Yesterday’s Halo Humpday Challenge went off against Penny Arcade, as expected… and ouch, what a hammering the poor PA guys took! Three sets, same map, same rules… mostly the same outcome. Go read Frankie talk some mean trash. I’m expecting retribution – in the form of a funny comic – sometime in the not-too-distant future. (And yes, once again, the results were known long before the writeup went live, thanks to Bungie’s supercool stats setup – thanks, GhaleonEB.)

CNN’s Game Over column has a piece on a wishlist for Xbox 2 – top on the list is backwards compatibiliity, so folks can play Halo 2. Thanks, Byrne McLaughlin.

TalkXbox has started a series of strategy videos – an intro video promoting the series is now posted. Eisen Feuer, the new Strategy Video Maker at TalkXbox, let us know on our forum.

William Vitka’s Violence in Videogame series at CBSNews.com continues with an interview with Hal Halpin, president of the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association. This one’s a little different than older ones in the series – the questions aren’t the same, but the idea – to explore the effect of violence in videogames on our society – hasn’t changed. Halpin’s professional stance is predictable – after all, he represents game retailers, so it’s not surprising that he opposes legislation that would ban the sale of videogames in certain markets – but he makes some interesting points.

Games that are marketed as violent and with gratuitous sex or violence in order to sensationalize, typically aren’t good games and wouldn’t sell if it weren’t for politicians and the media hyping the title.

I wonder if the politicians understand this? Go check out the piece – it’s an interesting read!

Once again, I’ve been remiss at clearing out the various art queues around this place. I just processed the Miscellaneous Art queue – more than a month’s worth of images in there, some ASTOUNDINGLY good. Somewhere between 30 and 40 images, depending on how you count them. Of particular note are the two movie posters done by Patrick Ballesteros for a Halo 2 tourney not too long ago. But they’re not the only thing in there… go look at ALL of it! And to the submitters – thanks for your patience! Update: Oops, missed one. Liam Quigley’s sketch has been added to the mix. Last one at the URL above.

So what happens when you’re not up on ‘l33t speak’? Read One One Se7en to find out.

Nineteen new pieces up in the Fan Fiction section – growing by leaps and bounds…

Another large art update over at Halo Babies – Tina’s posted her Dre’al images there, as well, plus many, many other creations. The Sexy Joe image is fantastic! (The MS Paint artwork is also really impressive.) Go look at all of it!

Back in December, Tina Leyk sketched out Dre’al, her Elite fan character, on the Halo Babies forum. (We hosted a copy here, too.) It wasn’t colored, though, because she didn’t feel she had the right tools at the time. She’s gotten back to it… and while she’s not thrilled with the result, I think I can say it’s GORGEOUS. (It’s the last image on her art page; one of these days, I REALLY have to beef up the organization of her artwork; there’s just too much of it to keep track of this way.) And Tina – Happy Belated Birthday!

Today’s Penny Arcade suggests who might be playing in tonight’s Halo Humpday Challenge… Thanks, Ross Mills.

I’ve said for over a year that the web needs more Halo-based weblogs. prometheus felt the same way – and recently, Tru7h and Rationalization was born. The first entry deals with matchmaking. Go give it a read!

It’s looking like the HBO Sentinels, the West Coast (US) Clan of HBO regulars, is leaderless at the moment. Clan Uberlord (hey, he has the title cause he’s the only one who was willing to muck out the clans’ stable stalls) KP is hunting for a new sucker – erm, leader – willing to keep the clan running and handle the day-to-day administrivia (more like month-to-month, actually; clans mostly run themselves – read his post for full details). If you’re interested, follow the directions listed in the forum post. (If you can’t handle that, we’re pretty sure you don’t qualify as an applicant.)

Mr Jukes continues his work in the Halo Jumping field – Jump Session #10 has been posted to his website (and to our mirror site, as well – good for QuickTime lovers). There are also a couple of vids from the Jumptacular crew… if you haven’t been in a while, go visit! (For the person who complained recently that we’re not posting enough movies – there are more than 10 new ones on today’s front page. Does that do it for you?)

As mentioned this morning, the Halogrid team released ‘The Platoon 2: Concrete Jungle’ today. There’s a direct download link for the WMP9 version (71 mb) on their movies page – but there’s no guarantee how long the bandwidth for that will last. I’ve created BitTorrent seeds (with decent starting bandwidth) for both that WMP9 version and a QuickTime version (78.5 mb) – these are probably your best bet, if you’re looking to download this movie without bankrupting the team that built it. Dennis Powers, of HaloMaps.org, has also thrown up http downloads for the WMP9 version, as well as both versions of the first episode (the remix we mentioned this morning, and the original, first-person-version released in February). Use these only if BitTorrent is not an option for you. This one is quite good; great camera work, a moving battle scene… I LOVED the HellJumpers insert, very clever trick. Go watch!

Cybrfrk has finished the conversion of the Halo Tips section (which has languished for some time) – it’s back up and running, and we’re going to need volunteers to man it. (If you’re interested, mail us and let us know why.) The approval process will be similar to the one that will soon go into place for Halo videos – and that’s what Cybrfrk is moving on to next, coding-wise. Remember: this section is for gameplay tips – NOT tricks. We’re not looking for ways out of Headlong, or places where the invisible wall is broken on Outskirts’ beach. This is a collection of information that will help you stay alive longer – both in single player and multiplayer. If you have something you’d like to submit – load up the submission page and go to town. If you’ve followed the pretty basic instructions, we’ll approve it and add it to the collection.

Mike Miller’s Halo 2 Legendary Walkthrough continues – this week it’s Sacred Icon. It’s a short chapter – because it’s a relatively short level. (Especially the way Mike does it.) Go read – and watch. And kick some butt.

LunarShadow’s H2O Stats reader has been updated to deal with the changes in Bungie’s Stats feeds. You can grab a new copy in this forum post.

FuzzySmurf put together a nice montage vid – great quality, some nice moves (I like seeing teamwork sometimes). Since he’s okay with us releasing it via BitTorrent, the bandwidth hit to us is minimal (and fully controllable) – we like that. The movie is in QuickTime format, 54 mb, and the torrent can be grabbed here. We’re supplying a healthy starter block of bandwidth for seeding… at least for now. Go get it!

A week ago, we mentioned a movie called ‘Platoon’, which recreated the beach scene in Saving Private Ryan. The Platoon Remix was only available in WMP9 format… and they were victims of their own success; they ran out of bandwidth. It was a really nicely done film, so we’ve put up a pair of mirrors (44.4 mb, mythica.org | bungie.org) – and we’ve re-encoded it in QuickTime format, as well (47.2 mb, bungie.org | mythica.org). In the next day or so, we should also have the second installment of this series online for you – Platoon 2 was filmed on Headlong, and also shows some great camera work. We may need to BitTorrent it to begin with… it’s rather large.

Dan Brennan writes to say that his Halo in your Hometown photoshop contest has announced winners – the top 7 entries can be found here. Nice work, everyone!