Midnight Carnage submitted a video called Spartan Team Zulu, the opening episode of a machinima series based on Relic. The MPRRS liked it, overall. The intro’s pretty good, but really – hopefully, like the RvB intro, it’ll be in the first episode and no others. It’s available in WMP9 format (26.8 mb) or QuickTime format (26.4 mb). Enjoy!

On a happier note, we finally have today’s One One Se7en online for you to read. I didn’t get the joke, at first, because I didn’t recognize the guy. Stuntmutt, I guess, thought I was kidding when I told him that, because he didn’t clarify. This requires me to admit to you that I own no Eminem albums, and have never seen 8 Mile. Sorry.

I’m not going to comment much, past pointing you to the info: Jordan R put a note on our forum pointing to an 80-minute interview that ChatterBox (“Video Game Radio”) held with Jack Thompson – it’s an amazing listen. Have you ever shouted “OMGWTF!?” at the radio? I have, now.

XerxdeeJ posted his weekly Tied the Leader update on our forum – there’s a reader poll asking for the cleverest in-game taunt, a look at a potential wedding ring (congrats, btw, XerxdeeJ!), a reader poll looking for reasons why Halo is as popular as it is, and semantic study of onomatopoeic utterances, among other things. Go check it out!

GamersHell has written a review of the Multiplayer Map Pack – “the perfect addo-on for multiplayer Halo 2 fans.” Give it a read!

Microsoft Game Studios is looking for your feedback about the Multiplayer map pack – visit this survey and fill it out by August 17. Thanks, Cybrfrk.

Last week, Frankie said that if nobody found the Hi Ben egg in Halo by this Friday, he’d reveal the details. krakho pointed out that over on the Bungie.net forums, M0N3y 5H07 laid out how to find the egg, on the level Regret. (There are screenshots in that thread, if you want to hunt for them.) AlucardX posted a note on the HIH forum pointing to the description, and Reidon made a video showing where, exactly, to find it. I hate Putfile with a passion, so I’ve posted the 3.5 mb WMP9 vid (and a 3.8 mb Quicktime version) on our servers. Again: M0N3y 5H07 found the egg, Reidon made this vid showing how to find it. Congrats to everyone!

Whee – looks like The Art of Halo is selling nicely – Eric Trautmann mentioned on his blog that he received his first royalty check from Del Ray, and he thanks the Halo fans who bought this game. Nice! (Thanks to Rampancy.net for noticing so quickly.)

Black Six wrote to let us know that today’s Mac Hall (guest-drawn by Jamie Noguchi, whose Angry Zen Master comic we mentioned a couple of months ago) has some pretty cool Halo content in it. (The beginning of that story arc started a few comics ago – you might want to look there first.) w00t! (The topic itself is so chock-full of geek-goodness, I’m having trouble cataloguing it all.)

Funkmon points out that he’s now helping out at halomachinima.com – and that he’s mirrored all season 1 episodes of the Halo CE Chronicles there. (Some people have trouble with the HCEC downloading mechanism; this is a bit more straightforward.) He’s also added tons of older movies – poke around and see what you find!

MLGPro.com has posted Part 2 of their MLG Philly writeup – Dyslexia takes a look at the Halo 1 play. Great fun! Thanks, 3Suns. (There are also over 300 pics from the event, in their gallery.)

SketchFactor and Frankie wrote up a fascinating piece on Bungie’s experiences at G-Phoria, the awards ceremony that showed on G4TV last night. (It was recorded a couple of weeks ago, and we announced the results then – it was just that it didn’t make it onto television until yesterday.) There’s also a page full of pictures, some of which should make you go ‘hmmmm’. Thanks to Frankie for being Frist.

Z sends word of a couple of new vids available at halo2forum.com – Ripoff’s Montage can be found here (warning, this one might bug some people – 3 minutes of the 7 minute film are intro and final credits, and the rest is super-fast cuts, heavy on the editing, hard to tell what’s going on); WMP9 format, 69.3 mb… and Croyt’s Anger is basically the back of Croyt’s head as he plays Halo 2 – and curses up a storm at the TV. This one is 4:23 long (it gets old after a minute or so), WMP9 format, 55.3 mb. Update: Z’s also posted a 14-minute 2v2 gameplay vid – Arpus and wyteChocolate vs Fonzi (from Str8 Rippin) and IGN Shockwave. 111 mb, WMP9 format. Top-notch slayer action on Lockout.

Nirvana pointed out a new feature running on his website – he calls it ‘Interview with a Star’. The first installment is an interview with AnubisUK, one of the team behind Broken Console Productions, whose ongoing project is The Squadron. Give it a read to see where Anubis gets his inspiration, and what he feels is good – and bad – about Halo movie making!

Captain Spark dropped off another 27 dialogue snippets – you can grab them from his site, or browse them in our Dialogue Databank. Some funny ones in there!

Okinawa Productions put together a music video called Spawn Man, a video about a spawnkiller, and the player who gets revenge on the tactic, set to Soundgarden’s ‘Spoon Man’ (which fits pretty nicely, surprisingly). Fantastic quality, great timing, great cinematics. A low-res version of this vid passed the Movie Peer Review Rating System – the high-res version is even better. Snag it in WMP9 format (67.6 mb) or QuickTime format (54.9 mb). I’ve gotta say – the ‘Halo music video’ genre is really maturing…

The J Nice writes to say that WannaPartyUp.com, a site we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, has added a few dozen new clips, and the ability to rate clips (just click on the number of stars you want to give the clip).

It’s been a few months since we last mentioned Saber-Scorpion’s Halo-based Lego stuff… but he hasn’t been idle. xyc0n noticed a bunch of new minifigs at Brickshelf – check ’em out! (To be fair, Bungie’s agdTinMan pointed out one of them on a random blog last week, but I never got around to front-paging it.)

Lots and lots of movies over at halo2forum.com (which sports a new design, to boot) – Vrbas’ Trailer for Montage 4 and S3X0RC1ST’s Montage 2 can be downloaded from this thread (both WMP9 formats, 24.6 mb and 104 mb respectively), and a pair of games with top pro players (both in the same vid, WMP9 format, 113 mb) can be snagged from this thread. Good stuff!

For the last couple of months, Aaron Walpole, brother of Bungie Cananimator Nathan Walpole (better known around these parts as bentllama), has been working his way up the ranks in Canadian Idol, a Canadian version of American Idol. (bentllama first let our forum know about this in June.) We haven’t mentioned it because… well, because there’s no real Halo tie-in there. However, 1Up just posted a story about it – and did their best to force a Halo tie-in, so we’re piggy-backing. (Aaron is now in the top 7 – and still going strong. If you want to hear how he sings, check this blog entry.) For the record – I think it’s pretty danged cool, and hope he goes all the way.