Author: Louis Wu

It’s been mentioned around the net (for example, here on Rampancy.net) that attendees to yesterdays’s I Love Bees ‘Training Exercises’ (multiplayer Halo 2 gameplay) received commemorative DVDs – at least one person has already ripped it and put it up for BitTorrent download. Unfortunately, there’s only a single seed at the moment (with a full…

Matt Slagle wrote a sizeable piece on piracy, and how it’s affecting gamemakers, for the AP newswire. So far I’ve seen it on Yahoo News, MSN.com, The Globe and Mail (Canada), and the Washington Post. I’m sure it’ll show up elsewhere. It’s a good read – and not just because he quoted me. :-> Thanks…

FTC 15, released to members a few days ago, is now available to the masses. 9:10 long, in DivX and QuickTime formats, weighing in at 32 and 31 mb, respectively… go watch. (There are BitTorrent links you should use if you can.) Thanks, Andrew!

Halo Babies has posted the final episode in the 30-strip series that started in April. The door’s open, though… the news post makes it clear that Gruntsbane is taking a break for a bit – the site will continue with fan art and contests, but new ‘official’ strips will be a little bit down the…

Just a quick note – individual shops that are having special events at midnight on Tuesday have begun to write to us, asking us to let people know what they’re up to. I’d love to – but we can’t (unless you want the news page of this site to consist of hundreds of these announcements…

A number of people noticed that Bungie.net’s Stats page was up for a short time – at the moment, it seems that ALL of Bungie.net is down. I’d expect it’ll be like this for the next few days – they’ve got an awful lot of stuff that has to work by Tuesday, so be patient.

ZiplocBodyBag and Cybrfrk have grabbed a second G4TV commercial starring the RvB team – this one is Church and Sarge, and it’s only 10 seconds. 1.6 mb, hi-res QuickTime format. Enjoy!

Not really Halo-related, but Dave Scully (Sargeant Johnson) rocks, so it’s worth a read. Dave will be hosting The Lunchtime Show with David Scully, a political satire show broadcasting on Sundays from 12:30 to 1:00 at the Static Factory. Thanks to Frankie at Bungie.net for the heads-up!

Gamestyle got the lowdown on ten super-secret features of Halo 2 – I’ll guarantee you haven’t read about ANY of these! Thanks, Lothar Hex.

Adam Daniel found ANOTHER New York Times piece today – a piece about Blockbuster video game launches. Focus? Yep. Halo 2. Go read!

The Halo 2 launch is even gonna be big in Singapore. Read about it.

Sep7imus sent in a nice link to a story in today’s New York Times Circuits section. (Free registration required.) It’s a decent overview of the I Love Bees game, which ends today. If you’ve held off following this, this might be a nice door in.

Spill Magazine in Norway is giving away 4 tickets to the Norwegian launch party: visit this page, answer a pretty trivial question, you’re entered to win. (I think.) All info comes from Kabeer Nasir, since I don’t read Norwegian.

8 million people noticed that nilerogers.com put up a new clip from the Halo 2 soundtrack – this one’s called High Charity, and the snippet 1:19 long, 1.2 mb large. A little spooky, too. Great screen in the Listening Station flash presentation for it. someboy was first – but thanks, all! (5 to go!)

Rocketwidget noticed that last month’s XBN Halo 2 spread (one of two Halo-related articles in the magazine) is now online – full text is here, and all the new screenshots that are part of the story start here. We’ll still be putting the press scans up in the next week or two – but you…

We got a fun step-by-step from Devastator yesterday – he got hold of some pieces from the Nightmare Armor guys, and used them to make himself a nice costume. Give it a look!

Tim Bennett sent along a scan (166K) of some street press for the Sydney (Australia) Halo 2 launch party – looks like it’s gonna be fun! Update: a bit more on the event is here, at Aussie Xbox (thanks, Gossip).

Kornman has released a small application that can edit animations for Halo – go grab a copy from the Gearbox forums! Thanks, MasterGrief.

Finchmeister points out that the Walk of Game voting is over; they haven’t confirmed the vote yet, but you can see the current ranking on the website, and the two top winners in the Game/Character section are Halo and Master Chief. Looks like the last minute push might have helped! Unless something weird happens, Halo…

Speaking of comics, today’s Calvin and Halo looks at the crazy world of collectibles… and brings up a pretty good question.