Soulblighta found a writeup on a Belgian site of the Halo 2 European Developer Tour. This, as well, is in Dutch (though he’s offered a translation – yes, please, Soulblighta 🙂 ). It chronicles an event that took place in Paris on August 20, and the size of the screens they played on made me drool. Take a look!

Ernst Sandelowsky points out an article he wrote (in Dutch) for the Xboxarena.nl website, about his experience at Power Unlimited Gameplay last weekend. I can’t read Dutch, but his description of the experience wasn’t very inspiring; people interested in trying out Halo 2 were forced to perform degrading acts for the crowd in order to get in. What were they thinking?

A few days ago, MereCatfish posted a short (1:52, 4.9 mb, WMP9 format) teaser for an upcoming video known as ‘Live Forever’; it wasn’t until today that I got word that it’s got sufficient bandwidth to be front-paged here. It’s exactly what it sounds like – a teaser – but from the looks of things, the final product (a team-based battle in heroic style) could be fun to watch. Check it out!

Gah. Once again, I’ve forgotten to update the Bungie Weekly Update archive until the end of the week. It’s updated now, with last week’s quickie from Halo Babies. Just in time for today’s NEW update. Erk.

Thanks to Andrew, of Xbox Ottawa (and half of the FTC team) for sending in a (monster) scan of an article in yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen newspaper (877×3809, 587K); it focuses on G-Spot, a pro Halo player from Canada who will be representing his country at the World Cyber Games next month. (The reporter writing the story lost 125-7 in 1v1 slayer matches – with some of the gameplay from G-Spot being performed with his controller flipped upside down.) Interesting read, and amazing quantity of coverage in a mainstream newspaper. (Must have been a really slow news day in Ottawa.) Check it out!

I really, really hope Stuntmutt’s offbase in today’s One One Se7en… cause that sort of behavior would make me want to shoot someone. A grunt, maybe.

A couple of days ago, Captain Spark released a video in which he finally, after years of abuse, FINALLY got some revenge on the uncooperative Marines who have made his dialogue-collecting sessions so difficult. It was funny enough that we’re hosting it for him now; I’d like to apologize in advance for the odd-looking text. Some weird setting on the original video CS sent me had screwed up the aspect ratio of the film; everything was squished. I fixed this, but in doing so, made the text look a bit… odd. Blame me, not CS. The video is available in two flavors, both 480×360: there’s a 4.2 mb WMP7 version, and a 4.7 mb QuickTime version. Grab the one that suits you!

Halo Babies has revamped their Baby MC, and he’s unveiled in the latest strip. They’ve also tipped a hat to… well, go read it.

Tyrian points out a customizable desktop countdown clock called PhanTim3 – it runs under pretty much any flavor of Windows. What makes this Halo-relevant is the existence of a set of 9 Halo skins for the clock; you can use this as a countdown to Halo 2. Freeware.

TheManRoom has posted its own Character Preview, and described the Halo 2 Media Tool Kit it received containing this information. For folks wondering where TeamXbox got its information and pictures for yesterday’s Bios Blowout article… now you know. (No, HBO isn’t on whatever list you have to be on to get this toolkit, so we can’t show you unwatermarked versions of these files… sorry.)

Dolbex points out that there are over 4 hours of new video footage of gameplay from MLG Atlanta – 50k3 in the Video On Demand section of the MLGPro.com website. If you want to see top-notch pro gameplay, this is the place to get it. A VoD subscription is $20 for the year.

Gah. Almost a month ago, ferory pointed out a ‘Halo 2 Readiness Guide‘ that had gone up on Xbox.com, giving information on what you might want to do to get ready for the release of Halo 2. I wrote back at the time that we’d already posted about that when it went up on Bungie.net; a couple of weeks earlier, B.net had posted a ‘Prepare Yourself’ article, and in that timeframe, a bunch of old B.net stories began to appear on Xbox.com, and I assumed that this was just another example of recycled content. I was wrong – it’s a different article altogether, similar subjects notwithstanding. My bad for not checking more closely. Thanks to both forum posters and emailers who pointed out this article again in the last day or two, and made me look a second time.

Took a little while… but the Bungie Store is back online, with T-shirts, fleece pullovers, keychains, pen and pencil sets, and more. There’s clearly more on the way – the slideshow on the opening screen shows a bunch of items not yet available. go buy, and help Bungie on their road to world domination! (Thanks, Finn – you WERE the first.)

I do believe I can see the bottom of the art queues. (I’m not sure that’s a great thing; I know from experience that when you empty a barrel that you’ve been using continually for a long time, you find all sorts of nasty growths you never really needed to see.) Anyway, today’s batch has been placed in the Wallpaper Section – 10 images that range from a spectacular reworking of a Tina Leyk piece to some peaceful views of an earthlike part of the Halo… and lots of stuff in between. Check ’em out!

Computer and Video Games has put up the fourth part of their in-depth look at Halo 2 – this one is an interview with Bungie’s Pete Parsons. Aside from one obnoxious paragraph (right after explaining how their guide asked them politely not to look at certain things, they described exactly what they DID see – there are potential spoilers in here for those of you who really, absolutely, don’t want ANY spoilers at all), it was a great interview – positive, but once again proving that Pete’s a master at making his point without giving anything away that he wants to keep secret. Go read! Thanks to John Houlihan of CVG for the heads-up.

Last month, Marc Friedrichs of Halo Universe sent along a couple of magazine scans of German Halo articles; somehow, they got lost in the flood of content. They’re up, now, in our Press Scans section, however; if you read German, check out June’s Video Games Aktuell and August’s Xbox Zone. Thanks, Marc!

Seven new pieces for you today in the Fan Fiction section – apologies for the outages earlier this morning. (Looks like a router got swapped out without the datacenter being warned… SOMEONE got chewed out pretty good.) Go read some Halo fiction and relax.

Today’s Calvin and Halo looks inside alien races… and what it finds isn’t pretty.

The country-specific Backstage Pass pages are beginning to appear; a little searching turned up ‘Coming Soon’ pages for Great Britain and France. I’m happy to set up a list for these, if folks want to point them out when they appear; in a lot of cases, I can’t read the page well enough to figure out what I’m looking at, so I’m dependent on locals in each area to find their own. Thanks! Update: With a little help from this GamesIndustry.biz article and some judicious guessing, I’ve found links to the rest of the European options for this contest – Germany, Finland, Denmark, Austria, and Switzerland. Still to come (I’m guessing) – asian sites like Japan, and possibly Australia. (NONE of the non-US ones have real info yet – just a placeholder page. Be patient, though.)

Subzero Rivalries has posted another episode; this comic looks at hwo much more important attention is than, say… winning. Pointed out by MarkHawk.