I’m posting this because… well, because. Halo is easily the biggest franchise Bungie’s ever been involved in, and this site is devoted to Halo… but yesterday was the 10th Anniversary of Marathon, the game that launched Bungie’s career, in many ways. (Yes, there were games that came before. Marathon was still what put them on the map.) In honor of that anniversary, Jay Faircloth (aka Anaphiel) created a set of desktop images to commemorate the game; they’re gorgeous. Grab one and raise a glass! (Comments can go here, on the Marathon Story forum.)

1Up.com has posted another interview published in the current issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly – this one is with Pete Parsons, Bungie’s Studio Manager. Pete talks about some of the decisions that made Halo 2 what it is today – and some of the reasons behind the tactics Bungie used to present the game to the public. Fascinating. Thanks, Dolbex.

Today’s One One Se7en lesson is ‘be clear when you’re discussing something not present.’ Or maybe just ‘Don’t let Stuntmutt out of his cage’…

Gamespy has ranked Halo 2 its 2004 Game of the Year, beating games like Half-Life 2 (2nd) and GTA San Andreas (3rd). Nice! Thanks, Black Six.

That Weasel writes to say that their Video Upload feature is back online; if you have a film you want to show the community, and it’s larger than Mythica’s 8 mb limit, and it doesn’t meet our posting guidelines, That Weasel Television is there to help! Just another feature for the fans… thanks, tw!

Sometimes I wonder how it’s all gonna get done. The next Big Thing that was supposed to come online here was the Joint HBO/HIH Tricks database – that’s still in the works (I keep adding stuff, so it keeps not being finished), but an ambitious fan coupled with some new software made it feasible to jump the line with a section that we’ve talked about for YEARS – a Cutscene Library. Huge thanks go out to Sniper 058, who went to the effort of recording them; we now have the first cutscene (a combination of ‘The Heretic’, and the Armory opener) online for you. Grab the flavor that works best for you, from one of our mirror links. Depending on demand, we’ll release these every couple of days. (If you want to see them faster, don’t abuse the links we have – download only what you need.) Hopefully, this will help the Story page folks out, as well. And yes, c0ld, one day the Halo cutscenes will be archived here as well.

That Weasel writes to say that Episode 14 of “Grunts Are People Too!!!” has been posted – ‘Behind the Rock’ is available in QuickTime, WMP9, and DivX formats. It’s not very big – go grab a copy! Oh, the sadness of dead grunts…

Last week, Lawrence.com posted its Gamer’s Voice Award nominees – Halo was nominated for 8 awards. Today, they’ve posted the results – Halo took home Best First-Person Shooter, Best Multiplayer, and Best Soundtrack, as well as the Gamer’s Voice Award (reader’s choice). It took runner-up to Burnout 3 for Best Replay. Go read all the results – thanks, Mothergoat.

As I sit here in my warm office, looking out over the white-covered trees behind my house, today’s Calvin and Halo is very appropriate… though I’m less unhappy than the SKBs.

The Flaming Arabs clan has put together a trailer for an upcoming movie called ‘N00bs Gone Wild’ – a look at teamkillers. You can grab it off their website; 1:51 long, 9.3 mb, WMP9 format.

In other award news, IGN is now accepting Reader’s Choice votes, though a bunch of the page links are broken from the Xbox Portal. (A little hunting dug up the correct link for the First Person Shooter voting page – I don’t know how many others will bother with this.) Thanks, Spike.

Gamespy posted the Multiplayer section of their Game of the Year Awards yesterday – and Halo 2 took Runner-up position to Unreal Tournament 2004. Ouch! Thanks to many – AltoDarkNight was first.

A custom gametype is sweeping XBL these days – it’s big enough that Dolbex felt the urge to write up a description of it yesterday over on MLGPro.com (and call it ‘the most fun I have had on Halo 2 yet’). It’s known variously as ‘Dawn of the Dead’, or ‘Zombie’, or occasionally something close to that. Dolbex gives a quick summary of the rules. The first mention of this game I can remember seeing was almost a month ago, by Salandarin on our forum – this isn’t new, it’s just becoming popular. Give it a try!

Tons and tons of fan art over at Halo Babies today… go see what you can find! (I’m lovin’ those pics of Linda…) Thanks, mrsmiley.

Two new stories up at Bungie.net right now; not surprising they tried to bury one. Last week’s Halo Humpday Challenge didn’t actually happen until Friday – and when it did, they almost lost to Clan PMS. Read all the gory details, written by He Who Died A Lot (otherwise known as Frankie). You can tell they wanted to hide this story, because the current top story, put up 8 minutes later and bumping the HHC writeup off the visible spectrum, was an article called ‘Getting Started with Halo 2‘ – an article that’s already been the Top Story at least twice. Hmm…

Andrew dropped by our forum to point out that the direct-download links for FTC 16 are now available (to all, not just to members). AVI or QuickTime, a bit over 50 mb each. Go grab ’em!

New contest over at misterchief.com – design and create a Mister Chief Birthday Card (in time for Mister Chief’s 1-year anniversary on January 16), win a copy of The Art of Halo (a place where Mister Chief is notably absent) or one of 5 T-shirts. Full rules and details can be found on the contest page.

20 new stories in the Fan Fiction section, including the second half of Jillybean’s Christmas Wish to the community. (Hopefully, you’ll actually be able to read these; the connection to that server has been tenuous recently. It’s wireless, over a rather large distance (several miles), and is easily disrupted. Deimos is working on upgrading the signal strength; things should be better next week or soon after. For now, keep trying.)

A couple of weeks ago, G4techTV aired an episode of Icons devoted to the history of Bungie. Dan Chosich filmed this for us, but we couldn’t do anything with it until G4 took it out of the on-air schedule. The last show date was yesterday – so if you’d like to grab a hi-res version of this film, via BitTorrent, you can do that. Thanks to Brian Towne, of Mythica, for hosting the seed. (The footage is 20:28 long, 720×480, 192 mb, in QuickTime format.)

halochat has put up a small video that includes the footage of Halo 2 gameplay from the final episode of The Apprentice, aired last week. Pretty cool to see SketchFactor in a TV show watched by millions! (Pretty funny that they ran out of power…)