As Ding mentioned yesterday, we recently saw the return of one of the early stars in the Halo Fan Firmament. In the year after Halo was released, Frogblast was on the front lines of the engine-pushers, seeing how far Halo could be deformed before it broke. (As far as I know, it never did, though it sure twisted a lot.) in the spring of 2003, he dropped out of sight; it seemed he’d moved on. This week, after an 18 month absence, he came back, out of the blue… to a huge outpouring of community love. Stuntmutt points out, however, in today’s One One Se7en, there’s a darker side to this story…

Longtime community member Shishka posted a note on our forum (and a sizeable news post on Subnova) explaining the latest twist in his life… he’s been hired by Bungie as a contract design assistant. It was to be under wraps for a little longer… but a certain aptly-nicknamed Bungie employee spilled the beans a bit early. We’d like to congratulate Shishka on his good fortune, Bungie on their good choice, and the community for supporting a company so cool it yanks employees from its fanbase.

Uncle Mato found an auction on eBay in which someone is selling a 10 DVD set of themselves playing through the entire campaign of Halo (one level per disc). Starting bid is $20.00. The idea is to help you through if you’re stuck, or something… but remember that there are plenty of text walkthroughs on the net (for free), we posted a 10-movie collection of superfast runs on Legendary (for free), and actually playing the game is fun. To give the guy credit, he DID do a nice job of labeling the DVDs. We’ve put up a local, no-links copy of the auction, for when this rolls off eBay’s site.

Brand-new top story at Bungie.net; Frankie busts some common rumors floating around out there. Most of these have been debunked already – usually by Frankie himself – but this is a good collection of the most outrageous ones, all collected in one place, all handled with panache and a heaping spoonful of scorn. A couple of them have come up very recently – one on our very own forum (and debunked by Frankie there, as well)… I think he just reached his breaking point. If you come across someone frothing about something you KNOW isn’t true, check this article to see if it’s covered, and if it is, send a link to the poor deluded soul. Maybe you’ll even open a blind eye or two.

Jarrad Whitaker, aka Akdor 1154, has arranged the Halo main theme for piano, with the approval of its composer, Marty O’Donnell. There are two versions, both in PDF format; the original theme, from the main menu (405K), and the extended version that plays during the warthog run in the Maw (Truth And Reconciliation Suite – 563K). Enjoy!

Okay… so if you could think of the most degrading position possible to put the Master Chief in… would it match this? (1.2 mb, QuickTime format, don’t watch this if you don’t want nightmares. Please don’t send Roger Wilco hatemail. Yell at him in this forum thread, instead.) Realize, too, that the entire ugly situation arose from this post.

Bungie.net has put up their own copies of the 10 new screenshots – you can find them in the Halo 2 Screenshot Gallery. Well, some of you can. I’m having trouble right now; some machines here can see the thumbnails, but get errors trying to load the full images, while others can’t even get to Bungie.net. Hang tight, try a bit later, and things should be solved.

Games Domain has put up its own Multiplayer Hands-On article – one piece of info that hasn’t shown up a lot is a comment about the matching process, with respect to connection speed:

“As far as the connection quality goes, when you’re being matched to join a game,” Jarrard explained, “you’re not just being checked for ping times against the host, but all the clients to one another and to the host, so it’s going to take it one more layer than what normally happens in traditional online games.”

There’s also cool info about the stats system, and a summary of gametype options. Give it a read! Thanks, Voodoo Extreme, for finding this.

That Weasel writes to let us know that Episode 10, Chuckzilla, and Episode 11, Green, are both available at the Grunts are People Too!!! website. Chuckzilla chronicles the rampage (and downfall) of the infamous monster grunt, while Green requires some serious work to translate, but checks out Halo from the other side. Modding to the max. Available in both WMP and QuickTime formats. Go watch!

GameDaily has put up another In-Depth look at Halo 2, this time focusing on Gameplay. Does a nice job of looking at the new features as they’re known today. Give it a read!

Dolbex points out an article, written by Liquid and Fuzz, on the MLGPro.com website that summarizes what’s known and unknown about Halo 2 multiplayer at this stage. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, this might be a good overview to read.

Another day, another 10 pieces of art gone from the queue. (You’d think that one of these days, we’d actually get to the bottom, wouldn’t you?) This batch is in the Wallpaper Section, and includes spectacular pieces from notables like Tina Leyk and Adam ‘Vegasmike’ Vehige, as well as beautiful constructions from lesser-known (for now) submitters. Check out the whole batch!

Pico is celebrating his 20th birthday today… and as a present to the Halo community, he’s released Lethal Rage 4, not so much a sequel as another in a series of nicely filmed battle pieces. Cinematics are great (and the bloopers at the end give you some idea of how much work went into them). The bugaboo for this series has always been voice acting, and that continues to hold true here… but that shouldn’t deter you from grabbing the vid. It was originally posted on Angelfire, and I’m astounded that that link survived the night – but at this point, there are a few other mirrors (including two we’ve supplied ourselves), and of course we’re always happy to add new links to that page, if you feel like helping out. And oh, yeah… Happy Birthday, Pico!

National Public Radio’s Morning Edition did a piece this morning on Madden Football, which has sold over 35 million copies over the life of the franchise. About 4 minutes into the 7 minute segment, the interviewer asks Gamespot’s Brian Ekberg if there are any games that approach the popularity of games like Madden. Ekberg points out Halo 2 as a strong contender this year. You can listen to the clip by searching for ‘Madden’ on this NPR page (Real or WMP formats). Interesting to see a Halo 2 mention in a context such as NPR! Thanks, BrotherSwing.

Looks like Finland is actively searching for the Master Chief. This news post on a Finnish gaming site explains how Microsoft Finland is looking for someone to fill the MC’s shoes – and the rest of his armor. Details thanks to Scanner Darkly on our forum. Do YOU make the cut?

Computer and Video Games has put up a pair of articles discussing their trip to Bungie Studios last month and their hands-on experience with Halo 2. Part 1 covers the basics of what they saw, part 2 looks closely at the 5 multiplayer maps they played. (Similar, but not identical, to the dozen other hands-on experiences we’ve mentioned in the past week or so.) Thanks, vshields ash.

Gamespy has added another 3 pages to their Halo 2 Reader Feedback Followup #2 (whew! Get that?). There’s some solid (if not always entirely welcome) info in there from Frankie; Halo 2 will not have bot support, and there will be no low-gravity levels in the game. There’s more – go read it for yourself. Thanks, Mr. Mongoose. Update: Nitpicker and HSP Factchecker Finn points out that Frankie specifies multiplayer levels in his response; there’s nothing, so far, that definitively rules out low-gravity environments in campaign mode. (We’re not saying it’s there – we’re simply pointing out that it hasn’t been ruled out yet.)

Ducain has finished the Three Towers highlight video (he says ‘finally’ – making me feel even WORSE that the Going Nowhere Fast vid isn’t done yet, thanks, Ducain), showing the best stunts of the entries for this contest. WMP9 format, 9 minutes long, 23.2 mb. If there’s demand, I’ll toss up a QuickTime version. Update: Due to popular demand, I’ve put up a QuickTime version for folks who need it.

Well, I’ll say that last night was pretty fun. I logged onto the HBO Coerce server – one of the few 16-players-full CE servers running last night – and saw a HOST of names I never see any more, including one I haven’t seen on Halo CE or PC… EVER. It was a blast. But again, even with the added publicity… total numbers never rose above 400. There are still a few more nights in which the 1000 player total can be reached, in this push… but I have to tell you, I’m starting to believe that this is just too little, too late. There are many hundreds of thousands of copies of Halo PC and Mac Halo out there – but Halo CE came along too late to capture the PC crowd, and the Mac folks never even got a chance. If the combined readership of all the largest Halo fansites can’t generate 1000 online players when they’re BEGGING for them… it just ain’t gonna happen. (Goes without saying that I’d LOVE to have that last statement proved wrong.)

CreepHunter pointed out yet ANOTHER guitar tab of the Halo theme he found at Video Game Jam – he liked this one better than the last one we mentioned. Again – I can’t read these, so I’m not passing any judgement at all… but they’re out there, if you want to use them.