An article in the (Australia) Herald Sun newspaper today talks about the marketing blitz about to kick off for Halo 2. It contains a summary of some of the more notable Australian events related to Halo 2 – and except for the crack about ‘constantly revised release dates’, is pretty accurate. Thanks, Dr. Nick.

One One Se7en makes an old joke new. Well, current, anyway.

Brandon Raffensperger, better known as gwdpto, the owner of the HBO-COERCE Halo CE server, posted a note explaining that as of October 31, HBO-COERCE would be going offline – there are multiple reasons, but Halo 2 is the top one. He’s hopeful that they’ll be back with a Halo 2 dedicated server before too long! Brandon, and everyone else who had a hand in making HBO-COERCE such a success this past year – thanks. The rest of you – you’ve only got about 4 weeks of playtime left on this server – go play!

Markus Tacker lets us know about a Halo 2 launch promotion in Frankfurt, Germany:

this morning I noticed a black Poster on a wall in the subway station Hauptwache showing the Master Chief and the headline “Are you ready to save the world?” (in german). On the bottom there were snippets to be ripped of (similar to these announcements searching for apartments) with an accesscode and the website url http://www.rettediewelt.com printed on it.

The access code is 010678DR.

You will find a nice flash with great sound and some silly games (text is german) promoting the launch party in munich.

I tried that access code, and got rejected; there were more prompts, but I couldn’t read them. If you read German, give it a shot! Update: I guess it matters which browser you use. Worked fine in Firefox. If you can guess your way through the answers to the subsequent quiz, you can get a Halo 2 countdown wallpaper. Thanks to everyone who helped out.

According to the Seattle Times, Halo 2 has presold more than 1 million copies at this stage, making it the highest presale in the history of video games. (I’ve heard higher numbers – but they probably did more homework than I did.) It’s the leader in a blockbuster season for Xbox, according to Andrew Jenkins, Xbox product manager. Go read the rest of the article

Major Nelson, the marketing guy at Xbox who gets such cool stuff, has gotten hold of (and taken pictures of) a limited-edition Halo 2 Kubrick T-shirt. It’s pretty cool. I’d wear one. (No, I don’t think you can buy one.) Thanks, A B.

CNN has put up a story on the World Cyber Games that kicked off yesterday in San Francisco. Halo takes up the last few paragraphs. (With almost $40,000 in cash and prizes on the line for the top 8 competitors in Halo, this is another of the biggies. If the same people who win this competition also take high honors in New York in 3 weeks, October could be a very good month for them!) Thanks, ICDedPpl.

The 2004 Season Championship for Major League Gaming will be held in New York City on October 23rd and 24th – and details can be found over at MLGPro.com. There is $50,000 in prize money on the line, with the vast majority of that going for Halo. (Quick addition makes it look like $40,000 is available for Halo, about $8000 for Super Smash Brothers, and $1000 each for Soul Caliber 2 and Gran Tourismo 3.) There are also tons of non-cash prizes. Go read the details, and get in on the action!

haloTV is into week 3 of their Plantronics Halo 2 headset giveaway, with 6 more headsets to go out. The response has been tremendous – so they’re giving you chances to win that aren’t just ‘put your hat in the ring and pray’ (though that option is still there). Make the coolest haloTV wallpaper, or logo, or video, or do the craziest stunt for them… you’ll win a headset. Check out the Headset Giveaway Forum for more details (registration required).

Calvin and Halo speculates on a pretty nice way to go out…

Dark Helmet has put forth the question – what are some of the best Halo tricks ever? Ducain stepped up to the plate with an entire section of the High Impact Halo forums devoted to the issue. Nominate your choices, and then come back and vote! Rules are here. Thanks, ash.

Bluestone has posted a new Flash movie called ‘Capture the Flag’ – it’s under 2 mb, and hosted at both 343GS and Newgrounds. Nice animation. (Apologies – he sent me mail about this on Saturday, but it got buried in the flood.)

Over the past few weeks, Compassghost has been posting pretty cool artwork for a Flash movie he’s working on. I haven’t added these to the Misc Art section because there are just too many of them; I considered offering him space for a separate page, but someone else did that and he said he wasn’t really interested… so they’ve never really been mentioned on the front page. However, he’s now posted the entire collection in a thread over on the Halo Babies forum, and says that future creations will be added to that thread. If you want to see this work before the movie comes out, that’s the place to go!

Geez – you go a weekend without posting any Fan Fiction updates, you suddenly have 23 pieces to deal with. Lots of poetry this time around.

On Saturday afternoon, Recoil brought a new product to our attention – the SmartJoy FRAG, an adaptor that allows you to connect PS/2 mice and keyboards to your Xbox. (We were sort of busy Saturday, and didn’t get to this right away.) Folks on many forums are up in arms about this, talking about how it will totally destroy Xbox Live – because a controller will never be able to keep up with a keyboard/mouse combo when it comes to accuracy. There are a few things to remember: any developer can remove the advantage of a mouse by enforcing a maximum turning speed (something that won’t really affect gameplay with a controller at all), and most people do not have their Xbox set up in a place where it would actually be convenient to play with a keyboard and mouse combination (let’s not even DISCUSS 4 keyboards/4 mice). However, it’s something to think about. According to César Berardini at TeamXbox, Microsoft has not yet responded to questions about this product. For more reading, and a movie of the product in action playing Halo, check out the Lik-Sang page or TeamXbox’s coverage. Be aware – this product is not yet available for purchase.

Ross Mills found a listing on Amazon.com for a Halo 2 Wall Calendar for 2005… except that it’s not available. Huh? (Details list a publication date of July 1, 2004. Bravardo (the publisher) doesn’t seem to have a website.) Curious… Update: Mike Scott says the listed ISBN number is invalid – did this EVER exist? Update 2: Xenos found a page which states that this calendar was cancelled. Oh, well.

Boxer reminded me a couple of hours ago that today’s Adventures in Disaster has been posted. Gotta watch them coordinates…

Narcogen, over at Rampancy.net, points out a tutorial showing how to use HexEdit, HMT, and some plugins to increase the speed of your Warthog. Since it’s posted on the MacDev site, I’d assume this works on Mac Halo. (You’ll need to register on MacDev to be able to read this.)

Major Nelson, Director of Programming for Xbox Live, has posted a picture on his blog of a metallic, embossed Halo 2 poster – looks pretty wild! Thanks to Anim8rJB for the heads-up. (Major Nelson also has pics of the final packaging of the Plantronics headset.)

Major League Gaming has launched MLG-TV, a free version of their for-pay Video on Demand. There are several vids up now, including shakeycam video from the San Fran tourney, and the LA Paintball Aftermath. Quality is quite good, especially considering what you’re paying for it (NOTHING). check it out! Thanks, Dolbex.