Halo: Resolution shows you why you should sit down and shut up when you’re told to.

On June 30, several sites released a flood of Halo 2 screenshots and renders. These have finally been added to our Screenshots database, bringing the total collection size to a hair under 3000 screens (and the Halo 2-specific material to 200 shots). Wonga!

Stefander points out Zanzibar Weekly Update 5, with a progress report on the HCE conversion. There’s a movie of the Covenant energy sword in action – looks pretty nice! Go read.

TeamXbox has opened a new section of their website, allowing community members to add their own reviews of games. First up is a preview of Halo 2 from TXB reader Gaven Wright. It’s an exhaustive piece, pulling together information from many sources (some going back as far as 2002) – some of the info might not be accurate any more, but in general, it’s a solid summary of what’s out there. Thanks to daedalus for pointing it out.

Whoa. Dolbex sends word that he’s interviewed Sid Garrand, the mastermind behind Nightmare Armor; you can find it over at MLGPro.com. It’s a great interview – the best news is that Nightmare Armor has been commissioned by Microsoft to make a number of suits – it looks like there’s some serious funding at this stage! w00t! Go read the interview, and look at the cool pics.

As promised, the next installment of Going Nowhere Fast is now available for download via BitTorrent. Cody Miller does a great run in under 25 minutes, taking advantage of a (little-known, apparently) glitch that causes the cutscene to kick in early if certain triggers are avoided. (His method for AVOIDING those triggers is, as far as I can tell, unique.) The run’s a monster, due mainly to the extreme length; 181 mb to download. Don’t let that stop you, though – it’s a lot of fun to watch! Also, in keeping with our pattern of releasing runs for direct download 3 days after the BitTorrent goes up, you’ll find download links for gwdpto’s Halo run from more than half-a-dozen mirrors on the GNF Status page.

Hmm. Fire Team Charlie has put up low-res versions of Episode 13 for download via BitTorrent… but the torrent file links to a zip file that contains BOTH the DivX and QuickTime versions (so you have to download 142 mb worth of content ANYWAY). Oddness. Hopefully, they’ll separate these out to two separate torrents soon. Meanwhile, if you don’t mind grabbing extra content, go get ’em! Update: There are now separate torrent files for the two different versions on the FTC Downloads page, so you only need to download the 70 mb version you WANT, rather than both. 🙂 This is really one of the most technologically impressive bits of Halo Machinima to be made… you definitely want to check it out.

Halo Babies puts up a fan-created picture of the MC with his helmet off, as well as a fun sketch of the MC in trouble. (mrsmiley says it’s the first no-helmet sketch he’s ever seen… I guess he missed Talon’s and Covenant’s offerings in 2002.)

(GT)Juggler has put together a vid commemorating the recent UCDI LANfest held in northeastern Connecticut a couple of weeks ago. It’s 3:12 long, 36.3 mb large, in QuickTime Format. Grab a copy from HaloGT.com.

Dang. Someone comes up with a new technique, it’s really cool. Folks try their hand, it’s still cool. Eventually, there are too many examples, and it stops making the front page. And then along comes XLNC. Again. Pwned.

The Xtournaments Crew want to remind you that the deadline for the $140/team ($35/person) registration fee for the upcoming $15,000 Xtournaments National Tourney is August 1; after that, registration will be closed. Also – iGames centers that have no registered teams by July 17 will NOT host the tourney at all. (You can find out if your local center has enough teams on this page.) If you wanna win, you gotta play! Go sign up now!

Bah. Gamespy put up part 3 of their Halo 2 Roundup a couple of nights ago – I just never got around to posting it. Thanks to the (literally) dozens of people who pointed this out – some politely, some not so politely. Makes me wonder if I should lower the bar, in terms of what’s expected of me here… if I’m going to be cursed at for neglecting to post an update about an article riddled with inaccuracies and whacky speculation, maybe it’s time to cut back on the posting altogether. Anyway, this piece covers audio, lighting, and some map info.

In accordance with our plan, we’ve begun to make the first Going Nowhere Fast speedrun available via direct download. Over 1500 people have already grabbed the file via BitTorrent, so the load shouldn’t be too heavy on our download mirrors… but there’s still a LOT of bandwidth available, if it comes to that. The biggest surprise (for me, anyway) is the inclusion of archive.org, the folks who are basically attempting to archive the internet. They have an entire media section devoted to speedruns in video games, and have agreed to include the top 10 runs from this contest in their collection. On top of that, we have our normal mirrors (mythica.org, files.bungie.org, that weasel television) as well as ninjasonfire.com… and psyjnir.org is offering the speedruns via Hotline, for folks who don’t like BitTorrent OR the web. All download links are being kept track of on the Status page we put up recently. The second level, Halo, will be made available via direct download on Monday. If you haven’t gotten this yet, grab it now!

Eep – busy with other stuff, no Fan Fiction update for 5 days… there are 29 new stories on the page. Sorry for the delay.

rockslider points out the final episode (for now) of Frontline with Suzie – a chat with Goldie. Take a look!

Apparently the Halo community missed last week’s Subzero Rivalries, released on July 4th. Good to know traditions carry on… thanks to funkmon for noticing.

He did it again, mommie. Make him stop. Make that bad BOLL man stop. (Move your mouse around if this post confuses you.)

Ducain points out a pretty darn cool video over on the HighImpactHalo forums – 4 banshees, 3 hogs… at the bottom of Halo. It’s sort of funny… the last step of the video is ‘now get yourself down there’. Until Frogblast solved this mystery, this was the HARDEST THING TO DO IN HALO – now it’s just one step in a seriously impressive collection of stunts that lead to the finale. 5:22, 19.7 mb, WMP9 format.