Whee – a video we released in July, 2004 has made it onto StupidVideos.com – at lower resolution and with a StupidVideos watermark on it. Gotta love that intellectual property stuff. (Really – grab our copies if you haven’t seen this – they’re much nicer.) Thanks, Chris Propes.

We don’t usually mention websites, in and of themselves, on our front page – but this one’s part of the family. IBO, the companion website for irc.bungie.org, is now ready for prime time. (Don’t be confused by the URL – irc.bungie.org runs the irc server, and ibo.bungie.org runs the website. They’re different boxes.) There’s lots of info for folks interested in joining the various Bungie-related channels hosted on the server – poke around! Thanks to KP and Sorahn (and a great design from Hawaiian Pig) for making it all happen!

Podtacular Episode 45 was posted yesterday – and as of Ep 48, they’ll be moving back to a once-per-week format. Thanks to David for the first heads-up.

DT and MR-T write to point out the first in an upcoming comic series titled ‘Office Chief’, over at Battlefield Halo.

Unresolved Issues With Father Figures Red vs Blue Episode 72 has been posted for sponsors – ‘Getting Debriefed’ has Simmons trying to get back into Red Base, Tucker and Caboose (and Andy) returning to Blue Base, and Grif doing his best to go home. Should be up for freeloaders sometime today or tomorrow, I’d guess. Looks like Sir B L U N T was first.

A few weeks ago, we posted a trailer for a new movie from CROSSFIRE – and this morning, we’re finally able to bring you the final product. Havoc is chilling, moody, and spectacularly filmed, with some amazing special effects. It pulled in what might be the highest rating ever from the MPRRS – so you should DEFINITELY go watch it! Just under 100 mb, in either QuickTime or WMP9 formats.

Frogblast was one of the premiere tricksters in the Halo scene – and when Halo 2 came out, he was all over it. Within 3 days of the game being released, he’d posted almost 250 mb worth of videos of exploration – and for months, Utfoo was the place to go for Froggie Goodness. Then he disappeared. His site lived on, however… until a couple of months ago, when it finally went offline. Turns out nobody had a mirror. Well… I’d saved one early on… but I neglected to keep it updated. Ducain has now put that original mirror online – you can once again grab the early Halo 2 material Frogblast posted. (The Halo links are busted, but most of that stuff is in our Tips and Tricks section anyway.) If you have videos from Frogblast’s site that are newer than what’s up there, Ducain asks that you get in touch with him over at High Impact Halo – he wants to add them!

A few days ago, blackouTT posted a note on our forum about the first episode of Legendary, a new movie he’d made. (The Freeloader fixed his HTML for easier reading.) He submitted this ep to the MPRRS – and they liked it, so we’re hosting it. You can grab the WMP9 version (100mb) or a new QuickTime version (91 mb) – go watch!

halofan141 noticed this deviation over at DeviantART – nice shot of the Chief! And if you like the work of lhs, check out this pic – and there’s other Halo-related stuff in the gallery.

A couple of days ago, X3n0 posted yet another one of his cool display cases – this one for the Active Camo MC. I forgot to point it out… but go look!

I wasn’t going to post this, because… well, because it was sort of anti-news, but we’re getting enough mail that I guess we should. Because of the Bungie Winter Pentathlon (which was going on for most of the end of this week, it seems), there was no Weekly Halo Update. They’ll have pictures for you next week, though.

The submission period for the Killer Grunts contest has ended – and the voting period has begun! Voting will be open to the public until Tuesday (time is fuzzy at this point) – go check out the entries (there are 116 of them!), pick your five favorites, and may the best box win!

Folks have wondered recently if Halo is moving aside for other online games… Stuntmutt’s take on it all can be found in today’s One One Se7en.

BATMANKM, a member of 2old2play, was one of the artists that entered in the Seventh Column Art Competition earlier this month; he recived an Honorable Mention in the writeup, but his work was not shown. Fellow clanmember DanLeCrinque talked to him about the work – you can read the interview (and check out the gorgeous piece, including progress roughs) on the 2old2play website. There’s even a set of wallpapers based on the pic… and a Batman Master Chief! Awesome read. Thanks, DSmooth.

21 new pieces in the Fan Fiction section this week. Folks have been busy… go read!

Preston Heckel noticed that the next installment of MLG’s Newcomer’s Guide to Halo 2 has been posted at MLGPro.com – this one focuses on Teamwork. There are great tips in there; some stuff is common sense, other stuff is not, ALL of it is stuff you should be thinking about when playing team games. Positioning, weapon control, powerups, map control, spawning issues… it’s all good. Go read. (There’s one more part coming.)

XerxdeeJ speculates about what makes a great game great in his latest Tied the Leader blog post. Nice read.

A new update over at the Halo Story Page – sweeping speculation, everything from Azimov to wormholes. Check it out! (And thanks, Finn.)