IGN has put up 4 new vids containing shakeycam (but very high-quality shakeycam) footage of Zanzibar gameplay at the Tokyo Game Show. These show better gameplay than the rather lame Warthog driving footage they posted yesterday. In actuality, there are really only 3 new clips; those marked ‘3’ and ‘4’ are the same clip. (It does end, however, with an awesome energy-sword death; worth watching twice, I guess.) The heads-up for these came from HaloPlanet.

Nice pickup by nash–housewares… in the final TGS picture displayed by Impress, Frankie is playing split-screen… but the screen is split side-to-side, rather than up-and-down! I missed this entirely, but it’s going to come as a welcome change to widescreen tv owners.

Interesting. There’s a forum thread over at Bungie.net in which a fan visited the website of the company that does the sculpture for the Halo 2 action figures for Joyride. In the Halo 2 section, he found a new, never-before-seen creature… is this a mistake? Did the sculpting company put up something they shouldn’t have yet? Is this picture in the wrong section of the website? It’s a mystery… all I can really tell you is that if you really, really don’t want ANY chance of being spoiled for ANY part of the Halo 2 storyline, don’t follow the link. Past that… you got me. (Please don’t post this image in our forum – and if you discuss it, do so with obvious *SP* tags in your subject line. Thanks.) Kudos to Brian Finney for pointing this out to us, and to opsixdelta for finding it.

Arkangel06 got a chance to play the E3 build of Zanzibar, as well as Waterworks and Lockout from the beta; he’s written up his impressions in a long post on our forum. Give it a read!

GhaleonbEB found some nice pics taken at the Tokyo Game Show yesterday; they were linked to on the Gaming Age forums, but they were actually posted on the Japanese site Impress. Great, high-quality shots of Frankie playing Ascension (the new map depicted in yesterday’s screenshots), which show clearly the HUD as it stands in this build, as well as closeups of the Chibi Master Chief (labeled ‘Kubrick’ below the display case; it’s clearly NOT made of Legos, as many are postulating). Check ’em out!

Goatrope continues his quest to blow people away in Vidmaster style… he’s completed 343 Guilty Spark, Legendary Difficulty, taking zero shots, and dying zero times. The movie is 11:44 long, in DivX-encoded AVI format, and 32.6 mb large. Nice humility, even. All I can say is… wow. (I’m really, really impressed that he didn’t instinctively pull his AR’s trigger a few times in the helmetcam room…)

Konrad, a regular at HBO Junkies’ lanfests, has recreated some memorable scenes from events held here over the years, in Megabattle style. (If you’ve forgotten – or never learned – what a Megabattle pic is all about, just search our news.) Now, you might not have any real context for the moments themselves (most people reading this have never been to a lanfest here), but the pics are pretty cool in their own right. Check ’em out!

Brian Towne, of Mythica.org, has made an astoudingly generous offer tonight; if you have a file that you need hosted – an image, a small movie (under 8 mb), whatever – that you want to post on either our forums or the High Impact Halo forums… just upload them onto his new server. There are no limits on quantity; you can upload as many files as you want, and you’ll never be cut off for overuse of bandwidth. However, you can’t cross-post these files on other forums, or on your own personal site; they won’t actually load. You can read the full details in Brian’s forum post; never again will you run into a situation where you have a picture you want to show to the forum but no place to put it!

When the two new screens were released today, there was a bit of talk on our forum about how cool it was that the scope on the sniper showed what you were looking at. BOLL, never one to leave you feeling like you were missing something, decided to give you a chance to try it out – today. Check out this forum post…

David Bikki points out a couple of pages of pictures at eToychest; the first page has as its last image a nice pic of the Halo 2 booth, and the second page has as its FIRST shot an adorable closeup of a chibi Master Chief. Check ’em out!

Everyone’s favorite cue ball has been interviewed over at TeamXbox; Frankie holds forth on online multiplay, decals, and what Bungie ISN’T talking about. (They’re still not talking about it – he’s just reiterating that. That is… oh, never mind. Just go read it.) Thanks, GhaleonEB.

SketchFactor has put up the two new screens released recently, over on Bungie.net… maybe a bit later than, say, us… but their versions are bigger. Go grab the 1600×1200 lovin’ over at B.net. (They DO have watermarks, though. Ha.)

This week’s update DID happen after all… Sketch has posted it for Frankie (who’s in Tokyo, enjoying… something) over at Subnova. It’s the last few tidbits, it seems… plus some fun coverage of the Tokyo Game Show. And some of the worst Mister Chief art to date. Go read. Update: Apparently, in the 2 hours since it went live, Subnova proved unable to handle the load. It seems fine now… but in the meantime, I’ve received word that it’s been mirrored by The Junkyard (thanks, Jake) and akba.info (thanks, akba). Sorry.

Just in time for THIS week’s Update (if there is, in fact, an update this week), we’ve finally managed to put LAST week’s update into the Weekly Update archive. Wow – it makes the ‘all updates’ list pretty large! (If all you want is to read a specific update, you should use the date links at the bottom of the main archive page.)

IGN Editor Chris Carle got to play some Zanzibar CTF at the Tokyo Game Show, and wrote up his experiences on IGN Xbox. Nothing horribly new – it’s the same build folks have been writing about all summer – but it’s nicely written, and it’s always fun to see what others have to say. Thanks, dkn2.

Thanks to Microsoft, we can bring you high-res, unwatermarked versions of the two new screens that showed up first on Xboxworld this morning. 1280×960, baby! Go get ’em in our Screenshots section.

Gamespot has put up 5 new movies – they’re all a minute long, except for one, which is 22 seconds. They all show gameplay on Zanzibar, collected at the Tokyo Game Show today, they were all filmed with a camcorder pointed at the screen, and none of them have sound. For Gamespot complete members, they’re available as zipped MPEG files (11.6 mb and 4.3 mb), for everyone else, they’re streaming media. Thanks, Patrick Dalire (whose description was fun enough for me to steal as the title for this piece). Update: Adam Daniel noticed a movie at IGN, as well. Downloadable for insiders, streaming for the masses. This one’s hardly worth it, though… 25 seconds of camcorder-recorded, no-sound footage of someone who has clearly never driven a warthog before going from the beach to the… well, the seawall. And then the movie ends.

Not available in the US yet, it seems… but in Germany, you can order Halo 2 bundled with the Xbox Live Starter Kit, for just €70.99. (The Starter Kit on its own is €48.99, which means if you need both, you’re getting Halo 2 for €22, a significant discount off its €48.99 standalone price.) Thanks, Uriel.