In honor of the one-year anniversary of the release of Halo 2, there’s a huge retrospective posted at Bungie.net. Bungie insiders, press representatives, and some loser fansite maintainer reminisce about the past year, and how Halo 2 has changed it. Great pics (Alta is hot in a formal evening dress), great memories. Go read. And then get on XBL and play! (Thanks, Frankie. For everything except the Kenny Rogers shot.) Update: Frankie is very unhappy that I passed over the whole ‘Halo looks totally awesome in 720p running on an Xbox360 which you better have already ordered if you want to see this before the turn of the century’ thing. It IS pretty cool; I passed over it because I’ll be old and grey before I have a 360. Oh, wait…

The votes (almost 25,000 of them) have been tallied for the 2005 version of the Guilt O’ Lantern contest… and the winners are repeat offenders! Michael Coffing, who took first place last year, did it again this year, with his Arbiter and Master Chief pumpkin. Eric Rodrigues, who took second place last year, pulled in both the second and third place prizes this year, with his renditions of Tartarus and Cortana. Both winners will be contacted via email about their prizes – but in the meantime, you can browse the pumpkins and view the final scores. Congrats to everyone who entered, and made this contest a success again!

Over at TeamXbox, there’s an interview with Nile Rogers about the future of audio in gaming – Halo, and Marty O’Donnell, are credited with putting Sumthin Else Music (Rogers’ company) on the track it’s currently on. Thanks, Tempus Fugit.

Gruntsbane stopped by our forum to point out an interpretation of Cortana he drew (he’s labeled her Not Safe For Work, because… well, because she’s not wearing any clothes). She’s a little more curvaceous than some other versions we’ve seen… but it’s a pretty impressive piece! (There are also in-progress sketch links.)

Thanks for all your voting – the 2005 Guilt O’ Lantern Pumpkin Carving Contest, voting phase, is now over. We’ll tally the votes of almost 6000 people later today, and announce the three top winners!

Stuntmutt looks at a very real hazard brought about by Halo 2 in today’s One One Se7en. Definitely appropriate for the Halo 2 anniversary…

That Weasel points out that the latest episode of Grunts are People Too!!, episode 22, ‘Offending Every Grunt’, has been posted in multiple formats – this one has been put together by TW and fans, rather than Mother’s Tooth, but the series lives. Singing Hunters and trampolining Grunts… oddness.

Exiled Zealot found a really nice Arbiter drawing over at DeviantART – be sure to check out Kamino185’s whole gallery – there are a whole bunch of Halo and Halo-related pieces in there.

Trickwaffle points out that today’s episode of the 7th Facet webcomic celebrates the one year anniversary of the release of Halo 2. Check it out!

3Suns found an article at Amped IGO that counts down the five top successes for the Xbox platform – and number one, in their opinion, is The Acquisition of Bungie. (I think I’d agree.) Go read.

Chappy found a pretty funny poster at his local FYE – they’re advertising the presale of a game that hasn’t even been announced yet. (Check out a blowup of the critical piece – they didn’t even bother to make the effort to blend the central area.) This is news not because someone’s trying to make a buck off this game (Gamestop and EB Games have had placeholder webpages up for it for months), but because someone actually went to the effort of creating a poster. Silliness.

Z points out Halo Fr3ak’s Montage over at Halo2Forum.com – nice timing. 96 mb. Go look.

TeamXbox posted a piece called ‘Passing Time‘ – ways to make the time go faster while you wait for the Xbox360. If you’re in this boat, you’ll find that the top two things to do on their list are Halo and Halo 2. Thanks, 3Suns.

Ever wondered how to stay calm when playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live? Fett_117 has posted 20 exercises that should help. Swing by Geezer Gamers to read about it. Thanks, Zed.

This year’s Child’s Play charity auction dinner (to be held next month) contains, among other cool things, a Tour of Bungie Studios. Tickets are $100 each (all of THAT is going to charity, too), so you can bet it won’t be cheap… but hey – aren’t they worth it? Thanks, Dr. Nick, who found it at Slashdot.

ofthehi77 stopped by our forum to point out 6 new downloadable maps for HaloCE. Swing by yayap.com to grab ’em! (They’re BEAUTIFUL.) Update: DocOc mentioned that there’s a problem with Dead End – you might want to hold off grabbing that one for a bit.

Kevin Paul, intrepid overlord of irc.bungie.org, has been interviewed over at High Impact Halo. Go read to see what makes this guy tick. (Ducain posted this on our forum last night, but KP wouldn’t let me put up a note about it until I’d hacked into the HIH servers and deleted the material about his rather questionable activities with cats and jello.)

Controversy still swirls about the Latino Review Halo script summary – Gamespot says they’re buying it, based on Latino Review’s record. Someone on the TeamXbox forums suggests that Microsoft is denying it’s true. You’ll have to make up your own mind – or simply accept that you’ll need to wait – but remember that NOBODY who’s actually involved in the making of this film has weighed in officially, yet. There’s nothing that says this isn’t real – and there’s nothing that says it is. I will reiterate that I don’t think LR has any good reason to fake this – and I will also reiterate that our policy is, and almost always has been, it ain’t so until Bungie SAYS it’s so. As soon as we know anything more definitive, we’ll be sure to mention it. Update: El Mayimbe has added an update to his story (scroll to the bottom) – apparently a lot of Halo fans are giving him grief about the piece. Yes, it’s true that a fake script was released last month – this might have made people wary. But LR has been doing these reviews for quite some time; they’re not in the same class as the site that tried to build traffic with that fake release. They’ve EARNED credibility.

Over at MLGPro.com, Dyslexia has taken time out with Trademark Gamers, who lost out to Team3D at MLG LA recently. Great read. Thanks, 3Suns.

Just a reminder – today is the last day to vote for the Guilt O’ Lantern pumpkins. If you haven’t picked your five favorites… do it now!