decide which weapons will best serve your style of play. The addition of the Banshee, along with other vehicles, throws in another strategic element to gameplay, encouraging cooperative play and creative tactics. The new maps feature several vantage points for sniping, an element found heavily throughout the campaign.

Thanks to Blue's News.

With the interesting tagline above, CompUSA has announced their Halo VIP Contest, where the grand prize package includes VIP treatment at the CPL Winter 2003 event, participation in Nvidia's Halo tourney, a free PC game every month in 2004, and an Nvidia prize pack. All you have to do is preorder Halo for $49.99. We report; you shop. Thanks to CobaltNova, via Louis Wu at HBO.

The Silent Cartographers, a PC Halo mapmaking group, have got their website up now. They have 14 members and list several projects on their project page, including four new maps, one called "Aquaphobia", a clear reference to similarly named levels in Bungie games, such as Phforaphobia in Marathon and Gephyrophobia in PC Halo.

Zandervix over at MBO has posted a note on the availability of Myth Browser v1.81; it runs on Windows and Mac OS X (requires X11) and allows you to browse Myth games running on PlayMyth and Marius.net.

Want specs for PC Halo? There's a bunch: the official PC Halo site, and the other... official... PC Halo site... uh.. anyway. Most of the info is the same, except it's more specific in some areas. Apparently you can run Halo under Windows 98. Well, I'll be damned, it's good for something! Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO.

Two mapmaking-related updates from Subnova lately.

The first is the formation of a PC Halo Mapmaking group called The Silent Cartographers. They intend to make maps, weapons and vehicles for Halo PC, and unlike most other mapmaking groups, they are not recruiting new members.

The second is Marathon mapmaking news; the Windows editors Obed and M2Shaper have been updated; the newest versions now work with the latest version of Aleph One.

[image:4387 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Yes, we just had to put up just one more headline with a colon in it. Our instructors from copyediting class would weep. Anyway, Gearbox is apparently taking that gold master CD on a world tour; the latest pic shows it visiting some of the earnest employees of Hooters. We thought twice about it, then archived this one in the PC Halo Gallery anyway.

Louis Wu at HBO pointed out that the author of Sybex's Strategy Guide for PC Halo, Doug Radcliffe, posted in the HBO forum that the guide is finished and should be out around the same time as the game. However, more exciting than that are some of the extras that will be included:

• Developer notes from Jaime "Case" Griesemer, Tyson "Ferrex" Green, and Paul Bertone
• Halo Bible Excerpts
• Community Spotlights on HBO, Randy Glass, Miguel "Freewill" Chavez, and Red vs. Blue
• Easter Egg list

All in all, it sounds like it'd be worth buying just for the extras, let alone the strategy guide.

Emil from CobaltNova let us know that registrations for the 32-team CPL PC Halo Winter Event, that will feature a tweaked Assault mode, will begin on September 23. Up until October 14, a team that has registered may drop out without any penalty, so there's no reason not to go right ahead if you've got a team and think you will play.

[image:4378 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Gearbox has put up their own press release officially announcing that PC Halo has gone gold, and there's even more photographic evidence of that fact now-- a picture of the Lead Quality Assurance Tester holding a gold CD. We've archived it in the PC Halo Gallery.

Blue's News spotted three more previews of PC Halo recently: DailyGame, GameZone, and Loadedinc. Gee, we're beginning to feel left out here that our site doesn't have a second word in its name that we can mis-capitalize.

[image:4375 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]This week's exclusive image from Gearbox is a shot of the PC Halo development team; it's in the PC Gallery now.

[image:4361 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Adrenaline Vault cooked up 27 new PC Halo Screenshots of their own, which we've put in the PC Halo Gallery. Louis Wu pointed them out, but must have counted differently than I did, since he cites 28 and I could only find 27... hmm... the mystery of the missing screenshot?

[image:4336 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Well, the gold master chiefs, which appeared on the Gearbox site, then disappeared, and then reappeared, were a harbinger of things to come, but the Microsoft press release made it official-- PC Halo has gone Golden Master, ready to head to duplication on its way to store shelves. There's a shot of the master CD over at Gearbox.

In addition, to celebrate the event SketchFactor has posted the interview with Michel Bastien that included questions from fans.

Next, it appears that CPL's announced mode for their tournament-- Assault-- is not the same version of Assault included in the initial release, but will be added in a post-release patch.

Finally, Bungie put up 13 new screenshots of PC Halo; they now live in the PC Halo Gallery.

Thanks to Steve of Forerunners, Emil at CobaltNova, and Louis Wu at HBO for information in this report.