Elnea (who’s known around here for her artwork, and around Red vs Blue for her funny journals) and OboeCrazy (who’s not known around here at all, but is pretty visible at RvB) put together a trailer for an upcoming machinima that does what hasn’t been done yet, that I know of – it incorporates footage from Halo, the Sims, and World of Warcraft (and in fact integrates them, so a Sims character is talking to a Pelican pilot who’s flying over a WoW landscape, for example); this is pretty cool stuff. You can grab a copy in a whole bunch of different flavors:

• MedRes – 540×360: QT (28.7 mb) | DivX (20.6 mb) | WMP9 (30.9 mb)
• LowRes – 360×240: QT (11.6 mb) | DivX (11.2 mb) | WMP9 (11.6 mb)

Actually, the large WMP9 is 720×480… but I was too lazy to cut it down. (The 540 versions actually look better, in my opinion.) Go grab one… and then let them know what you think of the idea!

Dennis Powers points out that you can now play all the Halo PC campaign levels in HaloCE; all you need to do is download one of the custom UI files that supports the ‘Campaign’ menu function (like this one, or this one, or this one), and then grab the Single Player levels off this page, and you’re good to go! (He warns that the campaign level conversions have not undergone strict quality control, so while each one has been played through successfully, you should use at your own risk.)

Okay – I’ve STARTED to get through some of the backlogged dialogue snippets. Real work calls, so I need to stop here… but be aware that there are still almost 350 snippets in the queue from Hellhawk. In the meantime, check out batches from Bloodpuppy (29 snippets) and RibsMaster (18 snippets). There are some funny ones in there!

Stuntmutt gets frisky in today’s One One Se7en. Luckily, Cortana’s there to cool him off.

Nineteen new pieces in the Fan Fiction section today – check ’em out!

A bunch of new dialogue snippets from Captain Spark got posted today – you can grab them off his site, or browse them in the Dialogue Databank. And yes, there are still a bunch of submitted clips in the queue; I’m really sorry about that. Today, if all goes well…

Bungie recently hired a new mission designer – and Frankie took some time out to interview him. What it’s like to be a mission designer, where he came from, what you need to be wearing in order not to get your ideas rejected. That sort of thing. I’d love to tell you someone else was first… but I can’t.

Well, I haven’t gotten EXPLICIT approval, but he’s linked to it from his Red vs Blue profile… so I guess he’s okay with it. If you visit Red vs Blue for anything other than the videos themselves (that is – if you avail yourself of the community tools provided by the website), you’ve almost certainly run across Luke McKay, a regular there who creates a lot of very cool avatars and images for people. I asked him about the possiblity of consolidating his Halo-related work in one place… and he said sure… so swing by his gallery page here at HBO, and check out some of his work! There are caricatures of RvB characters, comics, and random Halo-related stuff. Nice!

Swing by This Spartan Life for Episode 3, Module 2: Travelogue. It’s a really quick overview of some glitches accessible in Halo 2 levels. If you’re a regular at High Impact Halo, you won’t see anything new – but the composition is quite nice. There’s another new ep coming soon, as well!

Rockslider continues his Halo Level 2 expansions with Banshee Battle Engineering, allowing you to pick the spots for your battles. Check out his forum post, and follow it to his website!

This has been asked several times and always dismissed since we have seen that publicly viewed ranking systems can be bad things. However, as a movie “watcher” and “submitter” you may find it interesting in what your fellow community members find to be the top ranked movies. This shows the percentage that each passed movie achieved with a link to the associated news post.

This showed up in our forum a couple of days ago, and was quickly debunked by Frankie… but we’re getting plenty of mail right now, so it’s probably time for a front page post. The April issue (April? That month should send up flags) of Game Informer contains a story about Bungie’s next game – or so it seems. Over at Xbox.com, someone went to the trouble of transcribing the entire article, and the website Xboxic reposted it. Sounds really cool… except that it ain’t real. April Fools!

Speaking of eBay… this is pretty nice. Sulaco is selling his Xbox goodies – a Halo Special Edition Xbox, copies of Halo, Halo 2 (the Limited Edition version), Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Splinter Cell, hi-def cables, the Xbox DVD remote, a communicator headset for Live, and more – current bid is $51, and there’s no reserve. You’ve got 4 and a half days to decide.

Gryponosiris found a Covenant Plasma Pistol replica (heh – as though there’s a REAL one I need to differentiate from) on eBay; two days left, starting bid of $99. I guess this is becoming big business! Bungie has said, more than once, that the day might come when they crack down on this stuff… so if you’re interested in this sort of thing, buy it while you can!

Someone sent me this link, I think it’s pretty hilarious. It’s a 2 minute snippet from Howard Stern’s Sirius radio broadcast of 3-15-06 where one of the staff explains his adventures in XBL playing Halo 2. It’s interesting to see how others who are not clued in about XBL, Halo 2, and console games in general get a laugh at the hijinks that occur. Since we’re talking Howard Stern and Sirius radio, this is definitely NSFW! Profanity and crude language spread throughout.

If you’re in or near Philadelphia, check out Cyberzone – they’re having a Halo 2 2v2 Team Slayer tourney this weekend. More details can be found on their website.

PEZ writes to point out that halowiki.net has revamped their Halo 2 Sites article – it gives you an overview of many of the sites in the Halo community, and if there’s a site you like that isn’t on the list, you can simply add it. Swing by and take a look!

Remember all that talk about Delta Halo’s QuadWings last week? Stuntmutt does – and looks at the logical conclusion; check today’s One One Se7en.

Yesterday, we mentioned a figurine that agdTinMan found on the web – he was unsure whether it was real or not. Mortalis pointed out that not only was it real, but he owned it – and he sent us some pics for you. Check it out!