CJC pointed out a video he found on the MLG forums – it’s a takeoff of the MTV show ‘Punk’d’, where Ashton Kutcher plays practical jokes on celebrity friends. The Halo version has tricks played on unsuspecting XBL players. I watched the first couple – it’s probably funnier if you’re there. The vid is huge – 148 mb, WMP9 format (it’s 13 minutes long)… hosted at FileFront, so bandwidth shouldn’t be a huge problem.

Dennis Powers has posted a 320×240 WMP9 version of Bootstrap Boon’s ‘Oddball‘ – this one weighs in at 57.5 mb. If you haven’t downloaded this yet, you can save 20 mb or so grabbing this one!

Foo Mo Jive points out that Podtacular! Ep 8 has been posted – they’ve interviewed Major Nelson in this one, and the Map of the Week is Gemini. 34.5 mb, MP3 format – go get it!

Mike, from H2Press.net, writes to say that they’ve finished work on the Firefox version of their toolbar – more info can be found here.

Boatloads of content over at MLGPro.com right now – in addition to tons of results from MLG Seattle (including mountains of VoD footage), there’s an interview with Team US Eh (recorded after MLG Nashville) and another with IGS Monglers (a team of top stars from three teams that came together to win MLG Nashville.). Thanks, Dolbex and 3Suns.

Last Thursday, the Houston Chronicle put up a front-page spread (front page of the Entertainment section, that is) on Matt Leto, better known to Halo fans as Zyos. Nice read – and nice to see mainstream articles like this one about competitive Halo players! Thanks, CHRISVIOXXX.

The second video offering we’d like to draw your attention to is something that passed the MPRRS yesterday. It was created by Andras Ostrom, It’s called ‘Gladiator Evolved’, and it might be the best recreation of a movie scene in the Halo engine I’ve ever seen. The melding of audio from Gladiator and content from Halo 2 is astoundingly good; this movie covers the entire opening battle of the movie (all 12+ minutes of it), and it makes me want to go back and watch the real movie. Camera angles are awesome, timing is impeccable, appropriate choices for substitution are as perfect as I can imagine. This one’s big (because it’s 12:20 long)… but it’s absolutely, positively worth the download. Grab it in its original QuickTime format (80.9 mb), or in WMP9 format (81.5 mb) – you won’t regret it.

It seems that my news catch-up is going to need to wait until this afternoon; there’s too much family stuff to handle this morning. Before starting the carpentry and gardening, though, there are a couple of video bits you should watch. If you’re a Red vs Blue Sponsor (signups are available again – $10/6 months will get you all the goodness), you can grab Episode 60, ‘Fight or Fright’, is available for download. (That link will work for the public soon – probably tonight or tomorrow – but we won’t be posting another link for it, just keep an eye on it.) The writing just continues to get better – I’m loving this season. Go watch – you know you want to.

I’m back – thanks to Ding for minding the store while I was gone. I did a pretty silly thing (though not one i regret for a second) – I went on a spur-of-the-moment trip across the US to attend the moving-in party Bungie was holding at their new digs in Kirkland, WA. (We’ve mentioned the move a couple of times – you can check our news for more info.) As I mentioned in a forum post last night, I was pretty darned impressed with the new space; it’s gorgeous, well-thought-out, spacious, and productivity-enhancing. And such. Anyway, I’m home, and though I’m taking the evening off to attend a function with my wife, I WILL be doing my best to catch up on all news since Friday – probably tomorrow. For those who missed it, there was a Weekly Update posted at B.net last night, as usual – as of 3 pm yesterday afternoon, there were over 8500 Hurricane Katrina shirts sold, for a Red Cross donation total of over $120,000. WOW. (I got a look at some of the auction items that will be made available soon – man, I hope these go for what they’re worth, because that will be a LOT of money.) There’s also info on the Halo movie, music, stuff they won’t talk about, and Matchmaking playlists. And of course, a Mister Chief piece – in fact, one you’ll be able to bid on soon. Go read!

The all-girl gaming clan PMS is given 3 pages in the latest Entertainment Weekly magazine (Sept. 16 issue, on sale the 9th) No online edition as far as I can tell. Since they’re heavily into Halo, there’s much talk about the game, and their participation in the CPL 2005 Summer Championships. Interesting to see how Halo is again used as an example of a game that draws you in, no matter what your background.

With the Wu gone this weekend, updates are a little sporadic, but we’ll do the best we can. First up, thanks to a heads up from Anton P. Nym, The Escapist’s latest issue has an article written by John Tynes, a tabletop game aficianado that had some adventures in computer game development, it’s an interesting read, esp. when you get to the part where he mentions his role in Bungie’s aborted Phoenix project. Oh, what a tease!

A few days ago, a secret message was discovered on the mysterious site Origen Xbox 360. The details can be found in this IGN article– basically, there’s a Latin message on the page that, if you kinda squint at it, may or may not have something to do with what may or may not be Halo 3. We don’t know what it means, we don’t have any secret information to help you with, and we’re not willing to guess on record as to what this page means. So stop emailing us about it, OK?

Bootstrap Boon is an HBO Helljumper who put together a long (21:39 long) story called ‘Oddball’ – it uses footage from a couple of multiplayer maps coupled with dialogue from the Dialogue Databank, all wrapped up with nice background music, to tell the story of a Spartan/Covenant conflict. It passed the MPRRS recently, so you can grab copies from our server. Warning: the original WMP9s are a bit off, aspect-wise. I asked BootStrap’s brother about fixing this, and got no response – so you’ll have to live with the problem. Also, the low-res WMP9 has screwed-up audio at the start – again, this is unfixable by me. The QuickTime versions (both low and medium res) do not have either of these problems. Grab the one that makes the most sense to you (please be gentle, these are huge, and we don’t want to be poor next month):

• WMP9 Medium (856×480, 166.9 mb)
• WMP9 Small (428×240, 79.1 mb)
• QuickTime Medium (856×384, 138 mb)
• QuickTime Small (428×192, 66.6 mb)

Pretty ambitious work!

Stuntmutt takes a walk down Memory Lane in today’s One One Se7en – I’m with ya, brother.

In the ‘what fans are doing’ category, Laird, of Sponsors vs Freeloaders, pointed me to an eBay auction in which he’s selling a sketch of an SvF character, with all proceeds going to Hurricane Katrina relief. Check it out!

Over at Halo Babies, the winning strip in their recent ‘Red vs Blue’ contest has been released as this week’s normal comic. Nrek did the writing, Gruntsbane did the artwork. Knowledge of a popular custom gametype in Halo 2 multiplayer is necessary to get the joke. (Cute stuff!)

The Video Games Live tour, originally set up for this summer but delayed because interest was too great for some of the venues, is getting ready to kick off again; it starts in Seattle on October 29, with 27 additional tour dates to be announced soon around the US. There’s an official trailer, in both WMP9 and QuickTime formats – go watch!

Seventeen new pieces for you in today’s Fan Fiction update – go read. (I let a haiku through, because there’s no real policy about them at this point – but I’m also MAKING a policy, because haiku crazes on the forum have shown me their potential for overwhelming the fanfic section. From now on, I have to say ‘no’ to haikus – you’re welcome to post them on our forum, but please don’t add them to the Fan Fiction section. Thanks!)

I hesitate to mention this, because the files are enormous… but hey, what the heck. A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned that Cody Miller had completed the Twin Galaxies Halo 2 Bounty – complete Halo 2 on Legendary difficulty, with no deaths… today, he posted a note that the finished run had been uploaded to archive.org. There are two versions – a low-res, 800 mb copy… and a higher-res, 2 gb copy. (Yes, you read that right, 2 gigabytes. It is, after all, three and a half hours long.) QuickTime format. Amazing. Simply amazing. He makes it look almost easy… Update: For those having trouble with a direct download of the larger file, we’ve made it available via BitTorrent as well (with a chunk of seed bandwidth to boot). Remember – this puppy’s 2GB large.

Couple of tournament newsbits for you: Chappelle writes to point out an ongoing series of tournaments at Survivor Halo (join up, win cash), and Chryton mentions a tourney coming up in Bowling Green, Kentucky on September 24th – registration is $30, top prize is a Pontiac Sunfire. What are you waiting for? Update: We also heard from LTL Legolas, of Larger Then Live [sic], who wrote to point out the LTL League, an online league that’s free to enter. There are no prizes (at least not yet), but you can join for the joy of competition. Rules are here, signup info is here, and gametypes are here.