Author: Rampancy – Se7en Years Of Halo

The fan community switched into high gear this evening as the Halo 3 CG TV Commercial aired, and digitized versions began popping up immediately. One of the first is a very small, relatively low quality WMV version kindly provided by HYB. Next, Xbox.com had its own streamed version, but as it doesn’t play on Macs…

Okay, so right now, if you’re a US or Canadian resident with an XBL account linked to a Passport account and you use Internet Explorer 6 on Windows (or can create a configuration that mimics the above) you can access www.halo3.com and begin the signup process for the beta. Along the way, you’ll be told…

Halo fans will be reaching for their remote controls this evening as they get ready to watch the first television advertisement for Halo 3 tonight during Monday Night Football in the U.S. The commercial was created by Digital Domain using some of Bungie’s models for Halo 3, but unlike most promotional materials for the Halo…

A new version of the open source Aleph One engine for playing the Marathon games has been released. 0.17 offers a number of netplay-related improvements, and as such is netplay-incompatible with previous versions.

I can’t see any official confirmation of this from Bungie yet, but it appears as if Microsoft sent out a press release that says there’ll be signups for the public beta of Halo 3 multiplayer on Xbox Live, and that the signup form will be at www.halo3.com. At least, so says Kotaku, Techspot, Playfuls.com, PlanetXbox360,…

Spartan Jag got matched up with a bunch of quitters in Team Slayer on Xbox Live, but came away with a heartwarming tale of good sportsmanship and good manners involving a group not unknown to HBO’s readers– the Tied The Leader Gunslingers. A good read, check it out. Also be sure to check out TTL,…

1Up.com obviously didn’t get enough Bungie in their “three weeks of Halo 3” coverage, because now the company is getting a mention again– this time for Marathon. Unfortunately, it’s not a flattering mention. Marathon 2 is featured in their Best Worst Ads 3 feature, on page six, which shows their ad from 1996 that compares…

The Escapist has a nice piece on how Microsoft has gone from being a puppy to a big dog in the computer and console game space, and how often that has been achieved through acquisitions. To do so, they spoke with Bruce Shelley of Ensemble Studios, best-known for their Age of Empires series of RTS…

Buried near the bottom of an interview by Dean Takahashi over at the Mercury News interview with Microsoft’s president of Entertainment and Devices Robbie Bach, comes the news that Microsoft will look for other studios to make the Halo film with, or give up the project. Does it make sense for Microsoft to be in…

Then head right over to Something Awful for their sneak preview of Halo 3 where the Master Chief can kill you with his mind.

That’s how long a look 1Up actually got at Halo 3’s campaign mode. They described the area they were in as an outdoor war zone on Earth. They mentioned Covenant air craft that disregarded them, and a new Ghost apparently specialized for use by Brutes. Oh, and the Gauss Hog returns. Other than that… not…

A selection of the screenshots of Halo 3 multiplayer that have been featured in gaming magazines and embargo-breaking European websites for the past week or so are now up at Bungie.net in pretty high resolutions. Inside the main Halo 3 image gallery, Rampancy now has a Halo 3 Multiplayer screenshot gallery for them. Enjoy!

Eurogamer is doing a retrospective on the top twelve exclusive franchises for the first Xbox console. Halo 1 and 2 unsurprisingly clock in at #1.

Ars Technica notes that recent decreases in the costs of parts and manufacturing may mean Microsoft no longer has to subsidize the sales of their Xbox 360 console with profits from software: they may be making as much as $75 on each console sold, according to iSuppli. Meanwhile, it is estimated that Sony will lose…

Four Aleph One netmaps and a Lua CTF script for Marathon fans today over at Aleph One, courtesy of eX and W’rkcacnter.

One of the oft-discussed topics among those following the upcoming Halo Wars RTS game by Ensemble for the Xbox 360 console is whether or not a workable interface for a strategy game can be created for a console. Many commenters have offered that RTS games just belong on PCs to be played with mice and…

1Up’s latest Halo feature is a retrospective on the Halo series. The teaser on their three weeks of Halo 3 microsite mentions the “Halo/Marathon universe” but there’s nary a mention of Marathon there, and as we all know, the two universes are separate anyway. Right? Of course, they’ve also got coverage of yesterday’s revelations about…

Bungie commemorates the fifth anniversary of the release of Halo with an announcement that touches on both Halo 3 and Halo 2. First, there will be a Halo 3 television commercial airing during Monday Night Football on December 4th. Secondly, in the spring of 2007 there will be more Halo 2 maps available. They won’t…

Five years ago today, Halo shipped to eager Bungie fans and the unsuspecting masses of Xbox early adopters around the world. To commemorate this (and whet your appetite for whatever big news is to come later) Frankie has put up an Anniversary Panel of game journalists and fansite editors (including HBO’s own Louis Wu) to…

The newest installment of 1Up’s Three Weeks of Halo 3 looks at player complaints about Halo 2’s online play and how those are being addressed in Halo 3, including weapon spawns, dual-wielding, player icons and more. In particular, Ferrex mentions how the weapon spawn system in Halo 1 was made, and how in Halo 3,…