Occasionally, the subject of paintball guns comes up in our forum, and the Tippman Model 98 is held up as a classic. True Dark 1ES found a company called Engler Custom Paintball Guns that has taken this gun and modified it to look like something much more familiar to Halo fans. The page is broken, so actually ordering it might be difficult… but it’s the last gun on the page. Scroll down to the bottom for a look – and if the price isn’t totally out of range for you, you could try email; hit the ‘BACK’ link at the top of the page, then the ‘Contact Us’ link at the top of the resulting page. Update: looks like it was mentioned before – this was the earliest reference I could find. I must say, though, the new pics do it far more justice.

G-Phoria is coming in early August – the Awards show on G4TV airs August 9th at 8pm ET, and Bungie’s been nominated for 7 awards:

• Best Shooter
• Best Multiplayer Game
• Best Sound Design
• Best Original Soundtrack
• Best Voice Performance – Male (David Cross)
• Best Boss (Scarab Battle)
• Game of the Year

Voting is open now – go let ’em know what you think!

Wow, bummer. Got an email from TicketMaster today – my tickets for the August 22 performance of the Video Games Live tour have been refunded, since the show was cancelled. A look on the Tour Dates page shows a number of other cancellations – and since Boston is still listed as active, it’s possible there are still more shows off the list. Maybe they’re not selling well enough? Update: jdman2289 pointed out a thread on the VGL forum the info that suggests that the cancellations might be a mixup. Maybe. More to come.

HaloGod points out a 3-foot statue of the Master Chief he won in a GameCrazy tourney, and is now selling on eBay. Current bid is $250, 9 days remaining. (This is the same kind of statue I mentioned here back in January.) Go look!

Jillybean grabbed a small handful of emails from the bulging Halo Story Page mailbag for a light Sunday afternoon update. Go read!x

MasterGrief sent along a couple of HaloCE bits for us – Yoyorast Island has been released (this map looks BIZARRE), and a group is working on bringing Metroid into Halo – just a teaser, but an interesting start! Check ’em out.

Dennis Powers sends word that he’s re-encoded the Codex Series vids to be a more appropriate filesize for the 320×240 presentation they are generally released with; the new files should be much more palatable to bandwidth-challenged downloaders. You can find the new versions in the ‘Codex’ section of the GearboxGameZone Movies site.

Speaking of TWTv – we got this press release for the Rockets on Prisoner Awards:

August will be the month of Halo fan films. The 3rd Annual “Rockets on Prisoner” Awards official website will go live on Aug. 1st but before that happens, the community needs to make sure we has all the videos created since Aug. 1st, 2004 in our list. If your video isn’t listed, then just use this simple form to make sure we have it. The submission process will end on Aug. 7th, 2005, so make sure we have your video in our list before then.

I just checked the list… and that’s a pretty big list!

That Weasel, of That Weasel Television, writes to point out that last week TWTv added fifty more Halo Exclusives to their video collection, bringing the total number of TWTv-exclusive vids to over 500. Go look!

Adium is an Instant Message client for MacOSX – and Epyon has created a Dock Icon for it based on Halo 2. Nice work! You can add comments to this thread.

Infesord pointed out that he’s got a Weapons Respawn thread over at halo2sucks.com with more info than either our online version or the PDF that bluestrike2 put together – worth a look if you’re trying to make sure you’ve checked every angle. (Some of his data conflicts with the data here – users need to remember that ALL of this stuff, no matter WHERE you read it, is empirically collected, and subject to user error; Bungie has not confirmed ANY of it. The more lists you can find, and correlate with your OWN real-world experience, the better the chances you’ll be on exactly the right spot at exactly the right time.)

kons0uL pointed out an entry he made yesterday on his RSCR: Respod blog, which uses Friday’s Weekly What’s Update from Bungie as a jumping-off spot for a rant about matchmaking and community exclusions. He also started a thread on our forum, if you’d like to chime in.

Okay, that’s pretty much it for me today – I’m off to KP’s for a LANfest. No more online stuff today, I don’t think! He’s said that the KPcam will be on all day – though right now, all you get a view of is his deodorant. And maybe a wig? I can’t tell. Dang. Anyway, no more updates before tomorrow… enjoy your weekend!

Stephen Loftus has updated his Halo Scale Comparison article with some new Halo 2 data – there are a bunch of new vehicles added to the images (Covenant Assault Carrier, Scarab, Phantom, Seraph, ‘Creep’, and some drop pods), plus some weapons updates, with new silhouettes. Nice work – check out the article again!

Episode 16 of the Codex Series has been posted on their website – it focuses on the power struggle between the Praetor and the Cleric, and shows some great voice and camera work. The main QuickTime version has a problem – it will crash your player at around 5:08 – so get either the brightened QuickTime or the WMP9 versions instead. (The team is aware of the problem, and will fix it some time tomorrow.) Thanks to The An7i Flag for the heads-up.

The Weekly What’s Update is online at Bungie.net – and this week, it’s mostly being used as a blog by Frankie, to talk about cheaters, and what losers they are. A fine, fine read, with a 2-week window of time before some major changes go into effect… go read. Plus, there’s a great poster. (Lots of people told us about this, but Bungie was first.)

Been a long time coming… but there’s finally a Halo Demo for the Macintosh. At the moment, you can grab a copy on MacGameFiles.com – thanks, Dark uk. (It’s up a little before MacSoft thought it would be up – we’ll have a copy online soon, as well, but for now, use the MacGameFiles link.) It weighs in at 122 mb. (If this is too big for a download, it should be available on both the MacWorld disc insert this month, and the IMG DVD edition.) Update: We’ve now got a local copy, as well. Update 2: It’s available at Rampancy.net, too. Update 3: Thanks to Fluffy, over at HaloPlanet, there’s now a FilePlanet download.

LiL Poison, the 7-year-old Halo pro who also plays as Baby OGRE 4, will be at a tournament at Giants Stadium on July 23 – a ‘Beat LiL Poison’ Challenge will be available for anyone who wants to go up against him. (The Halo tourney – actually a pair of them – will be managed by MLG – entrance is free, $1000 in cash and prizes is up for grabs.) You can find more info on the Scion Exposed NY page. Thanks to Vic (LiL Poison’s dad) for the heads-up!

Dennis Powers wrote to point out that Halo CE Chronicles 11 has been released – ‘Decision’ shows the Station AI in an uncomfortable situation. 7:36 long, 23-24 mb depending on flavor (QT or WMP9). You can grab the version of your choice at the Halo CE Chronicles website (or any of the other GearboxGameZone sites, for that matter).

Another large batch of very funny dialogue from Captain Spark today – as usual, grab it either in zip format from his website, or browse (or search) the indivdual snippets in our Dialogue Databank.