A month ago, we mentioned a tourney in the UK, run by Vagusnet. Gamesindustry.biz has some more info today – the full prize list for the winner and runner-up. Go see what loot is available!

Bellator wrote to us recently to point out that there’s quite a bit of information about Halo 2 characters over at the Wikipedia – go check it out… and maybe add to it!

The Houston Press profiles Matt Leto, better known as Zyos on the Halo professional circuit. It’s a monster article, looking at Zyos from his early days, through the start of his Halo professional career, through the present day. Fascinating read. Thanks, Rampancy.net and cookedGamers.

There’s an editorial over at TeamXbox that holds up Bungie’s Halo 2 stats system as a model to be emulated by the rest of the developer community – and to back up what is written, the clan that wrote the article is putting out an open-source stats package that runs on php/mysql in the near future. Thanks, 3Suns.

Halo 2 was big enough to get a mention in Bill Gates’ keynote speech at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. 6.3 million copies sold to date… wow. This has been reported in a number of places – I found it easiest to read at Eurogamer.

Bungie posted another interesting story last night – Xbox Live and Halo 2 by the Numbers. It’s a look at the first couple of months of Halo 2 multiplayer stats – and they’re pretty big numbers. There are some confusing things (how can you have more unique users than sessions?), but overall, it’s clear that Halo 2 has jumpstarted the Xbox Live service (even though that service existed for 2 years before Halo 2 ever showed up). Take a look!

Bungie continues their (long-dormant) series on what it’s like to work at Bungie… this time from the perspective of true royalty, Alta “Bungie Princess” Hartmann. (Okay, when you get right down to it, her job sounds kind of rough… but it IS all the beef jerky you can eat.) Thanks for doing what you do, Alta.

Apologies – the forum is currently offline. There’s a 12-year-old script kiddie who had nothing better to do than spam it – and I, unfortunately, DO have something better to do than chase him around, so I’ve turned it off. Gotta love it when the bad guys win. On a positive note, though, a package was delivered to my door about an hour ago – a pretty amazing package. Say hello to my little friend! To those wishing to chat on the forum – I’m sorry. Maybe tomorrow.

IGN has put up an article predicting the year-to-come as far as Microsoft and Xbox are concerned. Their prediction for Halo 3: it won’t be out until fall 2006, released as a ‘counterpunch’ against the PS3 and Nintendo’s next offering. Hmm… Thanks, Guardian.

What do you do when you’re done? The latest Trunks and Soto takes one tack… (Thanks, Trunks.)

Bizarre. c0ld vengeance has been griping about a sound he hears on the Zanzibar bridge (the one you can lower to get to the sword) every time he plays… some expressed sympathy, and some expressed confusion. Today, he posted a short vid, showing what he was talking about… and it turns out this is another PAL/NTSC difference. NTSC players hear nothing when running on that bridge… PAL players have to listen to what sounds like grinding metal every time they walk across. Apparently, a PAL player can be playing in a game with an NTSC player, and one will hear the noise and the other won’t. I think it’s Bungie’s way of handicapping European players, or something.

Today’s addition to the Cutscene Library is a biggie – it’s the end of Sacred Icon and the beginning of Gravemind. Lots of story meat in this one! (There is one tiny difference between the Legendary version and the other versions – we documented it here. The film that’s there now is on Legendary; it’s unlikely we’ll bother to put up a delta vid for this one.)

MrJukes has updated his Jumping Guide again – this time with a 6 minute treatise on Foundation. Some of the tricks are more fun than useful (they require overshield to survive, for example), but man… the guy’s got style. Check it out!

Kevin Ryan writes to say that Afterwar episode 10 has been posted – there are game spoilers in this one (Afterwar takes place… well, after the war). Go see what’s next for the Chief!

Back in December, Vue Cinemas in London sponsored the Big Screen Battle tourney, pitting Halo fans against one another on movie screens. Now, they’re doing it again… for a cause. This weekend, pay £3 to enter or £1.50 to watch, with proceeds going to the Disaster Emergency Committee for use in tsunami relief efforts.

Captain Spark snagged another 44 pretty cool dialogue snippets – they’re available for download in a single batch from his website (link in the forum post, 1.3 mb), or piecemeal in our Halo 2 Dialogue Databank. Go listen!

That TricKy doesn’t stop looking… this time he found a Best of 2004 Awards page on Xbox SE, a Swedish site. Halo 2 took home Game of the Year, Best Xbox Live Game, and Reader’s Choice.

Stuntmutt looks at Jackal snipers in today’s One One Se7en. (And for those who can’t get enough, it looks like there’s another animated one from N1NJ4 on our forum.)

Juggler has put up another modding vid – this one shows views from outside Colossus, Midship, and Waterworks, as well as other fun stuff. 35 mb, QuickTime format, hosted on HaloGT.com.

Halo 2 picks up another GotY award… XBOX365 gives it the nod as the #1 Game for Xbox in 2004. Thanks, TricKy.