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.

The multipage article on machinima (with a focus on FTC) that appeared in yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen is now online, for folks with a subscription to the paper. If you DON’T have a subscription, SquattingBear4ever sent in a huge (2685×1684, 815K) scan of the article. It’s a great read.

serpx points out the official Halo 2 site in Australia, which has quite a bit more content than the US site. Unfortunately, for most of it, you need to register… and to register, you have to have a geographic address somewhere in Australia. I suppose I understand the theory behind this… but since this content isn’t available anywhere else in the world, it seems a bit unfair. Google, however, helps quite a lot when you let it, so Louis Wu now lives next door to the Australian Museum in Sydney. If you’re an Aussie, you can enter the Halo 2 competition, which started last week; each week, through October 15, they’ll pick the best 25-words-or-less description of what a fan would do if aliens landed on earth; there’s pretty nice schwag to win. There’s also customized wallpapers for several large cities in AU, news items about MC sightings, and more. Go check it all out! (If you’re Australian, that is…)

This was probably a bit more relevant last week, when our forum was full of complaints about the changes to the pistol in Halo 2… but hey, there are STILL threads today about it, so go read One One Se7en and realize that it’s only a game.

Brodingo found a pair of brand-new screenshots on the Dutch site Xboxworld.nl. There’s now a big long forum thread debating whether they’re real or not… for what it’s worth, they look real to me. It’s a map I’ve never seen before… but there’s some interesting stuff, if you look around. Maybe we’ll get word from Bungie about the story behind these – who knows?

New content over at Halo Babies; a new strip (things are getting… weirder) and some new Halo 2 Baby Chief concept art (very cool). Go look!

14 new pieces for you in the Fan Fiction section today – songs, stories, you name it. Folks keep writing.

ILTB dropped us a note about an event he attended in Melbourne, Australia, involving the band Regurgitator. (We mentioned them, and their Band in a Bubble project, about a month ago; they were released on Tuesday, which is probably the event ILTB was attending.) He snapped some pics of a roving Master Chief interacting with the band… take a look!

There’s a new mailbag up, courtesy of Count Zero; I think he must have been sober when he wrote it, because he’s less offensive than usual. He DID point out a hole in my near-complete collection of Halo-related souvenirs, though… if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some eBaying to do.

The 7th Column is back up and running – and man, there are a lot of changes. mrsmiley has done a decent job of summarizing them in a Bungie.net forum post; if you want a rundown of what he thinks is good and bad about the new system, go read. Otherwise, just explore the options available to you – there are many.