The Halo CE Chronicles nears the end of season 2 – the penultimate episode, Episode 19, ‘Gaia‘, has been posted on the Movies page. The struggle for control of the ring heats up… at the same time that the station commander comes face to face with something much bigger than himself… and teaches a friend a critical skill. Available, as always, in WMP9, QuickTime, and streaming Flash formats.

Well… she hasn’t been keeping me appraised of new work, but that’s not gonna stop me from adding it to her art page anyway. Go check Elnea’s Art Page for two new comics (both combining Farscape and Red vs Blue, two of her biggest passions), and two new avatars made for friends. (Look for the September dates.) Update: 2 more have been added to the ‘Cartoons and Art Works’ – another Farscape crossover, and a colored sketch. Thanks, Elnea!

2old2play.com has posted Episode 8.5 – a short (20 minute) interview with Major Nelson. The guy’s really doing the podcast circuit! Go listen.

And speaking of our favorite pun-ter, Stuntmutt has been spotlighted over at The Junkyard; go read what makes him tick. There’s even a custom strip, made just for the occasion. Thanks, Mhaddy.

Today’s One One Se7en will make your teeth hurt.

11 new pieces in the Fan Fiction section this morning – go read!

The US Finals of the World Cyber Games were held this weekend, as well (MLG Seattle on the West coast, WCG2005 finals on the East coast – it was Halo across the land); Team3D came out on top. The final match was actually OGRE1 and OGRE2 against Hotshy and Saiyan – T3D against T3D! The Ogres walked away with this one, and will be representing the US in Singapore in November. You can read more at Team3D – and you can read a mainstream article about the tournament (with a focus on Matt Leto) at FoxNews.com.

mothergoat’s been around for quite some time, and has garnered community respect both for his mapmaking skills in HaloCE, and for his musical abilities (do a search in our news database for some of his Halo-related works) – he’s back, with more of both. The Goatacular Map Pack includes 3 new maps, created with the help of some of the bigger names in the HaloCE community – he’s posted descriptions, screenshots, walkthrough movies, and the new musical piece that accompanies them. Go grab the lot!

Gladiator Evolved, a movie we released yesterday, seems to be a hit – we’ve served over 8000 copies of it in the last 24 hours or so (accounting for over half a terabyte of data). For folks afraid of the 80 mb download, GearboxGameZone has posted smaller versions (320×240, under 40 mb each for the WMP9 and QuickTime versions). (A thread on our forum seems to suggest that folks have enjoyed this film.) Thanks for the help, Dennis! Update – the original (80 mb) .mov is now being mirrored by Wraith7n – thanks!

Fury Three has once again summarized the Halo-related Lego offerings at Brickshelf – or, at least, the stuff he thinks is worth seeing. (There are 76 entries in his collection.) You can grab a zipped Excel file, or view an Excel-generated html file – both contain the same info.

Dennis Powers pointed out a video called ‘A Halo CE Road Trip‘ – it’s a tribute to Halo CE Mappers, and it does a nice job of showing you what’s out there by flying through a number of maps. It was created by Siliconmaster482. It’s available in both WMP9 and QuickTime formats from the GearboxGameZone website – 22.2 and 25.9 mb, respectively. Grab a copy!

CJC pointed out a video he found on the MLG forums – it’s a takeoff of the MTV show ‘Punk’d’, where Ashton Kutcher plays practical jokes on celebrity friends. The Halo version has tricks played on unsuspecting XBL players. I watched the first couple – it’s probably funnier if you’re there. The vid is huge – 148 mb, WMP9 format (it’s 13 minutes long)… hosted at FileFront, so bandwidth shouldn’t be a huge problem.

Dennis Powers has posted a 320×240 WMP9 version of Bootstrap Boon’s ‘Oddball‘ – this one weighs in at 57.5 mb. If you haven’t downloaded this yet, you can save 20 mb or so grabbing this one!

Foo Mo Jive points out that Podtacular! Ep 8 has been posted – they’ve interviewed Major Nelson in this one, and the Map of the Week is Gemini. 34.5 mb, MP3 format – go get it!

Mike, from H2Press.net, writes to say that they’ve finished work on the Firefox version of their toolbar – more info can be found here.

Boatloads of content over at MLGPro.com right now – in addition to tons of results from MLG Seattle (including mountains of VoD footage), there’s an interview with Team US Eh (recorded after MLG Nashville) and another with IGS Monglers (a team of top stars from three teams that came together to win MLG Nashville.). Thanks, Dolbex and 3Suns.

Last Thursday, the Houston Chronicle put up a front-page spread (front page of the Entertainment section, that is) on Matt Leto, better known to Halo fans as Zyos. Nice read – and nice to see mainstream articles like this one about competitive Halo players! Thanks, CHRISVIOXXX.

The second video offering we’d like to draw your attention to is something that passed the MPRRS yesterday. It was created by Andras Ostrom, It’s called ‘Gladiator Evolved’, and it might be the best recreation of a movie scene in the Halo engine I’ve ever seen. The melding of audio from Gladiator and content from Halo 2 is astoundingly good; this movie covers the entire opening battle of the movie (all 12+ minutes of it), and it makes me want to go back and watch the real movie. Camera angles are awesome, timing is impeccable, appropriate choices for substitution are as perfect as I can imagine. This one’s big (because it’s 12:20 long)… but it’s absolutely, positively worth the download. Grab it in its original QuickTime format (80.9 mb), or in WMP9 format (81.5 mb) – you won’t regret it.

It seems that my news catch-up is going to need to wait until this afternoon; there’s too much family stuff to handle this morning. Before starting the carpentry and gardening, though, there are a couple of video bits you should watch. If you’re a Red vs Blue Sponsor (signups are available again – $10/6 months will get you all the goodness), you can grab Episode 60, ‘Fight or Fright’, is available for download. (That link will work for the public soon – probably tonight or tomorrow – but we won’t be posting another link for it, just keep an eye on it.) The writing just continues to get better – I’m loving this season. Go watch – you know you want to.

I’m back – thanks to Ding for minding the store while I was gone. I did a pretty silly thing (though not one i regret for a second) – I went on a spur-of-the-moment trip across the US to attend the moving-in party Bungie was holding at their new digs in Kirkland, WA. (We’ve mentioned the move a couple of times – you can check our news for more info.) As I mentioned in a forum post last night, I was pretty darned impressed with the new space; it’s gorgeous, well-thought-out, spacious, and productivity-enhancing. And such. Anyway, I’m home, and though I’m taking the evening off to attend a function with my wife, I WILL be doing my best to catch up on all news since Friday – probably tomorrow. For those who missed it, there was a Weekly Update posted at B.net last night, as usual – as of 3 pm yesterday afternoon, there were over 8500 Hurricane Katrina shirts sold, for a Red Cross donation total of over $120,000. WOW. (I got a look at some of the auction items that will be made available soon – man, I hope these go for what they’re worth, because that will be a LOT of money.) There’s also info on the Halo movie, music, stuff they won’t talk about, and Matchmaking playlists. And of course, a Mister Chief piece – in fact, one you’ll be able to bid on soon. Go read!