docpan dropped by our forum with an offer; he’s got a 6-foot-tall Master Chief figure he needs to sell, and he figured he’d offer it to hardcore fans before putting it up on eBay. If you’re interested, stop by the thread, and see what’s what!

Merecatfish points out that The Halo 2 Conversion Map Team (CMT for short) has released Coagulation, their version of the Halo 2 map for Halo CE – there’s a thread devoted to the subject over at the Gearbox forums. There’s a video, created by KOD_Legend, showing you what it looks like (65 mb, WMP9 format, really long) – they did some great work. Check it out!

I haven’t highlighted a forum post from Matt Soell in quite some time – partly because he hasn’t been around (in a posting sense) for a while, but also because he no longer works for Bungie. However, he posted a note this evening that is worth a read by anyone interested in the marketing side of video games, and how it conflicts, sometimes, with what the ‘fans’ want. (I put ‘fans’ in quotes because they’re generally people who believe they deserve the title more than the millions of people who bought Halo 2 BECAUSE of the marketing hype.) If you’re new around here, Matt was the public mouthpiece of Bungie for many years, until his departure 2 years ago. He resurfaced about a year after that, at Wideload Games, the startup created by Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian. The man has a way with words, and a pretty grounded perspective on all of this stuff. Read it and let your blood pressure drop. (Remember that all of this is personal opinion; he’s not representing Bungie, or Wideload, or anyone else but Matt in this post.)

Apologies for the delay in this news; I’ve been unavailable for updates most of today. MLG St. Louis is fully underway now (day one is actually past), and there’s a ton of content available at MLGPro.com. You can watch today’s matches on their Video On Demand service – there’s a writeup of the FFA Finals online, so you can see what you’re getting into. Overswarm, who writes the Not So Common Sense Strategy Guide here at HBO, is doing commentary on the VoD streams… go listen! Thanks to synide for the heads-up. Update: eep – forgot, you can get full results for today’s matches over at Team3D, thanks to F13ND.

N1NJ4 writes to point out that the HBO Forerunners website is up and running, with tons of fun content for you. There’s a clan blog (interesting idea, with a half-dozen entries already, mostly decent reads), various art and video tidbits, and a trailer for the upcoming clan vid, “Forerunner Chronicles” (24.3 mb, WMP9 format, 1:31 long). Check it out!

kr4zed submitted a montage vid to our Movie Peer Review Rating System – and the reviewers liked the timing, and the video effects. (They would have been happy with more spectacular gameplay – but apparently it was good enough to pass even with this gripe.) It’s available in WMP9 format (36.6 mb) or QuickTime format (32.1 mb). Not bad for a fourteen-year-old!

Alan James sent in some new pics of his Master Chief suit in progress; he’s got leg pieces and gloves started. Check ’em out!

Almost a month ago, (GT))Juggler posted a teaser for ‘No Scope King’, a vid he was putting together that collected no-scope snipes from various games. Last night, this movie was released, and promoted on halo2forum.com. (Bandwidth is being provided – in its entirety – by Mythica; the halo2forum thread is just an announcement.) Unless you enjoy wallowing in mud (and nastier substances), I’d suggest passing over the thread; many (most?) of the posts either rant about how Juggler must have cheated to create this footage, or rant about how stupid other posters are for not seeing this. I’ve played with Juggler – quite a bit – and I’m not at all worried about the veracity of this footage; he’s quite a good sniper, with or without a scope, but more to the point, his skill isn’t the point of this vid. It’s about watching fun no-scope snipes. And Juggler does a really nice job putting them together. The video is 2:22 long, and weighs in at 35.8 mb in QuickTime format (720X480), or 26.4 MB in WMP9 format (600×450). (The WMP9 has the correct aspect ratio – the quicktime is a bit stretched. On the other hand, the QT has higher video quality, and is larger.) Go watch – but watch it to enjoy the filmmaking.

Mintz08 continues his PSP-ready conversions – this time with the 3D Terminal screenshots released yesterday. I’m still having trouble understanding the draw, but there it is for anyone who wants it.

Diss3nt has written up a blog entry with his thoughts about Halo 3. It’s a little bit schizophrenic (after ranting about how Halo 2 got too much advertising, and how that detrimentally affected the fanbase, he complains that wants to see more promotional focus on the storyline – it was too neglected in the Halo 2 ads), but there’s a lot of feeling behind it. He started a comment thread about it on our forum, as well.

Shishka, covering for the missing Sketch and Frankie, has posted not one, not two, but THREE gorgeous 3D screenshots of Terminal – you’ll need QuickTime to see these, but oh, they’re so very nice. I’m loving the last one. Shishka, fresh off a victorious sword lunge, is about to become winshield splatter. w00t! (We got this first from B.net itself, but thanks anyway to 3Suns for the email heads-up.)

Captain Spark released another 34 dialogue snippets today – you can grab them from his website, or browse them individually in our Dialogue Databank. (1363 snippets to date – wow!)

mrsmiley writes to point out a new strip over at Halo Babies – maybe you gotta worry about where you’re getting your info…

Mercury has written up an article on his blog suggesting that the trash-talking and rudeness we often experience is as much due to adults as it is to kids (both directly, and indirectly in how adults provide role-models for younger players). Interesting viewpoint. Comments can go in this thread.

Stuntmutt says ‘watch your custom button layouts’ in today’s One One Se7en.

Normally, we don’t have two Fan Fiction updates in two days… but today is Jillybean’s birthday, and she’s submitted a story, so we’re posting the queue again (it’s a total of four stories). Yes, she’s a front-page wh— um, attention-seeker. Live with it.

Wortrow found an interesting series of renders over on the Scifi-Meshes.com forums – Doug Godfrey, aka JoKeRr, has modeled the Master Chief, and is in the process of animating his work. (There’s a small website begun, as well.) It’s out of the ordinary; this wasn’t built by starting with Bungie models, it was created from the ground up. (You can see the progression of the model through the thread, now over 150 replies long.)

Mintz08 has been porting various web pages to the PSP – he started with some Weekly What’s Updates, moved on to the Enkidu Fan Fiction, and last night posted the Bungie.net Terminal preview. If you have a Playstation Portable, and you’re interested in reading some of these web pages offline on it, check out his posts!

Back in April, ArchieGates (a Gamespot user) released a pair of Needler songs; they’re pretty funny stuff. Looks like a couple of weeks ago, he released song number 3 – you can grab a copy off our server (2.4 mb). Funny stuff! Thanks to bighairyape for the heads-up.

comradx has released a trailer for the first episode of his upcoming feature-length Halo 2 film. (We posted an overall trailer a couple of months ago.) There are 7 episodes planned, with a trailer for each; Episode 1 should hit the web on July 4. The trailer is 18.8 mb in QuickTime format, 20.7 mb in WMP9 format, and combines cutscene footage with in-game play and additional voice work. Thanks to the MPRRS, for processing this. Update: thanks to trigger119, who pointed out that our hosting is pretty much unnecessary – it looks like this video has been online, on a dozen mirrors, for a few days now, according to this High Impact Halo forum thread. You’ve got a ton of choices, including BitTorrent.