Frankie finally weighs in in an attempt to quash an incredibly persistent rumor. Can we all stop posting this as a fact now? Thanks to Littlebigman for pointing this out.

Watching (and judging!) 8 hours of video was a non-trivial exercise… but we’ve done it. The judges’ votes for our Going Nowhere Fast contest have been tallied, and a winner has emerged. By a really narrow margin, goatrope’s Silent Cartographer run was edged out by Trefitch’s Maw run – and Tre will be able to practice for the NEXT contest we host on his brand new Limited Edition Halo Xbox. (Kudos, too, to Cody Miller’s Library run, which also garnered high marks from all judges.) Again – you can download all 10 winning runs from the Going Nowhere Fast Status page. Congratulations to EVERYONE who entered – we had a blast watching these, and it was wonderful to see the interest this generated. Even if you didn’t win, just entering puts you in a pretty small minority of Halo speedrunners! (And yes, there is one more movie still coming; a best-of, cool tricks vid. Timing is still unknown, but we haven’t forgotten about it!)

Wow, very nice. Halo Universe has put up a new Halo 2 print ad (German) – it’s 1024×1494, 288K. (Thanks, Marc.) Beautiful! Can’t wait to see this one in US mags…

AngelicLionheart noticed an article on IGN PC about G-Phoria, G4TV’s Game of the Year show. In it is a mention of a playable Halo 2 demo (most likely the Zanzibar level shown at E3). AngelicLionheart wonders if we’ll see some footage of gameplay from someone there… To be complete, it should be noted that Frensa Geran pointed out that Halo 2 would be playable at G-Phoria last week, on our forum. For more on G-Phoria, there’s also an article at Gamespot, including a tiny film with a few seconds of Zanzibar footage (I couldn’t tell if it had been recycled from older releases, though).

The Xtournaments Crew writes to say that registration has been left open a bit longer, because of a mistake last Saturday – and to point out that the Spokane, WA tourney location has moved. Details can be found on the Xtournaments website. (For those just joining us, Xtournaments is a multicity 4v4 national Halo tournament taking place in various iGames locations beginning on August 14, with $15,000 in cash and prizes on the line.)

That Weasel points out that Episode 8 of ‘Grunts Are People Too!!!’ – The Good, The Bad, And The Chuckly – is now available for download from the GaPT website. 6.3 mb in WMP9 format, 11.8 mb in QuickTime-friendly .mp4 format, this one is an old-style western. Nice use of mods for interesting camera angles.

Red vs Blue has posted a fun film to pass the time until you get your Season 2 DVD (you DID order one, didn’t you?) – it was displayed a few weeks ago at Lincoln Center, during the ‘Wild Wild Web’ program, and now it’s available for the world. (This isn’t sponsors-only.) Check it out! Thanks, Anlawn.

Another 8 stories added to the Fan Fiction database – it’s looking like the new Fiction Comments setup is working. Lots of productive comments… keep it up!

A bunch of people noticed lots of activity on the Bungie Webcam last Friday and Saturday. Many, many people were playing Halo 2. (If you missed it, Tru7h Online was nice enough to archive it.) Well, the first writeup of this activity has appeared on 1UP.com; Che Chou, of Xbox Nation, has a nice update on his blog. (It’s the top post at the moment.) There’s no real content yet – “I can’t talk about any of it for a month so ask no questions and I tell you no lies” – but at least you know who all those people are! Thanks to op_ivy for noticing.

Konrad points out a pretty strange glitch that surfaced at the recent Dead Babies LANfest; the movie is truly crappy quality, and 7.4 mb in QuickTime format, but it shows KP racking up points in a slayer game by committing suicide. Can’t say that I’ve ever seen this before…

funkmon noticed a new Walkthrough of Halo on the Xbox.com Halo site – well, not new, exactly. The walkthrough itself (a 1.2 mb, 81-page PDF file) is dated October 18, 2001 – a month before the Xbox was released. Its inclusion on Xbox.com, however, dates back no more than a week or so. Interesting… (Don’t forget, if you’re stuck, there are also walkthroughs at Bungie.net and right here at HBO – though these two are targeted towards Legendary play, whereas the Xbox.com one is more general.) Update: Nick points out that the walkthrough date is very odd. October 18, 2001 was almost a week before Halo went gold; how could a walkthrough have been completed by that point? On the other hand, some of the people mentioned in the credits are inside the industry… curiouser and curiouser.

A few days ago, Nick pointed out that Microsoft had released DirectX 9.0c, the next generation of DirectX. The end-user runtime is not installed via the normal Windows Update interface; you have to download it yourself, and run the installer. You’ll be warned that it cannot be uninstalled, and that if you’re using Windows ME or Windows XP you should set up a System Restore point before beginning. (This was enough for me to pass on it when Nick first mentioned it.) However, a number of folks on the Gearbox forums have installed this, with no noticeable ill effects, and there’s a significant framerate boost for Halo PC/CE. (Folks noticed a 10 fps increase in the HaloPC timedemo… and I noticed a similar (but less quantifiable) increase in normal gameplay under Halo CE.) I’m not going to tell you to install this, because I have NO CLUE what the side effects might be – but the short-term data, at least with respect to Halo, look pretty promising. Check out the page, and decide for yourself!

Last Friday’s unusual Weekly Bungie Update has now been archived in our database. I think all you can say about the usefulness of this is that our db is complete.

Stuntmutt shows where the new Halo 2 Elite troops come from in today’s One One Se7en. Personally, I’m starting to wonder about that boy – where DOES he get his inside info?

NuclearWinter discovered some pretty interesting info – Microsoft is getting ready to distribute a new style of Xbox Live headset, to be packaged with a game being released later this year. Evidence (read the post) points to Halo 2. If this turns out to be accurate, I think this is the first the Halo community has heard of it!

Saturday was the day for the Dead Babies LAN, visited by a passel of HBO regulars. Writeups and pics in this thread, and more pics from Juggler (the host) in this one. I couldn’t tell if his Furhman fetish was bigger than his Spiderman one… (You gotta love the ‘HBO’ spelled out in Bawls bottles, though.)

Ducain whipped up a vid showing some fun stunts on the level Halo – jumping through walls, launching marines, generally going places you’re not supposed to be. It comes in two flavors – 640×480, weighing in at 35 mb, and 320×240, weighing in at 15 mb. If you’re allergic to WMP9 versions, there are a pair of QuickTimes in this post. Always fun to see this stuff!

The CPL is in full swing, with the finals underway RIGHT NOW. cooked Gamers, a team often seen around the HBO-Coerce HaloCE server, has come back from a first-round loss to face Wat in the Final Championship round. Keep an eye on Gotfrag for details… and good luck, cooked Gamers! Thanks to rapture, a cG team member, for popping in to our forum last night with an update.

ShOrtBusKid points out a Halo tourney he’s organizing in Arkansas (Ft. Smith area). If you’re nearby, visit the site and check out the details!

Do you love Misterchief? A tribute, from BOLL.