A few days ago, James Meyers, of DS Unforgotten, submitted a film to the MPRRS – it had some technical problems. (That is – one reviewer was able to see it – and liked it, except for its size (31 mb) – while nobody else could even view it.) Getting a new copy took a while, and eventually, Cybr simply deleted the MPRRS entry. When James got back to me, though, the vid he uploaded was so small (1.6 mb WMP9) that I decided I’d just release it. 30 seconds… but pretty nicely done. You can also grab a QuickTime version (1.9 mb).

Dennis Powers pointed out a somewhat different vid he’s spotlighted over at GearboxGameZone.com – it’s a visual tour of a pair of HaloCE maps, W4Torn Cove and H2_New_Mombasa. I’m not sure I see it the same way he does – but it’s a great overview of these two maps. Available in both QT and WMP9 formats.

Severian sent along a link to his blog, which he describes as “part blog, and in fact a not-so-serious adolescent fantasy fulfilled”. It’s not really standard blog fare, and in fact I’m hesitant to post it (I’m not interested in a flood of similar pages being sent to us), but…

Peter Snel sent along an eBay link for a Halo 2 watch; if you’d always wanted one of these, but never got around to buying one, now’s your chance. Auction ends in less than 2 days. Update: posted a bit after 8 am ET, before I run out the door… these were found by 7he One:

• Master Chief Bust (day and a half left)
• Lot of 50 Halo 2 games (12 hours left)
• Master Chief statue (8 days left)
• Another Halo 2 Watch (day and a half left)
• Mouse pad (5 days left)
• Halo 2 banner (12 hours left)
• Dog Tags (set of 6) (day and a half left)
• Halo 2 glow mod (2 days left)

Whew!

Lothar Hex dropped us a line to let us know that his news post for Friday’s Exterminatus Now comic is a rather lengthy look at the differences between Halo and Halo 2. Most of it has been said before – but I really liked the comment that it’s hard to be in the ‘middle’ in the fan community; I’ve seen a lot of the polarization he talks about, and I agree with him that it’s easy to see the merits (and weaknesses) of both sides. Give it a read!

hinch put up a few direct download mirrors (here and here) for the Going Nowhere Fast highlight reel we posted – if you can’t use BitTorrent, give one of these a try. (If they die before new mirrors go up, don’t panic – we’ll be putting up more links soon.) If you CAN use BitTorrent, you’ll get MUCH better speeds from the links in this post.

Bungie’s Weekly What’s Update has been posted; the big news is that the Map pack (originally slated for a June 28th release) is now coming out on July 5. They’re not happy about it – but that’s how it goes sometimes. On the bright side, if you’re at E3, you’ll be able to play them. There’s more stuff, too, of course – I was amused by the suicide penalty story. And oh, yeah… the second volume of the Halo 2 soundtrack looks to be on schedule for an early July release. Awesome Mister Chief art, too. Go read!

9 months ago, we wrapped up a contest here at HBO that really captured the spirit of what makes the Halo community strong. Going Nowhere Fast was a chance for folks to show how fast they could race through Halo – straight speedruns, anything was allowed except modded Xboxes. We received dozens of entries, but there could be only one winner per level – and given the size of the films, we simply couldn’t afford to release ALL runs. We promised a highlights video, showing the best bits from all the entries (rather than just the winning entries)… but real life and the demands of this website conspired to keep that promise from being realized. Well… once again, the community has come through. Cody Miller, who participated in the contest (and won two of the levels) came to HBO HQ for a lanfest in early April, and while he was here he picked up a dozen (more?) VHS tapes and a 160GB hard drive filled with GNF content. He did what I didn’t have time to do – and he did it with s7yle. (This reel is lightyears beyond what I could have done.) The final product is eleven and a half minutes long, and in hi-res format weighs in at over 130 mb. We’re going to release this via BitTorrent first, because 130 mb is pipe-killing. After the initial rush has died down, we’ll put up versions for direct download; they’ll be in the same form factor as the original GNF releases (480×360), and will save you 50 mb or so in downloads. Given that some of the original footage was pretty lousy, you might even be better off waiting for the smaller version… but the hi-res parts of this vid are great in hi-res. We’re seeding it with quite a bit of initial bandwidth, so downloads should be snappy. You can grab torrents for a QuickTime version (138.7 mb) or a WMP9 version (133.9 mb) – please, leave your client open after download! And please – drop by our forum to let us (and Cody) know what you think of the work!

Stryke Force is releasing the last of its content to date in Hi-res format; swing by their video page for links. The New Year Special, their first PSA, and the trailer for the series are all up in WMP9 format at the moment. QuickTime versions will be coming probably tomorrow. The big news, though, is that from here on in, ALL releases will be in hi-res format – how can you beat that? Thanks, Feenix.

Jillybean must be almost done with her finals – she found time to update the Halo Story Page. (Then again, it might just be that the opportunity to bash Cortana wsa just too good to pass up…)

Sarge meets Queer Eye in today’s One One Se7en. Scary.

Just in time to give you some Halo-based reading for the weekend, the Fan Fiction section gets 19 new stories today. To the folks who are annoyed by the fact that I manage to update the Fan Fiction section a couple of times per week, but let the art sections languish for months… I’m really sorry, I’m working on that. The more automated a system is, the easier it is to keep it up-to-date. Fan Fic is nearly fully automated. Wallpaper/Misc Art sections are not. It’s on my list… really.

Awesome. New ep of w00tness has been posted, and with it comes a set of very nice wallpapers (last on page). Now THAT’S a nice gold elite. Thanks, Duo.

More people than died on Reach have contacted us about the Game Reactor article – so even though it’s totally unconfirmed at this point, we’re going to mention it, if only to get folks to stop sending us mail about it. Game Reactor, a Danish magazine, has published an article which includes an interview with Peter Moore, Corporate VP of Worldwide Marketing for Microsoft’s Home/Entertainment Division. In it, he states that Halo 3 will be out within a year. (It’s unclear to me whether he means a year from now, or a year from the release of the Xbox360, this fall.) Either way, until someone from Bungie says ‘yep, we’re actually making this’, we’re not going to move this to the ‘confirmed’ column… but we DO know about it, thanks.

The Bungie/XBL Team Halo Humpday Challenge (mentioned yesterday) has been written up by SketchFactor over on Bungie.net. General Tone: Whiney. He does his best to put a positive spin on the Bungie loss… but mostly, it’s pretty clear they got beat. 🙂 The aftermath was pretty funny, though… Looks like first heads-up came from Echoes.

Today’s Halo Babies strip is guest-written, though the artwork is still Gruntsbane’s. Poor Cortana… Thanks, Archaos46.

Hehe – hokeywebb22 came across a pretty fun truck, over at blennus.com…

The Codex, Episode 11, ‘Balance of Power‘, has been posted at the Codex website. A solid episode, plotwise… it explores the relationship between the Praetor and the Cleric. There will be no episode next week; the top news post on the main page explains why. It’s really nice to see a machinima team planning ahead! Go grab this episode today. Thanks, aardvark36.

Captain Spark grabbed another batch of dialogue snippets – you can find them in a zip file on his site, or individually (and searchable) in our Dialogue Databank. He’s beginning to wonder if it’s worth looking for more; diminishing returns, and all that. Chime in!