LiL Poison was part of a roundtable discussion last week that was recorded for a podcast over at GameSHOUT – you can grab it from this page. (It’s the October 13 ‘Roundtable’ link.) Go listen to the youngest pro gamer in the world! 26.6 mb, mp3 format. Thanks, SexyJosh.

Stephen Loftus put together a pretty cool image showing the various relative sizes of the planetary bodies we know about in the Halo universe. This is worth looking at if you’re having trouble pinning down how big, say, the Alpha 4 Halo is in comparison to Jupiter’s moons. The full-sized image is way bigger than your average monitor, so it’s been broken up for navigation purposes.

Sponsors vs Freeloaders has put up a short (36 second) teaser for Episode 9, ‘Faith, Hope, and Duality’, of their machinima series ‘Flamewar’. Their site is currently being crushed (Laird, the host, is today’s Featured User on the RvB site, and has used that position to publicize the teaser), so we’re hosting copies for them – you can grab the WMP9 version (4.4 mb) or the QuickTime version (4.6 mb).

Oh, not again. Gamespot’s Rumor Control has mentioned yet another viral marketing campaign, with the really, really, REALLY low-probability outcome that it’s pointing to an August 1 2006 release date for Halo 3. Go read the Gamespot writeup for details – I’m too tired of this kind of thing to bother summarizing. (It’s not clear to me that the viral campaign is even being run by Microsoft, yet – it’s certainly not clear that Halo 3 is involved in any way – but I’d like to send a note to Microsoft’s marketing department: you’ve mined the viral campaign vein for all the gold you’re gonna get out of it. Move on.) Thanks to Black Six for the heads-up.

This came in yesterday, but… well, it’s been a tough weekend here. F13ND is covering MLG LA over at Team3D.net – you can swing by for interviews, preliminary results, and more!

Dang. All this water’s gone to my brain. Burnie posted last night that Red vs Blue Ep 64 would be up for sponsors about 12 hours ago (and for everyone else tomorrow night) – but I spaced. So if you’re a sponsor, go grab a copy. Because Andy is simply the best machinima character ever. And because Tucker is a hero. Sort of. And because Sarge does the Burt Ward thing.

Very cool. Gamasutra is bringing you a streaming version of Chris Butcher and Bart House’s talk about networking that they gave at the 2005 Game Developer’s Conference. It’s technical – well, obviously, you wouldn’t give a non-technical talk at the GDC – but it’s pretty fascinating stuff for folks who want to see some of the issues and decisions Bungie was dealing with when developing Halo 2. This time around, Google News Alerts beat Roger WIlco by about 5 minutes. (RW’s forum post, however, is a much better place for comments.) For what it’s worth – several other really interesting talks (non-Halo-related) are also available for viewing from that Gamasutra link.

Z writes to point out BSiK’s montage over at Halo2Forum.com. 70 mb. Snipey Snipey Sticky Sticky. (Halo and Halo 2 footage, combined.) Go watch.

Tempus Fugit points out a really positive review for Stubbs the Zombie over at 1Up.com – they felt that the ‘first non-Halo game using the Halo engine’ did a great job of living up to the strengths of its predecessor.

Well, the last 12+ hours have NOT been spent on Halo-related stuff; if you’re really interested, there’s a short journal entry over at RvB. That doesn’t stop the news from rolling in, though. Frankie was first – no, wait, he WASN’T – in telling us about this week’s Weekly Update… lots of Bungie minutiae, plus a few things that might be of interest to folks who just wanna know how this affects THEM. Things like… oh, well, the Leaderboards on Bungie.net are going away. (Yay!) Things like… a clarification of who’s NOT responsible for the holdup on the Halo 2 Soundtrack, volume 2. You know. Stuff like that. Go read. More news tomorrow.

Pinkuh Blues. In a coincidental piece of timing, Stuntmutt comments on Pinkuh’s new comic series in today’s One One Se7en (just as she announces a new piece of art).

Twenty new entries in the Fan Fiction section today. Read?

Pvt. Jenkins submitted a series of Halo themes for the Pocket PC – you can look at previews and grab the individual themes below. (If you wnt them all, grab this zip file (1 mb).

Backwash: download | preview Burial Mounds: download | preview Elite Boarding: download | preview Ivory Tower: download | preview Lockout: download | preview

Lockout Hall: download | preview Relic: download | preview Sniper: download | preview Turf: download | preview Waterworks: download | preview

Check ’em out!

Geezer Gamers did their best to determine what effect alcohol has on your Halo reflexes. Predictably, the data got a little fuzzy near the end. Thanks, 3Suns.

This week’s Halo Babies comic takes its own look at the Peter Jackson/Halo Movie news… I gotta say, I’m LOVING that final character. Thanks, Gruntsbane.

Pinkuh stopped by our forum last night to show off another slick piece of work; a fan had commissioned her to put his furry alter-ego (a blue hyena) into Spartan armor, and she did a wonderful job. Check it out – and be sure to browse through the rest of her Halo-related works in her HBO gallery, if you haven’t already!

Well, clearly the big Halo news in the past 12 hours is the fact that the latest issue of Game Informer magazine contains an article about the Halo character included in Dead or Alive 4. Her designation is Spartan 458, and the magazine article shows that the Mjolnir armor looks pretty good with Xbox360 graphics. (The magazine isn’t even on shelves yet – it’s been mailed to subscribers – so we can’t bring you scans, nor will we even point you to sites hosting them… but they’re not that hard to find.) As more information surfaces, we’ll be sure to bring you the details. Chaos Recon was first out of the box with this one, but several dozen people were hot on his heels. (The longest (and earliest) thread on our forum, with input from both Frankie and Achronos, is this one, started by Tempus Fugit.)

Bungie’s Halo Humpday Challenge has been on sabbatical for a while – but it’s back, and written up as a new Top Story at Bungie.net. They didn’t have any particular foes – they simply went up against random teams in the Team Snipers playlist on XBL’s Matchmaking. They walked away with 2 out of three wins… and have already lined up the next targets. As Frankie says, BEST GIF EVAR. (It’s not actually IN the story – it’s on their front page. Or you could just go there directly.)

XerxdeeJ stopped by our forum to announce another week’s batch of musings over at Tied the Leader. Many of them this week are related to site administration, or to the recent search for a new clan name (they settled on TTL Gunslingers, as a tip-o-the-hat to Stephen King), but there are some other tidbits buried in there, as well. I liked this bit on Whisper Mode…