I had meant to post this a few minutes before midnight, but festivities here at home prevented me from doing so.

All of us here at HBO wish all of our friends and family the very best for a bright and fruitful new year.

In what I would like to consider a tradition started back at the end of 2003, we will shut down the forum for a few hours. Those of you forum monkies will have no choice but to interact with your loved ones and think of the coming 12 months and all the goodies that might swing our way.

Clink a glass of champagne for me, willya? 🙂

Over at Red vs Blue, their annual New Year’s video has been posted for sponsors – should be up for everyone later today. (I’d guess before midnight, Central time… but hey, I’ve been wrong before.) Made me laugh – though I don’t think it encouraged any actual resolution-keeping… Go watch! (Thanks, SaBoT.)

Interesting. Slith points out a ‘Covenant Mystery Ship’ from the bridge screens on the Pillar of Autumn; there are representations of two types of Covenant vessel, and one looks similar to the CCS-class cruiser (the Truth and Reconciliation is of this class). The other is… squatter. The T&R-style ship can be seen in this in-game screenshot (I couldn’t actually find it on a cutscene), and the ‘mystery’ ship is nicely represented on this high-res screen released by Bungie several years ago. Looks sort of like a Halo 2 boarding craft to me… what do you think?

Pinkuh has updated her Lost the Lead comic – and this one is Halo-related! YAY! (There’s no way to link directly to the comic page… this link will get you there, until she posts another one, and then it won’t any more. But if you’re visiting after this post went live, you’re looking for the 12-30-05 strip.) Great artwork – but hey, that’s to be expected.

Eep – I meant to post this yesterday, but it got lost in the pre-New Years Eve-planning. Z, over at halo2forum.com, announced a new montage contest a couple of days ago – and this one has what none have had before: cash prizes for the winners. There’s a thousand dollars on the line; at least half of that, and maybe more, will go to the first-place winner, thanks to a sponsor… so if you’re into making Halo 2 montages, you might wanna go check out the h2f thread. The submission deadline is several months off, so you’ve got time to collect good gameplay clips.

Late last night, a new comedy passed the Movie Peer Review Rating System (submissions are WAY off, so we haven’t been hosting a lot of films – are people just not making them any more?) – it’s a re-enactment of a Chris Farley bit from the movie Tommy Boy. You can grab a copy in either WMP9 format (17 mb) or QuickTime (17.4 mb). This is not the same Halo content as the Tommy Boy clip that has been circulating the internet since early November (you can find a copy of that here, for example) – but it is the same clip from the movie itself.

BiGmAc2121 has a new montage coming out soon – the trailer for it was edited by MikeMan27, and can be found on Halo2Forum.com. 19 mb, WMP9 format. Short, sweet, action-packed. What more do you want?

A couple of tournaments were announced on our forum yesterday – there’s a 2v2/4v4 Halo 2 event in Pittsburgh, PA, on Sunday January 8 (forum post was here, with a tourney flyer here), and a Halo 1 event in Groton, CT, on Saturday January 7, with details in this post. Next weekend looks to be busy in the Northeast!

If you don’t like puns, don’t read today’s One One Se7en. (Then again, if you don’t like puns, you’ve had 418 chances before today (not counting Sunday, Holiday, Guest, or Archive strips) to learn that lesson… so you do what you need to do.)

Well… it’s the second week of experimentation with the submission process for the Halo Fan Fiction section, and clearly a number of submitters haven’t bothered to glance at the submission guidelines. Several stories were rejected for lack of basic formatting for readability – if you want to ensure that your story is archived here, you need to at least read the rules. That said – there were STILL 22 pieces that got added this week – go read!

GU Comics incorporated Halo Zero in a strip a couple of days ago – it’s pretty funny. Thanks, Ross.

oil has created a module for Google’s personal homepage – you can read about it, see screenshots, and find install links in this forum post. Nice!

This week’s VG Cats comic was posted a few days late – but it’s got a Halo mention, so we’ll let him go. Looks like Echoes was first with the heads-up on our forum.

You know the holiday stuff is getting to you when you start missing stuff. Scooter, from Game Junkie, posted a note on our forum yesterday about an upcoming tourney at his store in West Chester, OH, on January 21. $100/team to get in (this goes up a couple of days before the event), minimum of $800 in cash and prizes. There’s a web page with more info.

What makes this week’s Halo Babies comic so funny is how appropriate it is… for both the BABIES… and for forumgoers everywhere. (What does that tell you about forumgoers?) Go read!

There were three images that had been included in Jilly’s fanfic last week that did NOT get included in the Misc Art update this morning – and that’s because Theo Prins has his own gallery page here at HBO. We’ve added those three images there – and the more I look at his work, the more I’m astounded by how much depth he can create with just a few strokes. If you haven’t seen these… look now.

As penance for letting the Wallpaper queue get so out of hand recently, I’ve cleared out the Miscellaneous Art queue, as well. You’ll find the images that were included in Jillybean’s Christmas Fan Fiction last week, as well as dozens of others – HrtBrkr, GT Gundam, Dillo, and Kristina Smith all have multiple entries, and there are a number of other impressive pieces. Go browse!

The Contra Costa Times put up a series of top 5 lists for teens for 2005 – and Halo 2 is the top choice on the ‘Top 5 Video Games’ list. Now that’s too legit to quit.