Video Gamers League sent out a press release announcing that Lee Jeans has signed on as a tournament sponsor for VGL’s series of tourneys; it’s an interesting shift from power drinks and computer companies. A sign that video game tourneys are mainstream enough to warrant a jeans company to jump into the action?

The Query Spree signature (for use on forums OTHER than our main one, of course) is beginning to look quite nice – check out this forum post! El B has made with the pretty.

The Codex, Episode 8, has been released. Action’s a little slow, but character development is topnotch. (What’s a good story without an evil villain?) Available, as usual, in QuickTime, DivX, and WMP9. (If you’re feeling lost, storywise, be sure to check out the Characters and Story pages to catch up.) Thanks, StickyHelljumper.

One more set of pics from last weekend’s Resurrection lanfest – Count Zero has posted his photo montage. Nice shots of Oliver…

trigger119 writes to say that Halomachinima.com has posted 4 new machinimas – in WMP9 and DivX formats (each movie). Descriptions can be found in this forum post. See what appeals to you!

Stephen Loftus has turned in another of his analysis pieces on the Halo environment – this one is a tour of the Longsword, inside and out. Check it out – pretty neat stuff! (Comments can go in the forum.)

Michael Smith is selling some promotional Halo schwag he’s collected, on eBay.co.uk. First two items up are a Halo PC Oversized Promo Box (Currently at £5) and a Master Chief resin sculpture (33 cm, or 13″), currently at £45. Forum thread is here. Check ’em out!

Pizack points out an article he helped write at Everything2.com, a wiki-like site with tidbits about… oh, lots of things. This particular article is about Halo 2. (First half contains spoilers.)

Interesting post went up yesterday at the Halo Story Page. I didn’t notice until I was berated by Ciarán on the forum. Go read… funky stuff.

William Vitka’s latest Gamecore article on CBSNews.com looks at the idea of a Halo movie… from the standpoint of someone who’s worried about the ‘mogulization’ of video games (more and more games being made by fewer and fewer developers, with big-budget sequels getting the nod over edgy indie releases). Will the ‘right’ people be able to guide the development of a Halo film, or will any such project be taken over by movie company executives who simply want to blow up more stuff?

Bryn Casey, who posts online as ofthehi77, has created quite a bit of traditional-media art focused on Halo over the past couple of years. We liked it enough that we decided to put up a gallery page for him; he’ll be adding to it over time. Most of these pieces have been seen, either posted here in our Miscellaneous Art collection, or on our forum, or at Yayap.com – but now they’re all in one place, broken out by medium. Browse the collection – there’s some really nice stuff in there!

Broadcast Gamer, run by longtime Bungie community member MC Wilson, aka Nijhazer, has an audio interview with our own Claude Errera covering a wide range of Bungie (and Bungie.Org)-related topics, including the upcoming Halo 2 content, eternally lingering Marathon fan projects, sneaky Russians single-handedly reverse engineering older Bungie games, and an old Bungie.Org friend, Pierre. Give it a listen and let MC know what you think! I’d like to send out a virtual croissant to Pierre, wherever he is.

Luke Timmins, a programmer on Halo 2, will be speaking at the University of Utah on April 21 (admission is free). Full details can be found at Voodoo Extreme (thanks, orion 12).

3Suns points out the latest Top Ten Bestselling PC Games list at Evil Avatar… it’s amazing that Halo is still on it. (At number 7, no less!) Doom 3 (released August 2004) is no longer there… Half-Life 2 (released mid-November 2004) is number 6. In fact, with the exception of an $11 Sims expansion pack, Halo PC is the oldest game on the list, and one of the only ones not released in mid-2004 or later. Amazing!

Lachdannan received a really cool gift from his girlfriend for his birthday… the forum crowd thinks he should marry her!

Comics around the net today:

• After War 17 has been posted at Black Art Studios – The Chief and Sarge go out on a limb.
• Uber-Chief 69 has put up a website for Resolute – there are now 5 episodes of this sprite-based comic. (He announced it on our forum, as well.)
• Mr Kippling has blogged his Bye-stander comic; remember, read from the bottom up for it to make sense.

It’s funnies day!

Nirvana has posted a number of movie mirrors – you can find the link in this forum post. Always nice to have more bandwidth!

High Impact Halo is a year old today! Amazing how a small site devoted to the vids of a single person has grown into the most comprehensive Halo tricking site on the internet, in one short year. Congrats, guys! (Ducain started a thread here – go spank him.)

Motherstooth has started a new machinima series… it’s called Miranda, and it focuses on your favorite female Halo 2 UNSC Captain. Episode One introduces her in a way you’ve never seen… she really IS pretty tough. Check it out! WMP9 format, 9.6 mb, hosted by That Weasel Television. Update: There’s a QuickTime version up now, as well (9.4 mb).

Lots of College Humor links today… folks went searching. (First off: that GTA vid we mentioned yesterday can be found at its home site, as well – thanks, Austin Wilkinson. And while we’re on the subject of GTA remakes… Fbu pointed out that he made his own version a couple of months ago, on KoTHalo.com.) Uber Hax0r sent us a link to Napoleon Halo-mite, a remake of a Napoleon Dynamite scene in Halo. This, too, can be found on its home site – and was first pointed out on our forum by Corgana, a couple of weeks ago, who ALSO found it on collegehumor. And LeaveMeAlone117 sent us a link for a Nike Just Do It spoof (which was actually posted on our forum by nash–housewares on April 1, but I was a bit busy preparing for a LANfest, and missed it). Wonga.