No, they don’t mean it’s gonna be terrible – they mean its a fusion of Worst, a popular Japanese manga that’s coming to America, and Halo 2, a popular video game that’s coming… well, everywhere. A Halo 2 tourney in mid-November, with Worst and Halo-related goodies for prizes. Check out all the details on the Digital Manga page.

Tina Leyk is back, with two new Fur-Lo comics; they’re both great looks at multiplayer… erm, fun. Or something. (I’ve been there, on BOTH of these…)

Okay, enough people have been whinin- er, clamoring for the return of the HBO-XBL Gamertag list that I put it back up tonight. What it DOESN’T have: I’ve yanked the ability to list what games you play. (This is why it disappeared in the first place; new games were being added to XBL so quickly that I couldn’t keep up, and people complained that the games they were playing weren’t yet on the list. It was easier just to yank it.) Think of it now as a way to find HBO regulars on XBL to play Halo 2 against.

Wow. Hawaiian Pig has ALREADY whipped up a MegaBattle set piece from Red vs Blue episode 39… wow. (There’s also a really nice little wallpaper in there.)

A couple of days ago, we mentioned a Spike TV casting call; it was happening in Santa Monica, CA, on Tuesday. It’s been rescheduled; the actual event will be tomorrow, Wednesday, October 13, at 10:30 am. The full casting notice can be seen here.

It’s almost, but not quite, the end of Tuesday – this episode of Calvin and Halo makes it in under the wire. (No guarantees on how long it’ll be readable; our backup servers are both choking.) It’s a big ‘un… but then, the job Calvin is trying to do is a big ‘un.

Team Radeon has put out a guide to Tweaking Halo PC – lots of information on making HPC run nicely on your computer. Check it out!

Soulblighta found another version of the Breaking Benjamin track off the Official Halo 2 soundtrack; this one’s at the MSN Music site. He found the link in an Xbox.com newsflash. If you’d rather listen to the song as a .wma stream than a Flash animation, this is your ticket.

A whole passel of movies for you this morning: a couple of ‘Where are we now?’ vids and a promo for the Homefront mod.

• Hikaru-119’s ‘With Us‘ looks at where the Human race stands…
• kwdono04’s ‘The Final Countdown‘ recaps our views of Halo 2 from announcement day through the present…
• The Homefront team has released their Version 2 Video, a cinematic look at what’s available in this Battlefield: Vietnam mod (and it looks pretty awesome).

Go grab the ones that interest you!

Bali, continuing to cull the best Halo 2 content from Xbox.com, points out a Contest for Canadians; as long as you’re of legal age, you’re eligible to Play Halo 2 before it hits the stores. Fill out the form (really, just click the ‘sign me up’ link) and boom, you’ve got a chance to be flown to Toronto on October 25th to play Halo 2 multiplayer with the band The Music – two weeks before everyone else. Not bad!

Red vs Blue Episode 39, kicking off Season 3, is now available for download. It’s 8:45 long, and currently only available in Lo-Res formats (they haven’t started the sponsorship stuff yet). QuickTime is 49 mb, DivX is 48 mb, WMP9 is 36 mb – and whatever format you grab, the whole thing is pretty durn funny. Go watch!

If you live in Southern California, Spike TV is looking for outgoing 18-30-year-old men and women who are crazy about Halo. Hmm… More details can be found in Konrad’s forum post.

synide sent along a clipping from yesterday’s USA Today newspaper about the Halo 2 soundtrack. There’s one thing you gotta say for adding high-profile musicians to your soundtrack – it gets you mentioned in a newspaper with a daily circulation of more than 2.5 million copies.

Interesting. There’s a charity dinner being hosted by the Entertainment Software Association to raise money for a non-profit foundation that supports children’s groups – and this time around, they’re auctioning off a large number of items for the cause. There are a lot of items, so sorting out the Halo-related ones might be rough… but look around, there’s everything from an autographed Halo Special Edition Xbox, to a Halo 2 Sergeant Johnson Personalized Outgoing Message for your answering machine, to a roto-molded fiberglass Master Chief figure standing more than 3 feet high. Remember – the money all goes to charity. Lots of folks sent this in – looks like Dusty was first.

To all the folks sending word that the Fan Fiction and Dialogue Databank sections have stopped working properly – we know. The tool that used to fix that problem has somehow broken – until we can get it fixed, these sections are spotty, at best. Sorry. (To stave off the inevitable offers – there’s no way to move these sections to machines at other sites; we appreciate it when people try to help, but we’ve got to fix this one ourselves. Thanks!)

IGN continues its countdown to Halo 2 with an article about the competition – games coming out the same week as Halo 2. Games like Mario Tennis, and Hot Wheels: Stunt Track Challenge. Hmm.

Took MUCH longer than I’d anticipated, but the aspect-corrected QuickTime versions of the Weekly Update movie are now available for download; your best bet is to snag one of the BitTorrent links for the Hi-res version, or a direct download for the smaller one. Thanks to all the hosts providing bandwidth here – this community ROCKS!

Bah. I was hoping that the QuickTime versions would generate quickly… but nothing ever goes as planned. Earlier today, Bungie released ‘Bungie Weekly Update: Sexy Girls Gone Wild Video Edition’ – which isn’t nearly as racy as it sounds, though it IS a nice walk through the Bungie offices. Bungie.net is swamped at the moment, so we’ve put up a mirror list of both direct downloads and BitTorrent seeds for grabbing this movie. If you don’t like WMP9 format (or you’d rather that the aspect ratio be correct) you might want to wait until the QuickTime versions are done – they’re both 16:9 (the way the movie was intended to be) and should be online shortly. Meanwhile, if you’re mirroring these files, feel free to send us links; we’ll add them to this page. Thanks!