The Codex Series, a popular machinima series, has finished its first season, but is still seeing serious amounts of web traffic. (One of the news posts on their front page right now talks about numbers – they’re pretty high.) To recoup some of their investment, they’re offering sponsorships – there aren’t any episodes to see, but if you donate enough, they’ll send you a DVD, containing the full first season, plus plenty of extras. (Give ’em $50 or more, they’ll even autograph it for you.)

I nearly missed this yesterday, but Scott Vieth stopped by our forum to point out the next round of Hao tournaments to be held at Game Junkie, a video game store near Cincinnati, OH. FFA and Doubles, a week from this coming Saturday, entrance is $15 before the 21st, or $20 after that. Check the forum post for more details.

Last week, the new playlists (Multi-Team and Team Snipers) went up on Xbox Live, and some folks complained immediately that the matchmaking system was breaking their teams up all the time – even when they went in as a group of three. As Stuntmutt points out in today’s One One Se7en… that’s not ALWAYS a bad thing…

I meant to follow up on this when the auction ended – but the last couple of days have been really, really busy. Last week, we mentioned that Briar’s Armor, one of the fan-created Halo 2 costumes we’ve been following, went up for sale on eBay. THe auction closed Wednesday – a few people were bidding on it, but the winner had put in an initial bid that trumped everyone… he (or she) picked up the suit for $2,324.99. Not a bad chunk of change!

Seven new pieces for you in today’s Fan Fiction update. Ooh…

Wow. Remember that cool box the Limited Edition of Halo 2 came in? The Inquirer has a story this morning about a company in Denmark that’s suing Microsoft for stealing proprietary information about a metal DVD container, then passing it along to the rival company that ended up manufacturing the boxes. (Microsoft says it did no such thing.) It’s still in court – but who’da thunk there’d be controversy about the BOX?

After a pretty long down period, Outpost: Coagulation has another episode up for download. Episode 9, ‘Two Betrayals’, is a long (10:09, 83.9 mb, in WMP9 format) piece, following ostracism of the Juggernaut Elite, and his subsequent capture by the Humans. There’s one more episode left in season 1, and then they’ll start filming Season 2; they’ve got the scripts done already, they just need voice actors. (If you’re interested, drop them some email.) Thanks, trigger119.

Coolness. ManKitten posted his Halo coloring book a couple of days ago – today, psychophan7 posted a step-by-step ‘how I colored it’ article at LiveJournal. As someone who can’t draw his way out of a paper bag, but loves to watch others do their stuff… I find this kind of thing fascinating.

Halo features in a pretty funny Exterminatus Now comic today – thanks, Lothar Hex.

Captain Spark uploaded a couple of batches of dialogue snippets today. (One is huge.) You can find them both on his website, in zip files… or you can browse through them in our Dialogue Databank; there was a batch dated September 10 and another one dated September 15. Check ’em out!

Another vid has cleared the MPRRS queue – this one is a montage, and was posted (in slightly larger form, filesize-wise) on our forum yesterday. The thing Pookaki focused on was no-reticle no-scopes, but there are plenty of other kinds of kills. It’s available in WMP9 format (49.1 mb) or QuickTime format (50.4 mb). Enjoy!

I’ve been hesitant to post games.net links here (it seems that many of their pieces are written not because anybody believes what they say, but because they’re trying to be controversial and get traffic), but this one’s sort of fun. They’ve put up an article entitled ‘Five Ways to Save Video Games‘, and it’s basically a ‘don’t do this’ list. Halo makes 4 of the 5 no-nos (it misses being cited in the “Stop Treating Women Like Whores” category). Agree or disagree, give it a read and then sound off in our forum! Thanks, 3Suns.

A movie passed the MPRRS a few days ago – but because it was encoded in H.264, I thought it might be better to re-encode it into formats more universal across the hardware spectrum. This has taken a bit longer than expected – apologies to Spuzzum, the creator, and thanks for his patience! The video is called ‘Sticky Style 2’, and shows off some pretty amazing plasma grenade sticks in Halo 2 campaign play. (I shudder to think how long it took to set a couple of these up…) The brute tallies were especially entertaining. Watch it – and enjoy some really well-timed gameplay! You can grab a QuickTime version (37.6 mb) or a WMP9 version (40.8 mb)… then go grab your own stickydooms and see how you keep up!

I guess it’s Art Week – four new pics from Bryn ‘ofthehi77’ Casey, first posted over at his brother’s site, yayap.com. My favorite is this pic of a pair of Hunters – but I also really like this loose MC. A full-body shot of Cortana and Scarlett Johansson as Linda round out the batch. Go look!

Halo Arena has interviewed c0ld vengeance, longtime HBO denizen and occasional credit whore – go read what he likes (and doesn’t like) about Halo, in all its forms!

Vern Shields continues his overloading hijinx – he’s been so dedicated, he’s inspired Stuntmutt for today’s One One Se7en. (Hehe – is that a good thing, or a bad thing?)

Twelve new pieces for you in today’s Fan Fiction batch – go read!

Another avatar from Elnea – a female spartan with a light saber? Wonga. (She says she’ll never catch up with the number of pending requests for these, so you might want to re-think sending her your specs.)

Some of you may remember the Futuristic Sex Robotz, the Gangster Nerd Rap group that created ‘Don’t Make Us Kick Your Ass’ a while back. (It’s not clean – but it’s pretty hilarious, and I don’t even LIKE gangsta rap.) They’ve got a spiffy new website up, in preparation for a full-length album coming out early next year (entitled ‘Hotel Coral Essex’). There’s no new content – but it’s possible you haven’t heard their ‘Welcome to the Internet’ single, or seen their Halo-related content in the context of their own interface. If you missed them the first time around, go visit! It’s pretty polished stuff, all around.

Mothergoat has created a new version of ‘The Prisoner’, the song he released yesterday with his new HaloCE maps. This version is missing the narration at the beginning, making it more suitable for Halo vids. (If you use it as such, read his post carefully for credit requirements.) He’s linked a copy from his website… but we’re gonna mirror it just in case (he got swamped yesterday due to overeager fans, I don’t want that to happen again). MP3 format, 5 mb. Awesome.