Yesterday was Bungie Day, as we mentioned – and Bungie celebrated with a whole passel of news posts. The only Halo-related ones were already covered here… but the others are fun reading for anyone interested in the company. Frankie posted about a new poll – judge the Bungie guys’ cars; there’s a contest in the Underground forum where you can win lots of Bungie schwag; Frankie mentioned the opening of a new Bungie-related fansite; and there’s a Top Story that looks back at some of the best and worst days experienced by Bungie employees.

Gamespy has posted a new article on Halo 2 – it’s an overview of the weapons and vehicles we know about. Some of the info is questionable (in describing how the new Ghost takes location-specific damage, the article suggested that you could explode a ghost in Halo 1 multiplayer, ‘rendering it unusable for anyone who wanted to take it for a drive’), but in general it’s a decent summary of what’s been shown so far. (This is the first of a multipart series of articles.) Credit for this news post goes to Google, though milhouse was only a few minutes behind.

Interesting – zoe, the artist responsible for several of Bungie’s coolest wallpaper creations, is asking for fan input on her next creation. She’s got a quickpoll up in her Seventh Column chapter, asking ‘Which paint job would you most like to see in a 3d render of Master Chief for a desktop wallpaper?’ (Choices range from jet black to zebra stripe, with a whole lot in between.) If you want to contribute, go vote! (You don’t need to be a chapter member to vote, though nothing’s stopping you from joining.) Word about this came from MakaVeli4Life1, a moderator over at the Bungie.net forums.

I’d leave this until the morning, because I’m beat… but it’s pretty time-sensitive; there were only 500 to begin with, and 150 are already snapped up. ecost.com is offering the Limited Edition version of Halo 2 for $42.99 – awesome price! Thanks to bentllama, who took time out of his busy pancake-filled schedule to shoot this news along.

Holy moley. Bungie has released another 3D screenshot… and this one has a fourth dimension… time. Rotate it, you change the angle of view… but you also change the action. (They blew up a warthog, but good.) I’m way behind on Bungie news today… but this is one you gotta view now. Two versions, 2 mb and 8 mb. Both require QuickTime (for now). Go get it!

Eep – a few weeks ago, we got word from Strato about a website devoted to a Marathon Total Conversion – Halo to Marathon. I didn’t want to flood their server, so I wrote to ask about it. Word came back that it should be fine – but the whole issue got buried under other stuff. I was reminded this morning by one of the team members – and when I went to look, I discovered that they’ve actually got an alpha release up right now! Swing by Forge House, and check out Halathon. (The timing is fortuitous – a huge group of new converts to Aleph One have been generated by a recent thread on the Bungie.net forums – and a news post to go along with it.) The weapons are fantastic…

Following a decades-long – well, maybe decade-long… okay a few years’ – tradition, July 7 is once again Bungie Day, a day to bask in the glory of upcoming world domination. SketchFactor has posted a happy little Flash card from MrSmiley commemorating the occasion. Watch it, then go play some Bungie games. Like Halo, maybe.

One One Se7en looks at one of the real downsides of a space elevator (a construct designed to move materials from a planet surface into space, mechanically – there has been speculation that one of these will exist in Halo). I’d recommend making sure your speakers are on… and that you’re using a browser OTHER than Firefox/WinXP.

Halo: Resolution looks at a tried and true institution… no matter how high-tech it gets, some things never change.

The technique pioneered by n00bles continues to inspire; J has posted a pair of screens – quite nice! Check ’em out. Update: and ANOTHER one, from n00bles again! This one is from Claustrophobia, a CE-only level. I’ve got to grab that…

As promised, we’ve put the first winning run from the Going Nowhere Fast contest online. Condorman dashed his way through the Pillar of Autumn in 6 minutes and 8 seconds in Legendary… it’s amazing to watch. It’s a 480×360 QuickTime movie that weighs in at a bit over 47 mb, and we’re serving it via BitTorrent for the time being. Please – once you’ve grabbed it, leave your BT client open for a while, and share the love! (The ten runs, taken together, will weigh in at a bit over a gigabyte; we can use all the help you can give us, bandwidth-wise.) If you don’t have a BitTorrent client, you can find one here.

Heh – pretty cool! Veegie and Madrox have begun work on a dual-wielding mod for Halo – there are a couple of short movies available in the Halomods thread (wmp9 format). This looks like it’ll be a lot of fun! It’s not clear from the thread or either movie whether this is Halo CE or Xbox. Thanks to FOrunnER for the heads-up.

Several Halo-related mods have put out Weekly Updates recently; you’ll find new content for Grand Theft Auto :: Codename Halo (a Halo CE mod), Homefront (a Battlefield: Vietnam mod), and Zanzibar (a Halo CE mod) at the respective links. Thanks to all who wrote in.

Piles of new fan artwork at Halo Babies – go take a look! Thanks to Big-Ern, of HaloPlanet, for the heads-up.

Hobbes takes a defensible stand in today’s Calvin and Halo.

SEspider wants to remind everyone that the Wallpaper contest he started a couple of weeks ago is ending this Saturday, July 10. If you’re planning on getting an entry in… now’s the time to do it! (The rules, once again, are here in our forum.)

Took us a while… but the first stage of the Going Nowhere Fast contest has been completed. We have a list of winners of each level run, and we’ll be contacting them invidivually about prizes. You can read a full status report on where we stand if you’re curious about what’s coming next. The first actual video release won’t be until Wednesday. Once again, we’d like to thank all who participated in this contest – it’s been a blast watching the runs. And I’d like to take a moment to thank Brian ‘amaroq’ Towne, Ross ‘c0ld vengeance’ Hurrell, and John ‘gnawf’ Farrell for their help in making this contest a reality.

We recently discovered a glitch film in our uploads folder; it’s called ‘Blood Gulch Bash‘, and it’s 4:36 worth of Blood Gulch tricks, some old, some less old, all crammed into an 18.1 mb package. It was made by Paul and KingHalo, over at Halo Secrets… and if you explore their site, you might find other stuff you want to download. In general, the film techniques are quite good. Watch, enjoy, get inspired!

Last Friday’s Weekly Bungie Update has been added to our Updates Archive – i find it amazing that this is the first week in which Bacon is actually mentioned. Go figure.

One One Se7en checks out the ramifications of Halo 2 being a console title.