Whee! Bluestone whipped up a very pretty Flash montage showing all the HBO Helljumpers (and their special talents – or whatever). You can find it in this forum post on the HBO Clan forums. You can also comment on it in this thread.

Gah. You want a lot of desktop choices? We got a lot of desktop choices for you, in our Wallpaper section today. 71 of them, in fact – or almost 90 if you count variants. I’m praying right now for the safety of the server. (You can use this link, instead, if you’d like to look at 9 at a time, instead of all 71 thumbs at once; just remember to use the ‘next’ nav arrow at the top to see the rest.) It’s insane how much I let stuff build up – but at least for the day, it’s cleared out! If you submitted a Wallpaper in the past month, it’s either in here, or it didn’t meet our hosting guidelines.

Eight new pieces for you in the Fan Fiction section – including a story by someone who usually submits artwork to us, instead of words. Check ’em all out! (Just clearing queues before I leave for E3…)

MarkHawk is broke, and looking to make up a little of the cash he needs by auctioning off a pair of Civilian Warthog action figures and a giant promotional poster. You can find the forum post here, and the eBay auction here. Not a bad starting price for a pair of extremely rare hogs and a poster!

I’m thinkin’… that’s Stuntmutt behind the wheel in today’s One One Se7en. Could be wrong, of course.

Gah – I almost forgot that I’d submitted the Going Nowhere Fast Highlight Reel to archive.org! You can grab all four flavors (high and medium res, WMP9 and QT) from their download page; we haven’t run out of bandwidth on other links yet, but it’s always nice to have a really large pipe at your disposal. (Could use a review or two, as well, to keep from looking so lonely…)

Microsoft promised to announce whether the Xbox 360 would be backwards-compatible this Monday – and they kept their word. The answer is yes – but only for a limited number of titles. (Emulation will be required.) They haven’t released a full list – but according to Newsday (in an article about the Playstation 3), David Hufford, Xbox group product manager, specifically included both Halo and Halo 2. Good news! Thanks to a bunch of people – first heads-up came from Fear Of Falling.

Dennis Powers points out an update to a recent news post we put up – the Zelda Ocarina of Time mod for Halo CE is coming along nicely, and in fact has released a video flythrough of the levels they’re working on. You can find commentary and download links (WMP9 or QT) in this post at gearboxgamezone.com. Check it out!

trigger119 points out that Fall of the Covenant, his second machinima project, has been posted at halomachinima.com. It’s available in four flavors – high and low-res versions in both WMP9 and QuickTime. (Size ranges from 50 to 100 mb or so.) It’s the story of the final battle between Spartans and the Covenant – and the visuals are quite good. In fact, my only real criticism is that the movement of the entire movie is held hostage to the visuals; battle scenes are prolonged well past their comfort point in the name of arty slow-motion death. This gripe notwithstanding, the hudless filming and great choreography give this film some nice polish! Go watch. There are comment threads set up both on the halomachinima.com forums, and our own.

Whoa, cool. Looks like Xboxyde was first out of the gate with new screenshots of the upcoming map pack maps (I’m sure all the big boys will have copies before the night is over). Check ’em out! Thanks, Recoil.

The Art sections here at HBO have been languishing for FAR too long – I’ve FINALLY cleared out the Miscellaneous Art queue. Beware – there are 64 entries in today’s batch (over 70 if you count variants) – page loading might be rough. I simply didn’t see any options; I’m leaving for E3 in two days, and it was now or never. There are tons of sketches, lots of paintings, modeled stuff, photos of real stuff… it’s an astoundingly large and varied collection. Look at everything – but don’t miss the stuff by Pinkuh, or Paul Davies, or Roger Wilco, or Chris Bryan. (I’m not in any way saying that the only good stuff in this batch came from one of these people. I’m simply saying that with such a huge update, it will be easy to miss things – so these are some to watch out for.) It’s really possible I missed something… so if you submitted miscellaneous art in the last month or two, and it’s not in this update, go ahead and let us know – we’ll look for it. If all goes well, I’ll be doing similar update with Wallpaper tomorrow.

Wonga. If you like montages, swing by Halo2Forum – they started a contest a few weeks ago, and received 135 movie entries, which they’ve narrowed down to 8 finalists. Two of those have already been released on HBO, but the other 6 are new to me – all told, you’re looking at 500 MB of montage goodness. Here’s hoping the bandwidth holds out… thanks, Z.

A note up on Bungie.net warns you that the Halo 2 Game Viewer is undergoing some work, and will be somewhat limited compared to its usual functionality. By next week, a better, more powerful version should be online… please be patient!

Ciarán Walsh has kicked off a blog, and it’s mostly Halo-related – an entry yesterday explores what it might mean to fans if Bungie isn’t the group creating Halo 3. The relative explosion of Halo-related blogs has prompted me to add a new section to our links page – you can now find all Halo-related blogs in one place (and add your own, via our automated interface).

Another video almost made it through the Movie Peer Review Rating System yesterday; we’re releasing versions of it anyway because as I said then, our reviewers seem to have reached a point where NO montage is good enough to make it through… but I believe there’s still a bit of a market for these. This one comes from GT Juggler, and goes by the name ‘How To Succeed at Halo Without Really Trying’. It’s a bit under 4 minutes, 46 mb large in either QT or WMP9 formats, and combines great video, fun editing, and nicely-done syncing (with not a small amount of attitude) to create an entertaining vid. If you like it, there’s a first part (this is ‘part 2’) available at HaloGT.com, as well.

QuickTime: bungie.org | mythica.org | halogt.com
WMP9: mythica.org | bungie.org

Enjoy!

Narcogen looks at the Halo franchise from a slightly different standpoint today – it’s a system staple for the Xbox, yes… but would it have been what it’s become without the help of Steve Jobs? Go read.

The Bungie store is running a new sweepstakes – you can enter to win one of 20 limited edition gold warthog action figures, or the grand prize of a gold master chief statue. No purchase necessary – just sign up. (You must be 18 or older, and live in the US.) First note I saw was from Capt Scope077 on our forum.

Interesting. A mod is starting up for Homeworld 2, attempting to bring Halo 2 ships into the game. (Many of them aren’t even in Halo 2; some of the models are built off descriptions in the novels.) It’s early days yet. There’s a thread here, and the start of a new board here. Thanks, Chris Buhr.

Couple of new Halo CE maps worth looking at – ‘No Remorse’ was inspired by Halo 2’s Outskirts, and has a nice writeup at Halo2CE (thanks, Nuero Ko Neza), and ‘Tributary of Lost Souls’ is a new map from SuperSunny that contains some nice glow effects (thanks, MasterGrief). Check ’em out!

Broncho has released a second Broncho and Friends video – nearly 20 minutes of jumping on the newest levels. If you’re a fan of jumping in Halo 2, you have to grab this. (Use the BitTorrent link if you can.) 44 mb, WMP9 format.