Three new desktop images for you, all using Halo 2 artwork. Check ’em out in our Wallpaper section…

dogsounds has whipped up another one of his cool comics – but he’s not thrilled with the caption. If you can come up with a better one, drop us a line. (You’ll find the piece in our Miscellaneous Art section.)

Monsters at Play has reviewed the Halo soundtrack – and it’s a great read. No “looping cheese-rock riffs” here… the soundtrack is one solid piece of work, and the review does it justice. Check it out!

Eep – Soulstalker reminded us that he’d submitted a Halo 2 box rendition a month ago, but we’d overlooked it. It’s been added to the Miscellaneous Art section.

Your daily dose of Fan Fiction:

• Cry for a Hero, part 5, by el_halo_diablo
• The Petersburg Affair, part 1, chapter 2, by Saber
• Halo Battle Cry, part 1, by Daniel Johnson
• Rise To Honor, part 18, by Shadow
• Shadows of Archon II, part 3, by Wado

Take a look…

hEx writes to let us know that Halo Network, a large German Halo fansite, is back updating. Check ’em out!

Funky desktop from FunkyJ… in our Wallpapers section

Another Halo Banner by Random Hero – check our Banners section.

Art submissions…

• Combo Melee animated gif, by Razorback
• Halo 2 box art, by Jack Smith
• Halo 2 box art, by Cheerio

You’ll find ’em in our Miscellaneous Art section.

An interesting little discussion on our forum has led to the conclusion that the time it takes for a weapon to respawn in multiplayer is fixed – for a given weapon, on a given map. Skeletor compiled a listing for Blood Gulch – but doing this on each map is relatively tedious, so he stopped there. Anyone bored enough to compile this list for other maps? First submission for each map will get credit on this page.

Interesting. If you visit the Jobs page at Bungie, you’ll find 5 listings at the moment:

• 3D Environment Artist
• Game Producer
• Lead Animator
• Character Animator
• Mission Designer

However, Michael Hughes just pointed out that there’s a different one listed at Gamasutra: Studio Manager. Have they just not gotten around to posting it on their jobs page? Or have they decided that Gamasutra might be a better audience than their jobs page? The listing’s been up since August 2, almost a week before the announcement of Halo 2.

Daily Fan Fiction flood:

• Short Story, part 8, by Jamie
• Into the Unknown, part 5, by Jean-Paul Allee
• Halo: The Return, part 7, by NeoX
• Titan, part 4, by Jaywhit10
• Halo Side Story: Angel Squad, part 1, by Jordan Dotson

Better go read ’em – there’ll be more tomorrow, I’m sure…

Jack Smith has whipped up a new banner for Halo 2 – you’ll find it in our Banners section.

Whoa – does this mean we have to start selling clothing?

The winners (and alternates) of the Regionals in the Halo National Tournament have been posted at Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site – check ’em out! Congrats to everyone who got this far… and good luck next week in LA!

Instant poll over at Gamespot – ‘Which upcoming console first-person shooter are you most excited about?’ Currently, Halo 2 holds the lead, with 40% of the more than 11,000 votes cast. Closest competitor? Doom 3, at 22%. Go vote! (Thanks to Trotskij for the heads-up.)

Woohoo! It took FOREVER, but the Miscellaneous section is FINALLY ONLINE! Browse through it, and find all the fun stuff we’ve collected over the past three years that doesn’t fit anywhere else. There are some tasty morsels in there… (Before anyone asks, there’s no fan-created music, because in the not-too-distant future, there’ll be a Fan Music page.) Thanks to Phil Saulnier for doing some of the original sorting, and to vector40 for many of the descriptions and lots of testing. Whew!

Elite ‘taunts’? Skeletor mentioned that Marty O’Donnell had commented on some elite ‘taunts’ back in May, at the E3 fanfest… but had suggested that hearing them in-game would be pretty hard (too many variables to line up). Surreptitious recorded some stuff that he believes are some of those taunts – is this what Marty meant? Or is there more to find?

Whoa. Stephen Hawking has made an ad for Xbox Live! (Okay, okay, not really – but dang, Blackstar did a fine job of it anyway.) 10 megs, 1 minute, QT 5 format; we’re not hosting it, but that’s because Blackstar said we didn’t need to. We would, though – it’s really funny. And we will – if downloads get out of hand at Blackstar Productions. Check it out!

Shaun Alphonso has put together a vision of the Halo 2 box. You’ll find it in our Miscellaneous Art section.