Red vs Blue Episode 45.9, The Greatest Episode Ever, is now up for sponsor download, in WMP9 and DivX formats. It’s… not what you’d expect. Thanks, Altodarknight.

Gameheads is running some Halo 2 tournaments coming up in January – details (and signups) are available at their site. If you’re near Marlboro, NY, check ’em out!

Bungie is looking for a new Interface Designer – and there are still other jobs open. Go see if you qualify! Thanks, John Rivas.

Another rash of articles about videogame violence, and how awful Halo 2 is for the youth of America (and, I suppose, the world):

• Washington Post – the governor of Illinois wants to enforce age restrictions on game purchases… and Halo 2 is right up there in the ‘evil’ bunch. (Thanks, Johngremm.)
• MTV.com – another take on this story
• Indystar.com – a rehash of last month’s ICCR-spurred drive to nail the evil videogame makers (thanks, Hunt3r); to be fair, this opinion piece is 2 weeks old, and isn’t really rehashing, as it was ‘news’ then.

Let’s remember that ESRB ratings are VOLUNTARY – and that PARENTS should be responsible for policing what kids play.

MacSoft has released Mac Halo v1.5, to bring the mac version into parity with HaloPC v1.0.6. (It also fixes a number of other issues – you can read the entire version history for full details.) The updater is 3.5 mb, and can be downloaded from a number of sites, including files2.bungie.org and MacGameFiles.

prometheus has put together a nice little guide on creating wallpaper – it’s like an art guide, but specifically tailored to making images that work well as a desktop pattern. There’s plenty of good advice in it – if you’re interested in creating wallpapers, you should read this!

Wow, nice. Tarzan posted a couple of pics on our forum of a wall mural he’s painting in his room. Fantastic work – even MORE impressive when you know it’s coming from a 13-year-old!

Wheee… Goldman Sachs raised estimates on Microsoft today, citing (among other things) ‘upside from the company’s Halo 2 game’. When was the last time a company that grosses $40 billion a year had its bottom line affected by a video game?

MR-T posted a few Master Chief renders on our forum – nice work!

And still MORE awards – Lawrence.com has posted its 2004 Gamer’s Voice Award nominees – Halo 2 is up for a whole PASSEL of goodies: Best First-person Shooter, Best Presentation, Best Replay, Best Online Multiplayer, Best Graphics, Best Soundtrack, Best Audio, and Best Overall. Winners will be announced on December 21. Thanks, Mothergoat.

A new Subzero Rivalries has been posted. I’m listing it because we’ve listed all the previous ones – but this one’s humor is rather juvenile. If you’re easily offended, don’t bother visiting, and if you do, we don’t need to hear about it. Thanks, MarkHawk.

Hehe – sometimes a free planet ain’t all you bargained for. Check out today’s Calvin and Halo.

Not willing to be left behind (SpikeTV, IGN, and Gamespot all announced stuff earlier this week), Gamespy has put up THIER 2004 Game of the Year sections. Halo 2 won several awards: Xbox Game of the Year, Xbox Shooter of the Year, Best Use of Xbox Live, and Best and Worst Ending in an Xbox game. It’s also up for Overall Game of the Year (which will be announced next week). Thanks, Black Six.

There’s a new interview with Chris Butcher over at How Stuff Works – this one focuses on Halo Networking. It’s a fascinating read – if you’re interested in the workings of Halo vs Halo 2. Thanks, Target4Hire.

Interesting. Uriel has put out a call to modders for a Halo project involving Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. Go read his post for more info.

I’ve turned off the poll we started last week (Which map would you like to see return for Halo 2?) – the results are still up, and it’s clear that the two favorite choices were Hang ’em High and Sidewinder, but it’s also clear that almost EVERY map in Halo had its proponents. Please be aware that this poll has no binding effect on ANYTHING – Bungie saw it, but they’re not obligated in any way to follow it. If they choose to release Halo maps, redone for the Halo 2 engine, you can be sure that they’ll take this information into account – but there are other factors (like the new weapon balance, and so on) that are possibly more important; the choices they make will take into account ALL the factors, not just what some of us would LIKE to see.

Stuntmutt looks at one of the pitfalls of clan play on XBL in today’s One One Se7en. If that doesn’t give you enough of your recommended daily allowance of corn, you should stop by his blog – he’s posted 20 guest strips that have been sent in to us over the past 8 months or so (since we stopped accepting guest strips). The first one, in particular, is fantastic.

Deimos, over at Subnova, wrote a nice little app that allows you to get MSN Messenger Alerts via IRC. This is relevant to this community because you can, for example, sign up for XBox Live Alerts, which will tell you when your friends sign on, or when you receive a game invite… and you can receive this alert while you’re logged into the Subnova IRC network, chatting on, say, #HBO. I’ve never paid much attention to the MSN Alert stuff, because I don’t want to run the Messenger IM application on my computer – but now I don’t have to. MorningStar has written up instructions on how to integrate these two services; if this sounds appealing to you, go read, and sign up!

An interview with Tyson Green, aka Ferrex, was published in February’s Electronic Gaming Magazine – and is now available on 1UP.com. It’s a fantastic read, even if Tyson misattributes the Warthog Jump vid to Frogblast, instead of Randy Glass. Tons of “why did you do it this way?” questions – with real answers. Go read! Thanks, Voodoo Extreme.