Over at 1Up.com, part of their Monday Halo 3 content – a writeup of the Halo 3 Humpday Challenge between Bungie and the EGM staff – is now online. Written in the style of the Bungie.net humpday writeups, this chronicles the blatant cheating and general poor sportsmanship of the Bungie team… and reissues the ‘X-button’ tease that’s got fans in such a tizzy. Go read. Thanks to Drakai for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 18:54:04 UTC)

Bungie asked recently for community feedback about an idea to add a female spartan death scream to Halo 3 multiplayer. Stuntmutt looks at one of the possibly unforeseen consequences in today’s One One Se7en.(Louis Wu 17:46:55 UTC)

I finally got a chance to go through our uploads directory – and buried amongst all the movies that people keep uploading (even though it says REALLY CLEARLY at the top of the page not to upload movies), I found a song submitted by StitchLips, called Killtacular. It’s pretty hard rock; he says it’s inspired by playing Halo 2 online. You’ll find a download link and the lyrics on this page.(Louis Wu 15:36:23 UTC)

Voting ran for a week on the 2006 Guilt O’ Lantern contest – and while a significantly smaller group of people voted this year than last (under 2,000, compared to last year’s nearly 6,000), there still emerged a clear winner – congratulations to Lacie O.! Michael Coffing, who won the last two years, and was actually forbidden from winning one of the top three prizes this year, had the second-highest total of votes. Second Prize, with just a few fewer than Michael went to Adam Beeman, and Third Prize belongs to Ryan Heiner. We’d had some lofty goals for prizes – they didn’t work out, so we’ve fallen back to gift certificates. All four prizewinners will get their choice of store – The Bungie Store or Gamestop/EB Games; first prize will get a $150 certificate, Second Prize $100, Third Prize $75 – and Michael Coffing will get a $25 certificate. (Don’t feel too bad for him; his haul in the past two years includes a pair of Xboxes, a copy of Halo, a gift card, a bunch of small stuff, and two custom recordings from 343 Guilty Spark on his answering machine.) Check out the voting… and start thinking about designs for next year!(Louis Wu 14:08:15 UTC)

MereCatfish writes to point out that the Halo CE 2v2 Tournament is now accepting team registrations. As the title might suggest, this will be a league of 2-player teams for Halo: Custom Edition on the PC. This is the successor to the Halo CE League; there are no prizes, this is for fun. If you’ve got a copy of Halo: Custom Edition, and a teammate… sign up!(Louis Wu 13:54:27 UTC)

Cody Brigan has created a Halo 3 Countdown Timer – it currently counts down to Christmas 2006, because he doesn’t have a release date for Halo 3, but it’s pretty nonetheless!(Louis Wu 23:35:51 UTC)

3Suns points out a couple of interesting things at MLGPro.com right now – a preview of FBI GamerGraffix, and a newly launched online tournament. Check ’em out!(Louis Wu 23:34:29 UTC)

Sigafoos writes to point out WikiRiot 24, which discusses the December issue of EGM, the new MLG TV stuff, the Podtacular league, and lots of clan/wiki stuff. 35 minutes, 14 mb. Go listen!(Louis Wu 20:28:40 UTC)

We’ve got one more from Bryn Casey – it’s a scene from the Ghosts of Onyx, and if you haven’t read the book, this could be classified as ‘spoilers’. Fantastic piece, though – check it out if you can!(Louis Wu 17:41:02 UTC)

If you missed the first episode of the MLG Pro Circuit on the USA Network yesterday, the MLGPro.com website is rebroadcasting it in its entirety. Thanks, 3Suns.(Louis Wu 17:08:18 UTC)

Chryton noticed an advertisement for the H5K Project, a Halo 2 tournament in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on November 27-29. $35 to register, $5000 first prize. More details on their website.(Louis Wu 17:05:17 UTC)

Germany’s Halo Orbit has renamed itself Halo Base – and they’ve posted 5 new Halo 3 ‘screenshots’. (These are technically scans from the December EGM magazine – but they got them by screen-capturing the images off the recently released 1Up Show vid; as video screen caps, they’re definitely legal for posting on the web.) Thanks, Legend.(Louis Wu 17:01:15 UTC)

Gears of War was released this week – and while it rocketed to the top of the Xbox 360 Top Live titles, it couldn’t unseat Halo 2 as the top overall Xbox Live title. We’ll have to see if another week or two of folks buying the game can accomplish that… thanks, Major Nelson.(Louis Wu 16:57:03 UTC)

A quick reminder – you’ve got another day or two to vote for your favorite pumpkins in this year’s Guilt O’ Lantern contest. Vote turnout is way, way down from the last couple of years – I’m not sure if that’s because we haven’t done a very good job of promoting this, or if folks are just tired of Halo-carved pumpkins… but please, if you haven’t voted yet, swing by and do so. Won’t take you more than a couple of minutes!(Louis Wu 18:03:18 UTC)

The MLG Vidcast #5 is available on the front page of MLGPro.com – most of it is concerned with the MLG Pro Circuit show on USA (you DID watch that this morning, didn’t you?), but there are a couple of minutes of play-by-play focus on the Ogres that haven’t been seen online before. Thanks, 3Suns.(Louis Wu 16:04:05 UTC)

Sane Intolerant linked to Toywiz.com, and a page that lets you preorder the Halo 2 Limited Edition Series 2 action figures – Prophet of Regret, Jackal Sniper, Teal Elite. (I dunno – might be fun to buy a bunch of Jackal Snipers and strap explosives to ’em…)(Louis Wu 15:58:20 UTC)

EGM’s Mark MacDonald pointed out that the Halo-specific portion of the 1Up show can be watched via streaming flash (or downloaded, in hi-res form) from GameVideos.com. And I’d like to take this opportunity to announce that I’m a little silly sometimes; I described the Halo content in the first news post of the day – but I was describing the content of Episode 53, not 54. This new one contains video footage of the EGM team in Kirkland (though no onscreen action), as well as interviews with Lars Bakken, Tyson Green, and Marty O’Donnell. Check it out!(Louis Wu 15:55:07 UTC)

The Bungie Weekly Update is live at bungie.net – and though there’s no Mister Chief this week (how I miss the little guy!), there’s a mini-interview with Eric Nylund about Ghosts of Onyx, some info about upcoming changes to the XBL playlists, and some teasers about Halo 3’s water. Go read! (You can, of course, read it in our Weekly Update Archive, as well.)(Louis Wu 01:54:11 UTC)