LordGideon wrote recently to point out that PraetoriaGuard had their first birthday on Saturday – and in celebration, they’ve released Episode 5, a celebration of that birthday, a sad farewell to Skvwire, and a an overall reminiscence of the past year in the Guard. 113 mb, in WMP9 format… go by, grab a copy, and wish ’em a happy birthday!

Chris Burke, of This Spartan Life, let us know that some special films they’d made for SpikeTV have been put online. (They were originally created as support for Spike’s Videogame Awards show that aired 2 weeks ago, but there were some unavoidable delays – they’re just going up now.) To see them, visit the SpikeTV VGA site, and follow the VGA TV link. At the moment, I can see three of them – an interview with Jeph Howard of The Used, an interview with Curt Vendel, of the Atari Museum, and an interview with Geoff Keighley, the host of Spike TV’s Gamehead. They’re great interviews, interspersed with life in the Halo universe. More might be coming online (there were 6 originally), so keep your eyes peeled!

Sponsors vs Freeloaders has released Episode 9 of their Flame War series – this one is titled ‘Faith, Hope, and Duality’. The disparate storylines get more disparate – instead of a single cliffhanger at the end of this one, there are several. As usual, great filming, great voicework – a really nice piece. This episode is 10:20 long, and weighs in at about 70 mb for the large version, 20-40 mb for the smaller one. SvF is serving a Hi-res WMP9, as well as low-res WMP9 and QuickTime versions. We’re mirroring the hi-res WMP9 (70 mb) as well as offering a hi-res QuickTime (68 mb). Grab the one that fits your bandwidth budget and viewing style! Thanks to Laird, on our forum, and Yaksha, via email, for letting us know.

Derik Olsson stopped by our forum to point out Jump Tactics Mix 2, a new video release from the Jump Tactics team – awesome jumps, fantastic filming. If you like Jumping vids, you HAVE to see this one. Download links (AVI,DivX, and WMP9 formats, with QuickTime coming) can be found in this thread on the Jump Tactics forum.

c0ld vengeance slaved away on Christmas day in order to release a new skin for the ClanHBO forum – he did an awesome job matching the look of HBO. Swing by, edit your profile, and choose the ‘HBO’ Board Style to see it. w00t!

Whew! Christmas was a day spent with family and friends, away from electronics of all sorts. (Yes, a number of electronic devices appeared under our tree… but their use was put off until today.) That didn’t stop Halo fans from around the net from celebrating, though – so we’ve got a lot of catching up to do! Halo Babies put up a fantastic Christmas wish image, created by HB forum member Etoli. It’s still on their front page – go see it. (Once it slips off, you can find it at this URL.) KillR pointed out that his Beyond Halo has a holiday greeting from the Great White North. Stephen Loftus turned his Pillar of Autumn model into a Halo-themed Christmas tree. Both Dillo and Darkneshasfallen posted Christmas-themed images on our forum. And da zing man created a great little 3D animation over at Newgrounds, entitled ‘A Very Covenant Christmas‘. I’m sure there are more examples around the Haloverse… but that should do for now! Update: There was a great Christmas wish from Amanda, of 7Pandas – I almost missed it. Their QuickTime version is noticeably degraded when compared to their WMP9 version – so I’ve whipped up another version. QuickTime users aren’t second-class! (We’re mirroring the WMP9, too.)

M E R R Y   C H R I S T M A S !



Once again, we here at HBO have snagged an older Bungie Christmas image – they do the drawing stuff better than we do. And once again, we here would like to wish you, there, peace and love during this holiday season. Pax.

And finally, in keeping with a long-standing (two-year) tradition, we’d like to present you another special Christmas wish from Stuntmutt.

We’ll be back updating on Monday, the 26th.

We got a very nice holiday wish from Boxer last night – and with that, I think we’ll call it a day. Enjoy your Christmas weekend… we’ll be back updating on the 26th! (There’ll likely be a Christmas post that goes up tonight at midnight, UTC… but there won’t be any more news. Time to go spend time with family!)

FireDragon04 points out a thread over at the Gearbox forums, announcing a map pack he’s released for HaloCE. Swing by, check out the screenshots,a nd download The FireDragular Christmas Map Pack!

In the spirit of silly things done by retail stores to get your business, Pat Hillman took a cameraphone snapshot of a box he saw in his local FYE. This, to me, seems to be going just a bit too far…

Gamertag Radio has put up their last audio for 2005 – their 33rd podcast contains an interview with Team3D. Go grab it!

MLG has put up a photo gallery for their Chicago blowout – nice stuff! There’s also a spotlight on Killer N, the Player of the Week this week. Thanks (and Christmas wishes back to) 3Suns.

Over at Halo Babies, there’s a truly bizarre illustrated version of ‘The Night Before Christmas’ – a lot of artists got in on the act. It’s not the story I remember… but it’s unique, that’s for sure! Thanks, mrsmiley.

The Squadron Ep 14 has been released – you can grab the WMP9 version (20 mb) on Broken Console’s site, or the QuickTime (22 mb) from us. I can’t tell you much about it – I’m on my way out the door – but based on past episodes, it’s likely worth the download!

You’d think on Christmas, Cortana would show a little more love for the common Spartan… poor One One Se7en.

We tried a week between Fan Fiction updates (by request of the FF community), and it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea; 16 new entries this week. If the numbers rise to something intolerable, we’ll consider ways to decrease it… but for now, this seems to be working! Go read.

Bah. Sometimes the big sites are just… clueless. Back in early November, we posted a note about a poster that a local FYE in Arlington, VA had put up, touting Halo 3 (which, you might remember, hasn’t been announced yet). The forum thread generated by that picture shows how the image is a poorly-done photoshop job, and NOT something a real Halo 3 campaign would use. Since then, we’ve had many reports on our forum of that sign showing up in other stores around the US. Well, today, it FINALLY got noticed by bigger sites (whee, only two months late!) – Spong suggests that the poster means that Halo 3 should be on sale soon (thanks, Marc Friedrichs), and ItPlays.net says the sign is proof that retailers are capitalizing on the almost-certain release of Halo 3 in 2006 (thanks, Mike Moore). Folks – while it’s definitely true that some retailers are trying to make an early buck on what is probably the most eagerly-awaited Xbox360 title out there… the fact that someone hacked together a sign so they could do this does NOT say anything at all about the game – when it’s coming, IF it’s coming… anything. (And the only reason this is news is because the big boys are willing to take stuff like this at face value.)

In its first day online, the HBO Halo Movie Cynics Database garnered 150 new entries (with 10 still in the queue to be processed) – and Cybrfrk has added filtering and searching to the interface, making it easier to pore through the results. If you dig carefully, you might even find entries by names you recognize… go browse, contribute, and HOPE that the folks doing the rewriting have enough sense to stay away from most of these ideas!

Gruntsbane has a Christmas strip for you up at Halo Babies – and it’s Episode 117! How fitting. Go read!