Year: 2004

Recently, we mentioned a surprise promotion coming today – I’m proud to be able to tell you about the Halo 2 Backstage Pass Sweepstakes. Win a chance to visit Bungie’s headquarters for 3 days/2 nights and play some Halo 2 before the rest of the world! Details are in the Halo 2 Backstage Pass Press…

Computer and Video Games has posted part 3 of their in-depth look at Halo 2’s multiplayer – this one focuses on Weapons. Good read, again. (Was the headline a nod to Iain M. Banks, or just a coincidental choice of words?) Thanks, Wiggum.

AngelicLionheart wrote about a Halo tourney in Athens, GA to benefit Habitat for Humanity; play Halo, win a chance at one of four copies of Halo 2, and help houses get built! Check out all the details in this Bungie.net forum post.

wopkins, who showed off a breakdancing MC a couple of months ago, is back with a threatening grunt. Spits, too. WMP and QT formats, at this point. Nice work!

What? It’s Wednesday, and there hasn’t been an art update yet? Wait, what was yesterday’s? Oh, yeah… wallpaper. Okay, here’s ten more creations for the Miscellaneous Art Section. Some of these just flat-out ROCK. Go look.

The next big MLG tournament will be in Los Angeles, on September 25 – and you can find travel details over on the MLGPro.com website. If you need help on where to stay or how to get around, check it out!

I vaguely remember Boxer telling me that today’s Adventures in Disaster (episode 10) should be up at akba.info. It seems, in fact, to be so. Artwork rocks, but if the MC were really this dumb, we’d never have made it off the Pillar of Autumn. Spoilers, just so I don’t get email from folks saying…

Dev was working on a flash cartoon called “Halo: The Battle of Reach” – he was almost done, and a virus ate his computer. He saved a few things, but most of it is gone. He put together a teaser for the project, in Flash, as an attempt to entice folks to help him out.…

Chronomaw points out that Halogen, the C&C Generals Total Conversion, has posted a large update for the mod, including unveiling the interface for the game and their concept of the UNSC logo, as well as some new renders. Check it out!

Geeoff noticed a skin at Skinz.org that bears a striking resemblance to our good buddy 343 Guilty Spark. It’s unlikely that the author took any inspiration at all from Halo… but it’s STILL a neat pic.

Last week, Eclarap of Halo France posted a huge writeup of his visit to Bungie’s offices in early August, a bit ahead of schedule. (The ‘ahead of schedule’ part wasn’t malicious – it was all a misunderstanding.) In the furor that erupted over this release, the Halo.fr writeup was pulled down, but Microsoft bumped up…

As Ding mentioned yesterday, we recently saw the return of one of the early stars in the Halo Fan Firmament. In the year after Halo was released, Frogblast was on the front lines of the engine-pushers, seeing how far Halo could be deformed before it broke. (As far as I know, it never did, though…

Longtime community member Shishka posted a note on our forum (and a sizeable news post on Subnova) explaining the latest twist in his life… he’s been hired by Bungie as a contract design assistant. It was to be under wraps for a little longer… but a certain aptly-nicknamed Bungie employee spilled the beans a bit…

Uncle Mato found an auction on eBay in which someone is selling a 10 DVD set of themselves playing through the entire campaign of Halo (one level per disc). Starting bid is $20.00. The idea is to help you through if you’re stuck, or something… but remember that there are plenty of text walkthroughs on…

Brand-new top story at Bungie.net; Frankie busts some common rumors floating around out there. Most of these have been debunked already – usually by Frankie himself – but this is a good collection of the most outrageous ones, all collected in one place, all handled with panache and a heaping spoonful of scorn. A couple…

Jarrad Whitaker, aka Akdor 1154, has arranged the Halo main theme for piano, with the approval of its composer, Marty O’Donnell. There are two versions, both in PDF format; the original theme, from the main menu (405K), and the extended version that plays during the warthog run in the Maw (Truth And Reconciliation Suite -…

Okay… so if you could think of the most degrading position possible to put the Master Chief in… would it match this? (1.2 mb, QuickTime format, don’t watch this if you don’t want nightmares. Please don’t send Roger Wilco hatemail. Yell at him in this forum thread, instead.) Realize, too, that the entire ugly situation…

Bungie.net has put up their own copies of the 10 new screenshots – you can find them in the Halo 2 Screenshot Gallery. Well, some of you can. I’m having trouble right now; some machines here can see the thumbnails, but get errors trying to load the full images, while others can’t even get to…

Games Domain has put up its own Multiplayer Hands-On article – one piece of info that hasn’t shown up a lot is a comment about the matching process, with respect to connection speed: “As far as the connection quality goes, when you’re being matched to join a game,” Jarrard explained, “you’re not just being checked…

That Weasel writes to let us know that Episode 10, Chuckzilla, and Episode 11, Green, are both available at the Grunts are People Too!!! website. Chuckzilla chronicles the rampage (and downfall) of the infamous monster grunt, while Green requires some serious work to translate, but checks out Halo from the other side. Modding to the…