Damian has sent along a midi file of the Halo theme… 8k.

As many noticed over the last few days, Bungie.net has been in a variable state of down-ness… they went offline for maintenance on Monday, came back Tuesday, but the forums were still down. Achronos pointed out (both on our forum and on Bungie.net) that things went back to normal last evening. Once again, he blames the Webmaster for everything – when I know for a FACT that the Webmaster has been in a rehab clinic for the past week. You can never trust that Achronos…

Looks like the HBO Clan members haven’t quite forgiven Stuntmutt for last week’s April Fools joke… as seen in today’s One One Se7en.

Jack Bauer points out a HaloCE map he’s working – The Pillar of Autumn, in space. The beta (as seen in the screenshots in the Gearbox Forums thread) look great!

LeaveMeAlone117 found a trailer for Grand Theft Auto: Headlong, a remake of the GTA: SA commercial in the Halo engine. 8.1 mb, WMP9 format. ObWarning: College Humor (the site that the video is hosted on) is not safe for work.

Hehe. In mid-March, we put up a copy of a Halo 2 vid telling the story of Wonderboy, Tenacious D’s mythical hero. It was the second Wonderboy vid we’d posted; the first went up in mid-2003. Now, there’s a third. Team Legacy Productions has put together their OWN version… timing’s quite nice. You can grab a WMP9 version (14.8 mb) or a QuickTime version (14.5 mb). Let the Wonderboy competition commence!

A lot of people have sent this one in, but we were all too busy at the lanparty to handle it- Last Friday, Xbox.com posted an interview with Microsoft Game Studios head Shane Kim. In this interview, he drops a number of hints about Microsoft’s plans for the next-generation Xbox, in particular this one:

Xbox.com: What about existing franchises—will we see those on the next-generation Xbox?

Kim: That’s probably the most-asked question I get right now! The short answer is yes. Without giving away all the surprises we have in store, gamers that love franchises like Halo, Fable, and Project Gotham Racing can safely assume we will continue to invest in them as we move into the next generation.

Now, please realize that this is NOT a confirmation of Halo 3. This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened- Steve Ballmer once said something similar, and it turned out to be false in the end. Simple common- and business- sense tells us that a third Halo game is very likely, but this interview isn’t the announcement we’re waiting for.

It must be spring – Finn has taken off his snowshoes and put away his anorak and come out from his igloo in the far north of Canada just long enough to sort through the forum for the choicest Halo Story-related tidbits to add to the Halo Story page. Don’t expect him to stick around, though – caribou season is right around the corner.

So it looks like somehow, I missed the REAL strip last Friday at Halo Babies – I only noticed the April Fool’s strip. Ouch. Go back and check it out, if you missed it too… it’s pretty funny!

Gravemind might be the single most difficult level in Halo 2 – which is one of the reasons it took Mike Miller two weeks to churn out the Gravemind chapter of his Legendary Walkthrough. His hard work will make it much easier for you, however; he’s created a monster piece, with 20 individual video clips (totalling almost 100 mb, depending on the flavor you choose) to help you through the level with the fewest casualties. There are some ‘omg I can’t believe I didn’t think of that’ tricks in this walkthrough – or at least there were, for me. (The lift ambush technique is brilliant, if daring.) Go read, download, and try it for yourself!

A number of snippets were submitted to the Dialogue Databank this weekend; Mr Fiddle pointed out a clip originally posted on the High Impact Halo forums, showing Herbie (an invincible grunt – do a search at HIH for more details) singing a hilarious rendition of the Beatle’s ‘Something’ (IWHBYD skull required) – we’ve included the snippet itself, plus both QuickTime and WMP9 versions of the movie… and Captain Spark, in the last submission for a while, dropped off almost 50 new brute and elite clips. Go listen to everything!

Trevor points out that teamdirtytricks.net now has seven downloadable jumping vids – go check ’em out!

A week ago, Bonekin visited our forum with a link to a hilarious sendup of a Christina Aguilera song, called ‘Beautiful Needler’. Took a little while to track down the author… but today, unableelephant found the Gamespot journal of Archie Gates, the song’s creator – and it turns out there isn’t just one, but TWO Needler songs. The second one is a takeoff of Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence, and it’s fantastic! We’ve gotten permission to host both; you can find them here

• Beautiful Needler (2.8 mb, mp3)
• Sound of Needler (2.5 mb, mp3)

The ending of Sound of Needler is laugh-out-loud funny. Go listen!

The Fan Fiction section went offline for a couple of weeks on March 21, due to server connection issues. It came back up last Thursday – and today, finally, I’ve cleared the queue of submitted stories for the last few days. 23 new pieces, some quite good. Go read.

Another Resurrection writeup – this one from retsamolah. Comes with some fun pics, and a movie that starts with a pretty cool intro, will make you queasy with the b-roll gamplay footage, and ends with the unveiling of the Mullins print these guys got for me. Amazing stuff. (There’s another movie mirror from prometheus, if the two that rets supplied go down.)

We got another montage from FuzzySmurf – this one’s called Forfeit. Once again, we’re providing a BitTorrent link for it (as we did for his last montage) – this is a relatively painless way for us to host montages, so I’m far more flexible about them. Composition is nice, quality is quite high. 56.5 mb, QuickTime format. Go watch!

A new Ogre Montage went up last Friday – you can find it at Combovideos.com. There’s a sizeable thread over at MLGPro.com about it. Thanks to STB on our own forum for the heads-up. 55.1 mb, almost 12 minutes long, WMP9 format. These guys are unreal… I just spent a weekend playing with a group that’s got some very decent players, but this is an entirely different league.

What happens when you mix Homestarrunner, Snoop Dogg, and Halo? You get more Halo rap. Seems to be the thing these days. Fo shizzle. (Created by Bomberman21 and TheSizzler82 for their clan, Fahordlingrads.)

Wow. Amazon.com is selling the Halo 2 Limited Edition (well, actually Tiger Direct is, THROUGH Amazon) for $35 plus shipping. What a deal! Thanks, Joystiq.

Phoenix_9286 has posted Page 10 of his Last Stand comic – Montoya takes off. I can’t tell – is it getting more serious? Is this just an anomaly? You decide.