Here we are, coming up on the 10-month anniversary of the release of the Xbox… and major new glitches are STILL being discovered. Frogblast shows how to get to Keyes from the very beginning of the level Keyes… and how to get to the lifepods on the Pillar of Autumn long before you’re supposed to. Wow.

The countdown at Xbox.com has changed to show that the release time of the Halo 2 trailer will be 6 pm Pacific time today. 12 more hours… (Realize that several tens of thousands of people will be trying at the exact same moment to be grabbing that file – so in reality, release (for you) might not be until tomorrow.)

Some folks have noticed a bunch of outages at Bungie.net over the course of the day. Well, a new article by Matt Soell points out what was done behind the scenes during these outages. Bungie.net (and all of its subsites) have just become more useful, more flexible, funner to use. Check it out!

Dan Chosich’s Seven has lost a mirror (the main site is down for excessive use of bandwidth), but Rampancy.net and Appleicious have stepped up to provide more bandwidth. You’ll find these links on the Seven mirrors page. One more: Xerxes, from Halo Orbit (in Germany) sent word that they, too, are mirroring the file. (Link is on the mirror list.)

Mad Cow points out that he’s working on a version of the Halo multiplayer map Chiron for Marathon: Resurrection, an Unreal Tournament mod. Check out some screens!

Yeroen, over at Bungie.net, points out that at the G4 website there’s an episode of ‘Arena’ called ‘Halo Tournament‘ – this is likely when the HNC finals will be broadcast. Friday, November 20, at 11 pm EDT. This make it more likely that the earlier link we provided is just for the Halo 2 trailer.

A pair of Fan Fiction pieces for you today:

• Revolution, part 5, by Gruntkiller
• Shadows of Archon II, part 8, by Wado

Take a look…

Randy Glass points out that G4 (the guys who filmed the Halo National Championship finals) is airing a special Halo episode of their ‘Cinematech’ show on September 4, at 8 pm PDT. There’s no synopsis posted yet… but if any HBO readers get this cable channel and would like to tape it and send it in, we’d be happy to find hosts for it. Even a written report of what is shown would be appreciated. Possible topics include the HNC finals and the Halo 2 trailer.

For your perusal, more Fan Fiction:

• Revolution, part 4, by Gruntkiller
• Rise To Honor, part 23, by Shadow
• Unexpected Surprises, part 2, by JediKnight114
• Titan, part 5, by Jaywhit10

Last post for the day, methinks…

A new desktop image from Dante – you’ll find it in our Wallpaper section.

This came in Saturday, but due to the holiday weekend, it was overlooked. HaloJuggaloProductions has gone live – it’s a Halo site with Halo news, some downloads (ENORMOUS gameplay movies – 80 mb for under 4 minutes of rockets on Blood Gulch, for example), an upcoming forum. Check ’em out!

Took a little while to get it up to the mirror sites… but we’ve put together a mirror page for Dan Chosich’s Seven video, with multiple sources for all three versions. Thanks to all the bandwidth donators – and if you’d like to add yourself to the list, drop us a line. Go see this film – Chris Butcher (the Halo AI guy) says this movie reminds him “exactly why it is that we do this.”

Thanks to the kind folks at Been Mawed, we have another mirror for Dan Chosich’s Seven video. Slick gameplay editing at its best! Grab the movie here. A full mirror list will definitely be up tomorrow. Enjoy!

Dan Chosich has created yet another vid – they just get better and better. The most troubling thing about Halo Seven is the need to stop the film to see if what you think you saw was really there. (That’s not a bad thing.) There’s some fantastic stuff in this one – but don’t watch it with a hangover. We’ve tossed up copies on mythica.org and the psyjnir.com hotline server – sometime tonight or tomorrow we’ll put together a mirror page. There are three versions: a 46.5 mb QuickTime 5 film (this is the one that’s mirrored), a 38 mb .WMV version (not as good, according to Dan), and a 17.5 mb .wmv for those on a slower connection. Any other mirrors (for any of these three versions) would be greatly appreciated – drop us a line, or tell Dan. (Or simply comment in his forum thread.)

DOH! More box art came in yesterday – and we almost missed it! Inspired by a comment by Jason Jones, created by Razorback. Nice piece of work. It’s in our Miscellaneous Art section, too.

*Ar-Isildur of WP* has created a flyer to advertise this very site. It’s available in a hi-res PDF file in both black and olive… we’ve added it to our Miscellaneous Art section. We’re touched.

For those who want a slightly better picture of the Bungie Dream Team, you can find it here – the only member missing is Max Hoberman. Having seen some of these guys play together a couple of times, I have to say I’m really impressed that the Finalists (a group of guys who never played together before Thursday, and, according to mnemesis, hardly communicated verbally during the matches) beat them so soundly. Says a lot for the skill level…

A quiet day at HBO yesterday, becauuse we had a 14-hour Halo lanfest going on here. (Well, okay, the first two hours were pretty slow, because we had some configuration problems that turned out to be user error… but there was a lot of gaming, anyway. 🙂 ) In the meantime, mnemesis finished his writeup of the Halo National Tournament finals, and they’ve been posted (along with pictures) over at Bungie.net. Check it out!

Wow. A whole MESS of new miscellaneous art showed up today. And it sure is miscellaneous… take a look.

A short writeup about the Halo trailer (due on Wednesday) has been posted to our forum, by mnemesis. No footage, unfortunately… but a glowing review and a promise of more (over at b.net) soon.