Podtacular Ep 19 went live yesterday – it covers Waterworks. Apologies to Foo Mo Jive, who sent mail early, but got buried in the auction work. Go listen!

Mat Noguchi gave a studio tour to Scobelizer, of Channel 9 – it’s pretty heavy on the geek side of Mat’s job (and Halo development in general), but for those who like that stuff, it’s pretty interesting. Vid is tiny, but quite watchable. Thanks to Mat, who was FIRST!!, and to Odyon, who noticed it on Scobelizer’s blog. Format is streaming WMP9 (ugh).

It’s been in the planning stages for a long time – but it’s finally here! “Blow Me Away“, the charity auction to benefit hurricane victims, supplied by Bungie (and a couple of generous fans) and administered by us, is finally on! The first item is already available at eBay. Subsequent items will be added every few minutes (this will give people time to move from one to the next at the OTHER end, as auctions are closing), so be sure to keep checking back on our auction page. There’s some truly droolworthy stuff in there for hardcore Bungie fans… dig deep!

Theo Prins has sent along another piece of art. He calls it ‘Marine’. He says it’s not DIRECTLY from Halo… I’m loving the light, though.

3Suns points out a new batch of Video on Demand footage available at MLGPro.com – 1v1 footage from MLG LA. There’s also a note explaining that Tekken 5 tournaments will be discontinued… and that the money remaining in the Tekken 5 pool (nearly $20,000) will be redistributed to Halo and Super Smash Brothers tourneys. Nice! (If you haven’t been by in a while, give the MLG Atlanta (Halo 50k4) info page a read… it’s coming at the end of November.

5 months ago, the Halo movie was confirmed to be a reality, and since then, there’s been a little information, a lot of speculation, and even some silliness – but one thing that we really know nothing about yet is who will be acting. Halo stands in a unique position with respect to a crossover between game acting and movie acting… how will it be remembered? I’ve posted some thoughts on our forum… give ’em a read, and chime in with your own!

Tempus Fugit pointed out an article at TeamXbox – Tecmo and Bungie formally announced the inclusion of Spartan 458 in Dead or Alive 4. (Yeah, we’ve all seen screenshots… but, well… Frankie put it best in this post.)

A couple of weeks ago, PraetoriaGuard posted their fourth comedy montage – this morning, it was submitted to the Movie Peer Review Rating System. They don’t need hosting… but all that’s available on their site is a high-res WMP9 that weighs in at 121 mb, and a lower-res version that weighs in at 36 mb (but is SERIOUSLY over-compressed, with an odd aspect ratio). We’re offering you a hi-res QuickTime, as well (640×480, 122 mb), and both a medium-res WMP9 (480×360, 52.9 mb) and a medium-res QuickTime (480×360, 55.4 mb). If you haven’t seen this yet, grab a copy now; it’s chock-full of funny skits, nicely filmed.

2old2play has put up 2old2type episode 11, their latest podcast. Discussion of their tournament software, lan info, speculation about Halo 1 on the Xbox360, and more. Just under an hour long, 25 mb, mp3 format. Go grab a copy! Thanks, DSmooth.

Stuntmutt continues his adulation of Spartan 458 in today’s One One Se7en. Poor 458…

Broken Console has released episode 8 of The Squadron, in both WMP9 (21 mb) and QuickTime (19 mb) formats. Turf’s in some serious trouble… go watch! As usual, high-quality cinematography, audio, the works.

On our forum, Skie pointed out a post on Shacknews – musician Henning Pauly is also a videogame fan, and two of the songs on his most recent album are videogame-related (including one called “Halo”). He was asked for a snippet for the Shacknews crowd – and Pauly obliged with a 7 minute piece that contains some of ‘Halo’, almost all of ‘I Like My Video Games’, and intros for Shackers. Go listen!

Over on Bungie.net, you’ll find a writeup of the most recent Halo Humpday Challenge… the Bungie guys took on the Halo 2 Test Team. Ooh… what a mistake. They got pummeled. Frankie’s writeup is funny… when you’re not crying for how badly they got spanked. Thanks to Stuntmutt for the heads-up.

I meant to say something earlier today, but forgot… thanks to [HC]D-Man for reminding me. This is just a heads-up that you’ve got 6 days left to submit an entry to the 343 Guilt O’ Lantern 2005 competition – there are some pretty spiffy entries so far, but there’s still plenty of time to put together a killer ‘kin!

Ouch. Stubbs the Zombie has been released for Xbox – at least the NTSC version. And the PC and Mac versions are coming next month. However, if you live in a PAL country… you’ve got a little wait ahead of you. THQ just announced that they’ll be bringing the PAL version to the world… and that the UK version will be released in February. (They say that the PC version will be coming in February, as well… but I’m not sure I understand why that would need to be delayed…) Thanks, eddie m.

The USA Final match for the World Cyber Games 2005 was between Team3D (the Ogres) vs Team3D (TheAlley); if you’re on a Windows PC, you can view this match on the WCG website. (It’s completely incompatible with Macs.) Thanks, Sn0G.

Looks like the Video Games Live concert tour has been postponed – AGAIN. I’m done posting notes about this; I’ve been burned twice now. (I had front-row seats in Boston, and that show was cancelled when the tour was postponed the first time. Then I bought tickets for a Connecticut date when the tour was rescheduled… and today, THAT show was cancelled. Both sets of tickets were ordered through Ticketmaster; there’s been some sort of problem with the first set, and I still haven’t seen a refund (though the show was cancelled 3 months ago), and the second set will cost me a few bucks in non-refundable handling charges, as well. I’m not willing to try a third time. Yeah, i know VGL is not Ticketmaster. Doesn’t change the fact that I’ve had to go through the refund process twice, and am currently out about $250.) So, while it’s possible that the show might be rescheduled next year, and it’s possible that they might, actually, go through with it and PERFORM… we won’t be posting any more news updates about the tour here at HBO. Thanks to Konrad for the heads-up.

PrAy4U writes to let us know about a national Halo 2 event on November 19 to be held at gaming centers around the US, using custom tournament system link software to link centers together – currently 9 states are involved. The technology is called Tunnelvision – looks pretty cool! Swing by and see if you can join in!

Dennis Powers sent along a link to a bunch of frequently-asked questions about his Halo CE Chronicles series – if you’ve been curious about stuff relating to that, swing by and see if your questions are answered!

Podtacular Ep 18 has been released; this one focuses on Waterworks, but has plenty of other content. 8.6 mb, available via iTunes or direct download. Check it out!