High Impact Halo’s Three Towers contest has ended – congrats to the winners! Check out Ducain’s writeup on the HIH forum for details. Highlight reels will be forthcoming, it seems. (And thanks to him for the heads-up on our own forum.)

Until recently, one of the items you could plonk down money for in various online stores was the ‘Halo 2 DVD Enhanced Prima Strategy Guide’ – basically the upcoming Halo 2 Strategy Guide, bundled with a separate DVD. This item is actually still listed at Amazon.com, though without any real information. However, XAL sent us a note that he’d received from EBGames (where he had this guide on preorder) – they’ve cancelled all preorders for it, because their supplier (presumably the publisher) has told them it is not going to be available. Since it was never clear what this product actually CONTAINED, we can’t really tell you what you’re losing…

The original plan, a few days ago, was to post 10 desktops and 10 misc art images until the queues were empty; unfortunately, our hardware conspired against us, and this turned out to be unfeasible. I’m rotating, then; every OTHER day, there’ll be 10 new desktops, or 10 new pieces of art. Today is art day, so check the Miscellaneous Art Section for the latest batch. (The machine just moved to a new IP address, so if you’re having trouble connecting, wait a little bit.)

It’s been a long time coming… but over on the Red vs Blue website, you can finally buy Trocadero’s debut CD – with all the music from the Red vs Blue series, plus a bunch of new tracks. You can listen to samples on Trocadero’s website, or just head over to the RvB store and plop down 12 smackers. This stuff rocks. Thanks to Neo-genesis for noticing.

IGN put up their own Hands-On Halo 2 article based on gameplay at the Game Stars Live event happening right now in London; they weren’t nearly as negative as our forum-goers, but it sounds like they had pretty much the same experience. Interesting that this is one of the first public showings of Halo 2 that DIDN’T have a Bungie employee on hand to keep things running… and it’s the first with any serious problems.

Pete Parsons talked to GameDaily about Bungie’s feelings about Halo 2, and where he thinks the game industry is going. An uplifting read. Thanks, Dr. Nick, for the heads-up.

Hehe – Ross Mills just got back from Gamestars Live… and it sounds like there were some organizational issues. Pretty odd… in all the hands-on reports from all the various sites hosting Halo 2 gameplay that we’ve seen, this is the first really negative one – and it comes from a pretty hardcore Halo fan. Sometimes, there ain’t no justice.

Hmm… I hadn’t realized that the release date for Halo 2 in Japan hadn’t been finalized yet… but no matter, according to IGN, it will go on sale there on November 11, just like most of Europe. One more country heard from…

Webshift points out that if anyone’s in the Atlanta area this weekend, they should seriously consider stopping by Dragon*Con, a huge SciFi/Fantasy convention taking place from September 3-6. Nightmare Armor will be out in force, with 8 different Master Chiefs (all different colors) on the show floor. Folks have been pretty unhappy that the Nightmare Armor website has been offline… never fear, they have a brand-spankin’-new one, up and running now. Check it out for the latest details!

TeamXbox posted the official Press Release for the Plantronics Halo 2 headset a bit over a week ago; they knew, at the time, that it had been leaked a little early, and that they might have to pull it. Looks like Plantronics has let it go, and the official PR release has hit the newswire today. A beautiful, hi-res shot of the headset is visible on the Plantronics site, along with a preorder page. Go check it out! Quick Update: John Durning points out that Plantronics’ website prices might be high; as an example, he points out that in the last couple of days, he bought (at Best Buy) a Plantronics MX150 for $31 and a M60 for $17 (these are priced at $45 and $25, respectively, on the Plantronics site); if this pattern continues, you might be able to buy the Halo 2 headset for something in the neighborhood of $35. Of course, you can’t PREORDER it at that price…

Man… I go a couple of days with no Fan Fiction update, and there are 18 stories waiting for me. No WONDER that server is having troubles. 🙁 Go read.

Boxer points out that the next Adventures in Disaster comic is up at akba.info – Episode 6 might give you a different outlook on Halo multiplayer.

Four tricks movies showed up on our forum in the last day or so; pretty wide range of size and interest. First post was from foxygrandpa117; he posted about a pair of vids a clanmember of his, wOot, made. The first shows a coop pair riding the initial pelican in AotCR down to the bottom of the pit; the trick is old, but nobody’s bothered to document the entire ride, I don’t think. WMP9 format, 7.7 mb. The second is random trick stuff; it’s the sort of video we’d decline to host if it were submitted here, because every single trick has been shown in other vids, but it’s a nice compilation of stuff, if you’re not a rabid downloader. WMP9 format, 21.7 mb. Then there was a post from vshields ash, pointing out a vid made by fluit (and originally posted at highimpacthalo.org). This one shows some platform-to-platform hog launching at the top of AotCR. Nice distance. WMP9 format, 2.7 mb. Finally, Madrox and Monoxide continue with their ‘getting stuff into the AotCR underground pit’ series, this time actually working on Two Betrayals, and bringing down a flood combat form. WMP9 format, 10.7 mb. (This is enough to get this post spoiler-labeled.) Nice to see that Halo tricking is still going strong!

Joshua Pettigrew has created a few bizarre widgets for Konfabulator, a MacOSX interface enhancer. (If you’re not using MacOSX, these are useless to you.) Drop them on your desktop, click on them, they spit out random dialogue from the game. if this sounds like something that interests you, go grab ’em. (Forum thread is here, for comments.)

Looks like the Sydney Roosters, on track for the National Rugby League finals in Australia, have pulled Halo’s Master Chief on board for some coaching help. Read all the details on the Australian Xbox.com site. Thanks to David the Great for pointing this out – and to the Aussies in this forum thread, who noticed the Nightmare Armor-clad giant on Rove Live recently. Looks like those suits are popping up all over the world!

Looks like Dr. Nick found that Canada.com article as well, but he went one step further, and found THIS article on the Canadian contingent on the same site. It’s a good read, even if they DO call Anim8rJB and bentllama the ‘Canimators’… and it looks like Sep7imus has taken issue with a couple of other… um, interesting phrase choices.

Nice image by opticalneuralinterface over at DeviantArt – someone else who shares Tina Leyk’s twin passions for Halo and the Xenomorphs. A browse through his gallery turns up this Halo 2 image (and lots of other fun stuff). Thanks to Mr. Cynical for pointing it out.

We’ve got another 10 desktops for you today in the Wallpaper Section – and a quick note. Some of the subsections of our site are hosted on a machine that’s having more and more trouble keeping up with the traffic; we’re doing everything we can to migrate away from this. In the meantime, though, if you get an error message when you load a page that reads ‘The database failed to initialize’ – be aware this is (mostly) transient – refreshing a few times should get you past it. I’ve moved the Wallpaper section off that machine for now; I’m not sure its current home will be any better, but given the greatly added traffic in both Wallpaper and Misc Art sections these days, anything that helps has got to be good.

TalkXbox was another site with a reporter at last weekend’s PAX event in Seattle – you can read their writeup, and view lots and lots of pics, on their website. Thanks, Jman.

Canada.com, the web version of Canada’s National Post, has a two-page article on Halo 2, and contains what I think is the first legitimate webview of the new Covenant beam rifle (as well as a not-very-clear pic of the Scorpion tank). It’s a pretty good read…