GBase, a Swiss gaming site, has posted ash.

Rockslider has added a few more enjoyable activities to his Bad Cyborg site; check the October 6th bullet in the Recent Updates list. This is a great site; content reigns supreme, but display isn’t unpleasant or awkward. No pics – just stuff to do. Fast.

This may or may not be relevant to you – but it’s pretty darn relevant to me. The Miscellaneous Art section has been moved over to nikon.bungie.org, a far more capable server than what it was on before. All old links should work without any intervention on your part; the only real difference to you, the user, is that the section should be available far more often. (During busy times, it should be faster, too.) Wallpaper won’t be far behind.

Hehe – Koolice sent us a screenshot (108K) of his MSN Messenger client from last night – looks like Anim8rJB (John Butkus, one of the Bungie Cananimators) was on XBL, playing… what? How could that be? Is it done?

Hehe – look where the Master Chief is showing up these days… (Full article is here.)

Mr Chubster submitted (a LONG time ago, it seems… sorry about that) a movie called ‘Sniping Made Easy’ – some really, really nice shooting. 4:36 long, 480×360. There’s a QuickTime version (26.3 mb) and a WMP7 version (29.8 mb). There’s a multiple killtacular at the end that I would have HATED to be on the other side of…

Nice… redeemermatt points out a few of the ads running for Halo 2 on msn and other places… I like.

An article in the (Australia) Herald Sun newspaper today talks about the marketing blitz about to kick off for Halo 2. It contains a summary of some of the more notable Australian events related to Halo 2 – and except for the crack about ‘constantly revised release dates’, is pretty accurate. Thanks, Dr. Nick.

One One Se7en makes an old joke new. Well, current, anyway.

Brandon Raffensperger, better known as gwdpto, the owner of the HBO-COERCE Halo CE server, posted a note explaining that as of October 31, HBO-COERCE would be going offline – there are multiple reasons, but Halo 2 is the top one. He’s hopeful that they’ll be back with a Halo 2 dedicated server before too long! Brandon, and everyone else who had a hand in making HBO-COERCE such a success this past year – thanks. The rest of you – you’ve only got about 4 weeks of playtime left on this server – go play!

Markus Tacker lets us know about a Halo 2 launch promotion in Frankfurt, Germany:

this morning I noticed a black Poster on a wall in the subway station Hauptwache showing the Master Chief and the headline “Are you ready to save the world?” (in german). On the bottom there were snippets to be ripped of (similar to these announcements searching for apartments) with an accesscode and the website url http://www.rettediewelt.com printed on it.

The access code is 010678DR.

You will find a nice flash with great sound and some silly games (text is german) promoting the launch party in munich.

I tried that access code, and got rejected; there were more prompts, but I couldn’t read them. If you read German, give it a shot! Update: I guess it matters which browser you use. Worked fine in Firefox. If you can guess your way through the answers to the subsequent quiz, you can get a Halo 2 countdown wallpaper. Thanks to everyone who helped out.

According to the Seattle Times, Halo 2 has presold more than 1 million copies at this stage, making it the highest presale in the history of video games. (I’ve heard higher numbers – but they probably did more homework than I did.) It’s the leader in a blockbuster season for Xbox, according to Andrew Jenkins, Xbox product manager. Go read the rest of the article

Major Nelson, the marketing guy at Xbox who gets such cool stuff, has gotten hold of (and taken pictures of) a limited-edition Halo 2 Kubrick T-shirt. It’s pretty cool. I’d wear one. (No, I don’t think you can buy one.) Thanks, A B.

CNN has put up a story on the World Cyber Games that kicked off yesterday in San Francisco. Halo takes up the last few paragraphs. (With almost $40,000 in cash and prizes on the line for the top 8 competitors in Halo, this is another of the biggies. If the same people who win this competition also take high honors in New York in 3 weeks, October could be a very good month for them!) Thanks, ICDedPpl.

The 2004 Season Championship for Major League Gaming will be held in New York City on October 23rd and 24th – and details can be found over at MLGPro.com. There is $50,000 in prize money on the line, with the vast majority of that going for Halo. (Quick addition makes it look like $40,000 is available for Halo, about $8000 for Super Smash Brothers, and $1000 each for Soul Caliber 2 and Gran Tourismo 3.) There are also tons of non-cash prizes. Go read the details, and get in on the action!

haloTV is into week 3 of their Plantronics Halo 2 headset giveaway, with 6 more headsets to go out. The response has been tremendous – so they’re giving you chances to win that aren’t just ‘put your hat in the ring and pray’ (though that option is still there). Make the coolest haloTV wallpaper, or logo, or video, or do the craziest stunt for them… you’ll win a headset. Check out the Headset Giveaway Forum for more details (registration required).

Calvin and Halo speculates on a pretty nice way to go out…

Dark Helmet has put forth the question – what are some of the best Halo tricks ever? Ducain stepped up to the plate with an entire section of the High Impact Halo forums devoted to the issue. Nominate your choices, and then come back and vote! Rules are here. Thanks, ash.

Bluestone has posted a new Flash movie called ‘Capture the Flag’ – it’s under 2 mb, and hosted at both 343GS and Newgrounds. Nice animation. (Apologies – he sent me mail about this on Saturday, but it got buried in the flood.)

Over the past few weeks, Compassghost has been posting pretty cool artwork for a Flash movie he’s working on. I haven’t added these to the Misc Art section because there are just too many of them; I considered offering him space for a separate page, but someone else did that and he said he wasn’t really interested… so they’ve never really been mentioned on the front page. However, he’s now posted the entire collection in a thread over on the Halo Babies forum, and says that future creations will be added to that thread. If you want to see this work before the movie comes out, that’s the place to go!