Mercury points out another entry in his Halo blog – a discussion of the downloadable content coming soon, and a look at how these things get promoted. Go read!

Among the concerts presented this summer at the Hollywood Bowl, one strikes a chord here. “Video Games Live,” featuring music from a variety of different games including Halo, is scheduled for July 6th. Sycophantic Marty fans eagerly await word on whether he will be conducting/playing/singing at the event. You can check out the Video Games Live site here. As an actual monk, I suppose I better brush up on my chanting skills. (Thanks, Music4Games.) Pax.

If you’re interested in helping out a biology student, go read this forum post – Kyle Schouviller is trying to build a dataset that will show which color provides the best camoflauge. I think he’s got his work cut out for him (and then some)… but you gotta give him credit – he’s trying to use Halo 2 to prove a point about natural selection! Check it out.

A new piece from Craig Mullins today – a spectacular Mullins-esque rendition of the Master Chief. So few strokes… so much detail! Thanks, KP. (It’s the last image on the page, if you’re having trouble finding it.)

This is just… odd.

Vic points out that the 2v2 tournament in New York we mentioned recently is happening this weekend – free Red Bull! Check the post, and check the site.

TheDaringDuke put together a short vid on Banshee piggybacking, and boosting techniques. I’ve seen Banshee riding before… but the barrel rolls and boosting were new for me, and the presentation makes it easy to emulate. Worth a look!

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!