Author: halo@bungie.org

I think Stuntmutt’s pining for interaction – check today’s One One Se7en. Just a few more days…(Louis Wu 20:56:06 UTC)

trigger119 let us know that there’s a new Halo 3 Beta montage up and ready for download at GamingTV – this one is from MMaster. Lots of snipes, lots of Spartan Laser kills. WMP9 or QT, 40-70 mb. Go watch for nostalgia!(Louis Wu 18:29:51 UTC)

KEEZY, from PreGameLobby, let us know that they’ve put together a Halo 3 Preparation Guide. A significant number of the points match up nicely with RVideo’s guide from last week – but there are a few extra steps which might be useful. Check it out!(Louis Wu 16:27:38 UTC)

Jasman’s Plasma Pistol and Rifle have been news on the toy front for a long time – but until now, I haven’t seen a picture (or a price) for the upcoming Energy Sword. BigBadToyStore is preselling all three – but it’s the $120 sword that surprises me. They’re not promising that this is the final…

Interesting… and maybe depressing for some folks who got their hands on Halo 3 early. According to Pro-G, Microsoft has confirmed that they will be banning Xbox Live accounts of folks who play Halo 3 before its street date – and they’ll do this whether you’re connected to XBL when you’re playing, or not. Ouch!…

The Illinois Daily Herald (a suburban Chicago paper) has an article about folks waiting for Halo 3 – and it features two HBO regulars, Toby Dillman and Darren ‘ViralSyris’ Maughan. Nice going, guys! (And thanks to ViralSyris for the tipoff.)(Louis Wu 14:43:52 UTC)

Very cool. Mike McDermott created a really cool paper master chief – and provided information for creating your own. Spectacular! (The program he used is free, but Windows-based; you can find a link in his instructions.) I found this at Rampancy.net – Narc found it at Kotaku.(Louis Wu 14:01:15 UTC)

Sean Pfeil pointed out an article at CVG, which discusses a Famitsu review of Halo 3; one 10 and three 9s from the four reviewing editors – an overwhelming endorsement, especially for a first-person shooter in Japan. (You won’t be seeing too many of these reviews yet; there’s actually a press embargo in place, worldwide,…

Lutzie let us know that the UK chain Argos might have screwed up and broken Halo 3 street date at some of their stores; a quick search around the net turns up a lot of anecdotal evidence, but no first-person accounts (“I picked up a copy!”). It looks like some Comets and Woolworths, too, have…

Kikizo has an interview with Harter Ryan, Executive Producer of Halo Wars – it’s an interesting discussion about how the game came together, what’s new and what’s not, and where the Ensemble team would like it to all go. Give it a read! Thanks to Narcogen, at Rampancy.net, for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 11:42:32 UTC)

A quick warning – Bungie.net goes down today around 9 am Pacific (noon ET, 4 pm UTC), for infrastructure upgrades. The news post says the site will be read-only… but in the past, it’s been mostly unreachable during upgrades. We post this to keep you from panicking; the downtime is planned, and what comes out…

DPAD lists the first official rankings for Halo 2 pros – see where your favorite team sits!(Louis Wu 11:21:48 UTC)

iMedia Connection has a massive article which looks at the marketing campaign Microsoft put together – lots of details about the whos, and whys, and hows. Comments like “Given the appeal of “Halo” to the emo crowd, […]” made me raise my eyebrows a bit… but all in all, a nice summary of the overall…

Curious about the numbers behind Halo? Wishing you could put your fingers on a list of stats about the game? 3Suns found a post at Evil Avatar that might be able to help.(Louis Wu 11:15:21 UTC)

KORHAL pointed out an article at PC World that talks about the Halo marketing juggernaut, and how it affects Microsoft as a whole. Worth a read.(Louis Wu 11:13:55 UTC)

Today’s Ctrl+Alt+Del has a matchup that seems… one-sided. Thanks to the millions who wrote in – Brandon Jones was first.(Louis Wu 11:12:06 UTC)

Chris Hamilton let us know that an Australian site will launch on the 25th – Finish the Fight is dedicated to the competitive Halo community in Australia (though they’ll have content for regular joes, too). Bookmark ’em! (Louis Wu 10:55:27 UTC)

The official press release for the Launch Madness events went out yesterday – you’ll find it at dozens of websites (including ours, actually). Major Nelson will be on hand in New York – but there will be bigwigs at all the named events.(Louis Wu 10:53:25 UTC)

Brodingo noticed a new theme for your 360 – it’s listed on Xbox.com, but not yet available on Marketplace. It’s based on the Halo: Uprising comic book. (Louis Wu 10:51:16 UTC)

PROPH37 found an odd mention on Gilbert Arenas’ blog – apparently, there’s a Halo version of his shoe coming out in the not-too-distant future. No pics yet… but this is the first I’ve heard of it. (Check out the post entitled ‘Introducing the GilIIZero’.)(Louis Wu 10:48:50 UTC)