Computer and Video Games has put up the fourth part of their in-depth look at Halo 2 – this one is an interview with Bungie’s Pete Parsons. Aside from one obnoxious paragraph (right after explaining how their guide asked them politely not to look at certain things, they described exactly what they DID see – there are potential spoilers in here for those of you who really, absolutely, don’t want ANY spoilers at all), it was a great interview – positive, but once again proving that Pete’s a master at making his point without giving anything away that he wants to keep secret. Go read! Thanks to John Houlihan of CVG for the heads-up.

Last month, Marc Friedrichs of Halo Universe sent along a couple of magazine scans of German Halo articles; somehow, they got lost in the flood of content. They’re up, now, in our Press Scans section, however; if you read German, check out June’s Video Games Aktuell and August’s Xbox Zone. Thanks, Marc!

Seven new pieces for you today in the Fan Fiction section – apologies for the outages earlier this morning. (Looks like a router got swapped out without the datacenter being warned… SOMEONE got chewed out pretty good.) Go read some Halo fiction and relax.

Today’s Calvin and Halo looks inside alien races… and what it finds isn’t pretty.

The country-specific Backstage Pass pages are beginning to appear; a little searching turned up ‘Coming Soon’ pages for Great Britain and France. I’m happy to set up a list for these, if folks want to point them out when they appear; in a lot of cases, I can’t read the page well enough to figure out what I’m looking at, so I’m dependent on locals in each area to find their own. Thanks! Update: With a little help from this GamesIndustry.biz article and some judicious guessing, I’ve found links to the rest of the European options for this contest – Germany, Finland, Denmark, Austria, and Switzerland. Still to come (I’m guessing) – asian sites like Japan, and possibly Australia. (NONE of the non-US ones have real info yet – just a placeholder page. Be patient, though.)

Subzero Rivalries has posted another episode; this comic looks at hwo much more important attention is than, say… winning. Pointed out by MarkHawk.

Nice article over on TeamXbox – bios of the Halo 2 cast (at least the cast known to date), both human and covenant, as well as rundowns of known weapons and vehicles. Some pics seem to be new. Worth a read! Thanks, Recoil.

Ever feel like you just don’t have enough easy ways to access the information available here at HBO? There are so many different search areas – news, art, forum, updates – or maybe you just wanna find posts by your friends. Or maybe you want better access to the subsections of HBO, without having to go to the main page first. Well, BOLL is here for you. He’s created the HBO PAL, a small popup window that gives you access to an enormous swath of HBO info in one little strip of real estate. Stick it in a corner of your screen, see if it makes your life any easier. (If it doesn’t… hey, just close it.) Don’t forget to thank him.

We don’t normally like to post the same news item twice, but this one deserves a double-post, because of the confusion. A couple of hours ago (but yesterday, by this site’s clock), we announced a new contest in which Xbox Live subscribers would get a chance to win a 3 day/2 night trip to Bungie Studios to play Halo 2 before the rest of the world. Several threads immediately popped up on our forum, pointing out that while the sweepstakes page at Xbox.com states that “Twenty lucky winners from around the world (five in North America)” will be going to Redmond, the official rules page states that the contest is open only to “legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (except Quebec)”. Residents of non-North American countries – fear not! Each country sending people will have its own sweepstakes page, with its own eligibility requirements and rules. Once they’re all live, you’ll be able to see whether you meet the requirements in your country – but for now, remember that the contest doesn’t close until October 15, so there’s plenty of time. Sorry for the confusion!

Recently, we mentioned a surprise promotion coming today – I’m proud to be able to tell you about the Halo 2 Backstage Pass Sweepstakes. Win a chance to visit Bungie’s headquarters for 3 days/2 nights and play some Halo 2 before the rest of the world! Details are in the Halo 2 Backstage Pass Press Release.

Computer and Video Games has posted part 3 of their in-depth look at Halo 2’s multiplayer – this one focuses on Weapons. Good read, again. (Was the headline a nod to Iain M. Banks, or just a coincidental choice of words?) Thanks, Wiggum.

AngelicLionheart wrote about a Halo tourney in Athens, GA to benefit Habitat for Humanity; play Halo, win a chance at one of four copies of Halo 2, and help houses get built! Check out all the details in this Bungie.net forum post.

wopkins, who showed off a breakdancing MC a couple of months ago, is back with a threatening grunt. Spits, too. WMP and QT formats, at this point. Nice work!

What? It’s Wednesday, and there hasn’t been an art update yet? Wait, what was yesterday’s? Oh, yeah… wallpaper. Okay, here’s ten more creations for the Miscellaneous Art Section. Some of these just flat-out ROCK. Go look.

The next big MLG tournament will be in Los Angeles, on September 25 – and you can find travel details over on the MLGPro.com website. If you need help on where to stay or how to get around, check it out!

I vaguely remember Boxer telling me that today’s Adventures in Disaster (episode 10) should be up at akba.info. It seems, in fact, to be so. Artwork rocks, but if the MC were really this dumb, we’d never have made it off the Pillar of Autumn. Spoilers, just so I don’t get email from folks saying ‘hey, man, how come you didn’t put a spoiler warning on that post?’

Dev was working on a flash cartoon called “Halo: The Battle of Reach” – he was almost done, and a virus ate his computer. He saved a few things, but most of it is gone. He put together a teaser for the project, in Flash, as an attempt to entice folks to help him out. Watch the teaser (418K), and if you’re interested, contact him (info is in the animation) and join the team!

Chronomaw points out that Halogen, the C&C Generals Total Conversion, has posted a large update for the mod, including unveiling the interface for the game and their concept of the UNSC logo, as well as some new renders. Check it out!

Geeoff noticed a skin at Skinz.org that bears a striking resemblance to our good buddy 343 Guilty Spark. It’s unlikely that the author took any inspiration at all from Halo… but it’s STILL a neat pic.

Last week, Eclarap of Halo France posted a huge writeup of his visit to Bungie’s offices in early August, a bit ahead of schedule. (The ‘ahead of schedule’ part wasn’t malicious – it was all a misunderstanding.) In the furor that erupted over this release, the Halo.fr writeup was pulled down, but Microsoft bumped up the news embargo date, to last Friday… and because of that bump, you’ve been reading dozens of hands-on writeups in the past several days. And now, finally, the original writeup is BACK online, along with his screenshots and the shakeycam vid he collected. There’s a translation, of sorts, over at HaloPlanet, if you don’t read French – but at the very least you can look at all the pretty pictures. And whoa, speaking of HaloPlanet… it looks like Fluffy has put up the first part of his OWN impressions of that weekend – it’ll be reformatted at some point, and added to, but it’s a great start. (For the record, I had NO drinks on the plane; it was Fluffy’s incessant talking that made me miss that turn. At least we didn’t end up in Fishkill, NY.)