Nice article over on TeamXbox – bios of the Halo 2 cast (at least the cast known to date), both human and covenant, as well as rundowns of known weapons and vehicles. Some pics seem to be new. Worth a read! Thanks, Recoil.

Ever feel like you just don’t have enough easy ways to access the information available here at HBO? There are so many different search areas – news, art, forum, updates – or maybe you just wanna find posts by your friends. Or maybe you want better access to the subsections of HBO, without having to go to the main page first. Well, BOLL is here for you. He’s created the HBO PAL, a small popup window that gives you access to an enormous swath of HBO info in one little strip of real estate. Stick it in a corner of your screen, see if it makes your life any easier. (If it doesn’t… hey, just close it.) Don’t forget to thank him.

We don’t normally like to post the same news item twice, but this one deserves a double-post, because of the confusion. A couple of hours ago (but yesterday, by this site’s clock), we announced a new contest in which Xbox Live subscribers would get a chance to win a 3 day/2 night trip to Bungie Studios to play Halo 2 before the rest of the world. Several threads immediately popped up on our forum, pointing out that while the sweepstakes page at Xbox.com states that “Twenty lucky winners from around the world (five in North America)” will be going to Redmond, the official rules page states that the contest is open only to “legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (except Quebec)”. Residents of non-North American countries – fear not! Each country sending people will have its own sweepstakes page, with its own eligibility requirements and rules. Once they’re all live, you’ll be able to see whether you meet the requirements in your country – but for now, remember that the contest doesn’t close until October 15, so there’s plenty of time. Sorry for the confusion!

Recently, we mentioned a surprise promotion coming today – I’m proud to be able to tell you about the Halo 2 Backstage Pass Sweepstakes. Win a chance to visit Bungie’s headquarters for 3 days/2 nights and play some Halo 2 before the rest of the world! Details are in the Halo 2 Backstage Pass Press Release.

Computer and Video Games has posted part 3 of their in-depth look at Halo 2’s multiplayer – this one focuses on Weapons. Good read, again. (Was the headline a nod to Iain M. Banks, or just a coincidental choice of words?) Thanks, Wiggum.

AngelicLionheart wrote about a Halo tourney in Athens, GA to benefit Habitat for Humanity; play Halo, win a chance at one of four copies of Halo 2, and help houses get built! Check out all the details in this Bungie.net forum post.

wopkins, who showed off a breakdancing MC a couple of months ago, is back with a threatening grunt. Spits, too. WMP and QT formats, at this point. Nice work!

What? It’s Wednesday, and there hasn’t been an art update yet? Wait, what was yesterday’s? Oh, yeah… wallpaper. Okay, here’s ten more creations for the Miscellaneous Art Section. Some of these just flat-out ROCK. Go look.

The next big MLG tournament will be in Los Angeles, on September 25 – and you can find travel details over on the MLGPro.com website. If you need help on where to stay or how to get around, check it out!

I vaguely remember Boxer telling me that today’s Adventures in Disaster (episode 10) should be up at akba.info. It seems, in fact, to be so. Artwork rocks, but if the MC were really this dumb, we’d never have made it off the Pillar of Autumn. Spoilers, just so I don’t get email from folks saying ‘hey, man, how come you didn’t put a spoiler warning on that post?’

Dev was working on a flash cartoon called “Halo: The Battle of Reach” – he was almost done, and a virus ate his computer. He saved a few things, but most of it is gone. He put together a teaser for the project, in Flash, as an attempt to entice folks to help him out. Watch the teaser (418K), and if you’re interested, contact him (info is in the animation) and join the team!

Chronomaw points out that Halogen, the C&C Generals Total Conversion, has posted a large update for the mod, including unveiling the interface for the game and their concept of the UNSC logo, as well as some new renders. Check it out!

Geeoff noticed a skin at Skinz.org that bears a striking resemblance to our good buddy 343 Guilty Spark. It’s unlikely that the author took any inspiration at all from Halo… but it’s STILL a neat pic.

Last week, Eclarap of Halo France posted a huge writeup of his visit to Bungie’s offices in early August, a bit ahead of schedule. (The ‘ahead of schedule’ part wasn’t malicious – it was all a misunderstanding.) In the furor that erupted over this release, the Halo.fr writeup was pulled down, but Microsoft bumped up the news embargo date, to last Friday… and because of that bump, you’ve been reading dozens of hands-on writeups in the past several days. And now, finally, the original writeup is BACK online, along with his screenshots and the shakeycam vid he collected. There’s a translation, of sorts, over at HaloPlanet, if you don’t read French – but at the very least you can look at all the pretty pictures. And whoa, speaking of HaloPlanet… it looks like Fluffy has put up the first part of his OWN impressions of that weekend – it’ll be reformatted at some point, and added to, but it’s a great start. (For the record, I had NO drinks on the plane; it was Fluffy’s incessant talking that made me miss that turn. At least we didn’t end up in Fishkill, NY.)

As Ding mentioned yesterday, we recently saw the return of one of the early stars in the Halo Fan Firmament. In the year after Halo was released, Frogblast was on the front lines of the engine-pushers, seeing how far Halo could be deformed before it broke. (As far as I know, it never did, though it sure twisted a lot.) in the spring of 2003, he dropped out of sight; it seemed he’d moved on. This week, after an 18 month absence, he came back, out of the blue… to a huge outpouring of community love. Stuntmutt points out, however, in today’s One One Se7en, there’s a darker side to this story…

Longtime community member Shishka posted a note on our forum (and a sizeable news post on Subnova) explaining the latest twist in his life… he’s been hired by Bungie as a contract design assistant. It was to be under wraps for a little longer… but a certain aptly-nicknamed Bungie employee spilled the beans a bit early. We’d like to congratulate Shishka on his good fortune, Bungie on their good choice, and the community for supporting a company so cool it yanks employees from its fanbase.

Uncle Mato found an auction on eBay in which someone is selling a 10 DVD set of themselves playing through the entire campaign of Halo (one level per disc). Starting bid is $20.00. The idea is to help you through if you’re stuck, or something… but remember that there are plenty of text walkthroughs on the net (for free), we posted a 10-movie collection of superfast runs on Legendary (for free), and actually playing the game is fun. To give the guy credit, he DID do a nice job of labeling the DVDs. We’ve put up a local, no-links copy of the auction, for when this rolls off eBay’s site.

Brand-new top story at Bungie.net; Frankie busts some common rumors floating around out there. Most of these have been debunked already – usually by Frankie himself – but this is a good collection of the most outrageous ones, all collected in one place, all handled with panache and a heaping spoonful of scorn. A couple of them have come up very recently – one on our very own forum (and debunked by Frankie there, as well)… I think he just reached his breaking point. If you come across someone frothing about something you KNOW isn’t true, check this article to see if it’s covered, and if it is, send a link to the poor deluded soul. Maybe you’ll even open a blind eye or two.

Jarrad Whitaker, aka Akdor 1154, has arranged the Halo main theme for piano, with the approval of its composer, Marty O’Donnell. There are two versions, both in PDF format; the original theme, from the main menu (405K), and the extended version that plays during the warthog run in the Maw (Truth And Reconciliation Suite – 563K). Enjoy!

Okay… so if you could think of the most degrading position possible to put the Master Chief in… would it match this? (1.2 mb, QuickTime format, don’t watch this if you don’t want nightmares. Please don’t send Roger Wilco hatemail. Yell at him in this forum thread, instead.) Realize, too, that the entire ugly situation arose from this post.