Year: 2004

Mothergoat (author of some cool Halo fan music) has been bitten by the mapmaking bug – and his first map is now available for download. It’s called Transfer, and it’s pretty bumpy. (Mothergoat calls it ‘jump-heavy’.) Some nice touches, like the overarching longsword beams. There’s a small promo movie (3.9 mb, WMP9) if you want…

When the Limited Edition box set was originally announced, Halo forums across the net were flooded with folks outside the US worrying anxiously about whether it would be available internationally, and whether it would be available in PAL format. There’s still been no official confirmation – but some investigation by fans would suggest that non-US…

Gamespy has put up its Annual E3 Awards – and Halo 2 took #7. (It was beaten by four games and two handheld gaming devices.) Thanks, MinM.

Another IGN article – this one is called ‘Halo 2: A Deeper Look’. It checks out the little things that add up to make Halo 2 stand head and shoulders above its competition. Nicely written.

In going over the E3 coverage out there, I found a Hands-On article we missed last week; it was put up at GamePro. It’s not long, but gives a nice recap of the play afforded press and lucky public last week.

IGN has posted a ‘Second Time Around’ article – the reviewer got a chance to think a bit more about Halo 2 and strategy. It’s a good read. Thanks, HaloMasterr.

MacSoft has released a patch to bring Mac Halo up to v1.05. This fixes a number of graphical glitches – a full list (and download links) can be found in the press release. The download is 3.4 mb. (This is NOT a Custom Edition patch; Westlake is still evaluating that situation.)

Not that it should surprise anyone at this point, but Halo 2 just took home another award from E3 – Game Informer voted it Game of Show. Nice one!

Xbox.com has put together their Halo 2 page; many recent articles have all been linked there for easy access. One you might have missed (because we never posted news about it – we missed it) is an article about the 1000-person-big, nationwide, Microsoft-employee-only Halo 2 alpha test that took place a few months ago. Thanks…

Lots of new shirts available at Red vs Blue and its affiliated w00twear site; a new Doc shirt, a special edition Sarge shirt, and a Purple Octopus shirt. Visit RvB for all the details! Thanks to The Salmon Sausage for the heads-up.

One One Se7en solves a mystery that nobody even realized needed solving. Can you ask for anything more?

Halo: Resolution continues the encounter between MC and Bill Gates. Billy’s secrets… revealed?

Bah. Another missed email. Bongo wrote up a summary of the E3 demo over at Sector 7 yesterday, based on the released movies. Go read again.

Curll posted a note yesterday on xblGamers explaining the Clan pricing rumor (it was a psych/marketing class project, apparently) – I missed the email until just now. Go read.

Sanchez the Llama reminds us that Nerdstock 2004, a Halo Xbox tourney near Chicago, is coming up fast (June 26) – if you’re in driving distance, sign up and go play!

Looks like we missed a contest due to the E3 flood; SEspider is offering some cool Halo 2 action figures (when they come out) to the person who can make a Pelican jump with grenades. Details are in this forum post (with an adjustment of the due date in this post). Give it a shot!

Inspired by the Halo 2 multiplayer action at E3, Silverbrin has reworked ‘Under Cover of Night’ from the Halo soundtrack; you can find the results at music.psyjnir.org (6.6 mb, mp3 format). This version contains no audio from the original. Comments can go in this forum thread!

E3 caused the Fan Fiction section to be neglected – after weeding out the duplicates, the unreasonable entries, and combining a couple of insanely short chapters into a single entry (next time I just delete ’em; you can upload ’em again if you can’t follow the rules), we’re STILL left with 38 new pieces. Go…

A few days ago, Tina Leyk updated her Furnation site with a new Hunter sketch; we’ve finally gotten around to adding it to our collection here. (It’s at the end of the Unfinished Artwork section.) Thanks to Zeta for first pointing it out. (Tina created the artwork for a shirt worn by a number of…

Frankie has written up his account of the Bungie Fanfest last Thursday – and with the possible exception of seriously slandering yours truly (there was no intentional theft involved – REALLY), it’s a great writeup. Especially the mini-interview with ExcreBex. Go read it!