Justin Durban, otherwise known as Edgen, has created quite a bit of Halo music over the years. When he heard that Peter Jackson was going to be working with the Halo movie project, he got pretty excited, and was inspired to create a new piece. Halo: The Spartans (8.6 mb, mp3 format) is a beautiful look at what a Halo movie score might sound like. We’re hosting it with Justin’s permission – grab a copy and give it a listen! Thanks to GreyThor for the heads-up.

Jeff Cousins pointed out that two of his speed runs (Outskirts and Cairo Station) have been posted up at highspeedhalo.org. The Cairo Station run, in particular, is pretty darned cool – the man is GOOD. (In fact, I’m wishing the footage was higher-quality, it’s so impressive to watch.) QuickTime format, 17.4 and 32.9 mb respectively. Go watch!

Bungie’s posted a great article on Team Hardcore playlist tactics, with the help of MLG Pro’s Dolbex. If you’ve tried the playlist and found that staying alive was… well, hard, you should read this. Great pics, too. Thanks, Frankbex.

The Rockets on Prisoners Awards announcements continue, with a vid showing nominees (and winner) for Best Male Performance. Thanks once again to Spartan 777 for the heads-up.

Pushbak created a fun HaloPC-based montage; it didn’t QUITE pass the MPRRS, but it was close, and it brought back memories, so we’re hosting it. The original is MPEG-4 encoded (QuickTime only, 51.5 mb), but you can also grab a WMP9 version if you like (49.3 mb). As Pushbak says, “Halo = Fun”.

Narcogen put together some great questions, and got some solid answers, in an interview with Matt Soell, lead writer at Wideload Games. Everything from Halo engine choices for Stubbs to business model comparisons to details about the game itself got covered. Go read it!

The second episode of MLG PwnCast has been released, and can be downloaded via iTunes. It’s 70 minutes long, 79.4 mb, and is co-hosted by Overswarm (of the Not So Common Sense strategy guide), reviews CarnageStats and a few montages, and generally gives you tips on MLG-style play. Go listen!

Captain Spark turned in another batch of dialogue snippets for the Dialogue Databank – I’m LOVIN’ that female marine clip. You can use the above link to browse the submissions, or grab the whole batch from his website.

The Team Hardcore playlist went live yesterday. Stuntmutt takes a look in today’s One One Se7en.

The Group Drawing for the World Cyber Games event, taking place next month in Singapore, occurred last night (well, this afternoon, Singapore time – about 10 hours ago). The Halo 2 competition pits 17 teams against one another – they’re split into four groups, with two teams from each group moving on to the final 8-team single-elimination tournament. The US team made group D, and will be duking it out with the Netherlands, Colombia, Canada, and Switzerland for a shot at the final round. (The other three groups have only four teams each.) Good luck to all 17 teams – we’ll see who comes out on top in just about a month!

A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned PolyMallet, Chris Hughes’ personal site. Recently, the gallery page was updated with new work, including a number of Halo pieces. (The Early Work in Progress Cortana is pretty interesting.) Go check it out! Thanks, Harry Al-Shakarchi.

There’s another top story up on Bungie.net tonight – it’s an interview with Bob Glessner, the newest Bungie hire. He works for Mat Noguchi, doing Tools programming (the fact that he’s working primarily with Halo map-creation tools says some specific things about Bungie’s next project). I think Noguchi gets a bad rap in this interview – I mean, I’ve spent several hours with the guy, and I’ve NEVER seen him bite the head off a chicken. Good read, though. Check it out. As usual, Frankie manipulates the system to get credit for telling us. (He steals kills on XBL, too.)

Eep – this passed the MPRRS yesterday, but I forgot to post it. I just want to say that this is probably the last of its kind that we’ll entertain here; I do NOT want to become the defacto host of iPod-formatted films. That said, the reviewers approved it, so I’m passing it along. It’s Gladiator Evolved (originally released a month ago, in regular web formats, to rave reviews), and it’s been formatted to play on the new Video iPod. It’s 54.5 mb, H.264-encoded, with a screen resolution of 320×144 pixels. (The original had 4 times as many pixels.) If you’ve got a Video iPod, and want to see how a great Halo vid looks on it, this is one to grab. For everyone who suddenly gets the idea to reformat every great Halo vid for the iPod (or the PSP, or any other non-web-standard viewing option)… please, find your own host. Thanks!

Broken Console Productions have posted Episode 7 of their ‘Squadron’ Machinima – it’s available in both WMP9 (16.6 mb) and QuickTime (16.9 mb) formats. The squadron is… running into trouble. As usual, high-quality workmanship all around… go watch!

It’s official – as of now, the Leaderboards on Bungie.net are gone. Also, the Team Hardcore playlist should be live very, very soon. (As in, later this afternoon.) Here’s hoping that the level of cheating goes down, now that there’s much less to be gained!

The Stubbs the Zombie site was updated yesterday (in honor of the game’s Xbox release) with a fantastic trailer of ‘My Boyfriend’s Back’ by the Raveonettes. Disco Zombies… it don’t GET any better’n that. Thanks, Karri.

Z points out a nice montage trailer over at Halo2Forum.com – 58 mb, WMP9 format, really clear footage. Give it a look!

Dave Cheung, of Chugworth Academy, is worried about what having Peter Jackson on board might mean for a Halo movie. Check the image linked at the bottom of the news post on this page for a graphical depiction of his fear. Thanks, Kaari Koehn.

The Best Villain nominees (and winner) have been posted over at the Rockets on Prisoner Awards site – thanks to Spartan 777 for the heads-up.

Frankie wrote up a summary of statistics about Halo 2 on Xbox Live – and while it’s chock-full of the normal things you’d expect (like what percentage of arranged games are played on each map), it’s also got just plain silly stats, like how much money would have been earned if every hour spent playing matchmaking had been spent, instead, earning minimum wage, or how much you’d make if you had a nickel for every game, or how close to Reach you’d get if you stacked a penny for every second played. (Well, maybe not that last one. But that’s only because he didn’t think of it.) He’s also inordinately proud of beating everyone to the punch with the news – cause yeah, he POSTED it. But he’s like that. Go read. Update: Skavenger found a few more facts you might be interested in…