A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned the Game with Fame event with 3 Doors Down – a couple of Los Angelenos got the chance to play, and G4 filmed it. It was broadcast yesterday on the show Screen Savers for the first time – sorry about the short notice. Never fear, though – it’s on again on Sunday, February 27, at 12am ET/9 pm PT, or your can watch it online (Flash video format) at G4’s website. Check out 3 Doors Down getting schooled by 23-year-old Katrina L. Thanks, TriXie!

Mr Smiley has interviewed CJ Cowan, Cinematic Designer on the Halo 2 team. Where he came from, what he does, what’s tough and what’s not. Meaty – go read, and get inside the head of a Bungie cinematographer! Update: credit for the interview goes to cmwak1, not mr smiley.

The Bungie Store has re-stocked some of their supplies, so if you’re in the mood for a tall, cool drink in a Legendary Beer Stein while wearing the stylish Bucket Hat, go to it. Also available (finally), Drone, MC, White Spartan, and Warthog action figures! Woo!

Hiding… in plain sight? Don’t try it, says Stuntmutt in today’s One One Se7en. Hmm… Maybe the HBO Helljumpers ARE moving forward…

Singapore news site The Electric New Paper has an interview with Brian Jarrard, Bungie’s Community Guy. Will the Master Chief stop the Covenant? Will there be a Halo 3? A Halo movie? Check it out, and see for yourself! (Heh, not that there are many answers, mind you, but there might be a few hints… 😉 Thanks to danbrennan.org for the heads-up. Update: Drat, mnemesis got to this before me… I wanted to also point out a discrepancy in one of their ‘did you know?’ facts. There’s a claim that Halo 2 has sold 15 million copies to date; given that as of January 20 (just over a month ago), they’d sold 6.4 million copies worldwide, this number seems a tad unlikely. I suppose as a TOTAL of all Halo-franchise titles it makes sense (they were at 12 million last month)… [-lwu]

Wow… lots of vids posted to our forum while I was gone. I’m taking them at their word and assuming there’s enough bandwidth to go around. (We have a bunch of stuff in the queue, hopefully that I can get to soon – we’re going to have to let these stand or fall on their own.)

• CollaterHalo – the club scene from the movie Collateral, reproduced on Midship/Headlong. Hosted by Vypers.net. WMP9 format, 22.3 mb.
• Monkeys Gone Wild – a tour of all the trees in Halo 2 multiplayer maps (and how to get into them). Hosted by vypers.net. WMP9 format, 17.9 mb.
• Anti-Cheating PSA – from Rampant Stupidity Productions, a look at cheaters and why they suck. It’s in AVI format, but recorded with the WMV3 codec, so it won’t play on a mac. 12 mb, hosted by Rampant Stupidity. (Update: And here’s a 15.3 mb .mp4 file, thanks to Chester)
• Devin’s GreenRoomEffect – another Devin Olsen montage. Nice work. WMP9 format, 33 mb. Hosted by syeren.
• WaLKa’s Montage – some pretty amazing sniping, and general gameplay. WMP9 format, 24.7 mb. Extra mirrors can be found in this thread on the MLG forums.
• Outpost 2 – the second episode of Outpost: Coagulation. Covenant politics… or something. WMP9 format, 21.2 mb, ALSO hosted by vypers.net. (Here’s hoping they hold up… that’s a lot of vids.)

Wow… will that keep you busy for a few minutes? (Please – if you try one of these links, and it’s dead… you don’t need to mail us. There’s not much we can do about other people’s bandwidth.)

ICDedPpl has started a bonus round for his Halo Photoshop contest; entries are due by Sunday night, voting will be up for 3 days. The winner will get a full year of webhosting with free domain registration or transfer. The catch? Your photo must include a cartoon character. Go read the site for more details!

New strip up over at Halo Babies; Baby Sarge is a little… mature for his age, I guess. (There’s also a nice concept sketch of the newest character – check it out!)

Ducain, over at High Impact Halo, has interviewed FrogBlast, trickster extraordinaire, about what drives him to do the stuff he does. Great read – thanks to both of them! (Ducain pointed it out in our forum.)

Interesting article over at MLGPro.com – Brick Shoemaker lays out why he thinks Halo 2 is no good for 1v1 battles. The main argument is a solid one; Halo 2’s multiplayer focus is geared more towards teamwork and cooperation than solo heroics. Go read. Thanks, 3Suns.

Thanks to Frankie, for pointing out a writeup at Aussie Xbox of a charity bash they hosted to benefit the tsunami relief effort. Great pics – that’s a lot of people playing Halo 2! Update: Gah – looks like mnemesis got to this one already; you’d think I’d be more careful reading existing news…

Bungie has put up an interview with BlAcKjAk, a high-ranking XBL player (he’s currently number 2 in the Rumble Pit stats). It’s just a quick ‘what do you like/dislike about XBL/Halo 2?’ piece – but it might make some people feel better to know that the folks at the top of the leaderboards are complaining about the same things that the common folks complain about.

There were a few news bits recently that might be of interest to Halo fans…

• Business Week has an article about the big-business aspect of the current videogame market – and Halo/Halo 2 play a pretty big role.
• The Oregon Daily Emerald looks at Halo’s ability to suck in and keep players.
• Pantagraph.com focuses on Steve Scott, a native of Central Illinois and a member of the Halo 2 dev team.

I’m slowly cleaning out the inboxes that mnemesis and CZ didn’t have access to…

Eternity 117 sent along a tabbed version of the Halo 2 theme, Mjolnir Mix, as played by Steve Vai. Go play!

We mentioned a vid called ‘Broken’ a few days ago; one of the mirrors came from HaloImpulse. Wasn’t until just now that I saw the actual link to the mirror… if you still haven’t gotten this, you can grab it here (12.7 mb, .rar format).

Another hefty art update over at Halo Babies; some really, really cool stuff. (If you like the ‘Ambush’ piece by tanqexe, be sure you’ve seen his other Halo-related work in our Misc Art section.) Thanks to mrsmiley, who sent this along a few days ago – sorry I wasn’t here to pass it along to someone who could post it then.

Dzejms writes to point out that “Pete Parsons & the Bungie Crew” have won the Wired Rave award mentioned here recently.

A couple of interesting (to me, anyway) movies popped up recently on our forum. The first, mentioned by nof, was done by Blackstar and stars the HBO Lekgolos in a send-off to one of their own. That Blackstar sure knows his stuff. The second was put together by Hikaru-119 as a sort of tribute to one of the less appreciated characters we know. Makes you wonder, maybe there’s more to the little blue guy than you thought. Perhaps he’s not just an irritating, bureaucratic, tin-pot dictator. Nah.

Nice work. (Before anyone gets all light-headed about “movie guidelines” and whatnot, I’m just posting to make sure the news page isn’t empty. Louis gets all cranky when the news page is empty.)

Jump Tactics, mentioned here a few times before, has released a whole mess of styles vids via their forum. Give ’em a look and see if they don’t improve your pouncing panache, your vaulting verve, your evading élan. They may possibly help you jump better, too.

Hep, from Aussie Xbox, writes to tell us of an article on their site detailing the results of the charity Halo 2 tournament, held this last week on the 12th, that we’d previously mentioned. Check out the final stats, plus all the tons of great prizes from Logitech, Xbox, and Netgear and the fun being had in the name of a good cause.