New content at Halo Babies – there’s a new strip (not surprising, it’s Friday), and Gruntsbane has decided to release some background images he uses for his strips; you can make your own guest strips much more easily now. Check it out!

Somehow, I managed to miss a new Sponsors-only movie at Red vs Blue – Tax Day Tips. The advice might be solid… but implementation might be… risky. (This is NOT this week’s movie, which will be out later today for sponsors, and Sunday for the general public.) Check the Sponsors page for details.

Jake ‘Evergreen98’ Billo has put up his second of 3 articles on Xbox Live over at the Junkyard, and once again has managed to fit enough Halo content in to garner a mention here. This one looks at why Microsoft really, really wants you to subscribe, and how it’s using games like Halo 2 to ensure that you realize that life will be better on Live.

We got mail from PalaNIN stating that Halo Online, a general Halo site, is in danger of going under for financial reasons; the webmaster, PTM, is asking for help. Read the news post for 4.15.2004 for full details.

SplitboXer writes to let us know about a design contest for a new website banner for the XBConnect site. Prize for the best entry will be a a USB 2.0 external NEC DVD burner (DVD-R/+R CD-R). Not too shabby! Details in this forum thread (registration required).

Apologies to Blackstar; anyone who visited the Calvin and Halo page on Thursday would have found that a new comic was posted… but the news post never got put up. So here it is now, better late than never, right? Calvin demonstrates the absolute joy that can be found in playing the bad guy…

Once again, being out all day during the inaugural week of the new Bungie.net’s unveiling means a bunch of news went unreported. Let’s see… there’s a new outtake from David Scully, voice of Sargeant Johnson, and man, it’s just a little bit out there. Okay, a LOT out there. (Absolutely worth the 1.2 mb download.) There’s a brand new batch of Letters to the Webmaster (lengthy, but missing the usual bite; he must be out of Jack Daniels again), and finally, there’s a new Bungie Comic… except the link doesn’t work and you can’t see it. (I’m sure that’ll be changed very soon, so if it works, you don’t need to write to us.) Update: The comic works now. Of course.

DOH! Halo Orbit, A German Halo fansite, published their own analysis of the third multiplayer Halo 2 shot yesterday… and I never got back to it. 🙁 Sorry about that! If you read German, check it out!

A few days ago, WhatTheDilly-O mentioned a sighting of Halo in Mad Magazine. (There’s your credit, bub.) Normally, we don’t post scans from mags that are still on the stands – but Madda Cheeb found an online version put up by Mad themselves; who am I to argue? Check it out. (it’s pretty funny…)

SexyJosh released another Halo-related song, this one based on the concept of ‘Flaming Ninjas’. At this point, it’s a members-only download from his website… PG rating for language.

CENOBITE points out that the new Game Informer (out to subscribers now, should be on store shelves soon) contains a 10-page article on Halo 2, filled with new info and screenshots. Keep your eyes peeled!

Nothing ever goes as planned – but we’ve finally (FINALLY) finished tallying up the results from the Win A Date With One One Seven contest. The five lucky winners of the Halo 2 Calendars are:

• Taylor Cartwright, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
• Aaron Bayley, Sandbach, Cheshire, England
• Austin Drake, Maize, KS
• Ryan Luevanos, La Jolla, CA
• Jeffrey Howe, Lubbock, TX

It was tough picking through the more than 3,500 entries… huge thanks to Stuntmutt and BOLL for finding the time to make this happen. The winning strips – and 36 runners-up – can be seen in this section. Way to go, everyone!

Note to self: Don’t ever take the afternoon off when Bungie.net is updating. My inbox is FLOODED – literally flooded – with news of a gorgeous new ODST render and a new 343GS-based Wallpaper over at the brand-spankin’-new Bungie.net. If you haven’t already, go grab these. (The 1600×1200 version of the wallpaper is big enough to read the text easily… there are a few tweaks aimed at those Bungie fans who like to read small text. Nicely done, Zo.e!)

Holy moley – when was the last time that Halo: Resolution and One One Se7en covered the same topic on the same day (from different viewpoints, of course)? And what makes it even MORE bizarre… is that it wasn’t planned.

Halo: Resolution looks at a possible crossover title… nah.

It’s raining outside… and you know what they say; when it rains, it pours. Subnova’s new server died last night; steps have been taken to rectify the problem, and we have every hope it’ll be back up and running soon… but in the meantime, Fan Fiction is (once again) offline. Everything else should be running (albeit a bit slower than before) – and we’ll do our best to make things more permanent soon.

There’s been an awful lot of grumbling in the Halo community about the release of the HEK (Halo Editing Kit – it’s been made clear to me that not everyone actually keeps TRACK of these acronyms). Gearbox (through Randy Pitchford) said several weeks ago that they were done with it, it had been passed to Microsoft, and therefore folks should talk to MS if they wanted it released. (The post was subsequently deleted from the Gearbox forum – which suggests, at the very least, that upon reflection, it was decided that this was not the wording they wanted to use.) Since then lots of people have been yelling that MS/Bungie are holding the HEK back, others are yelling that it’s Gearbox’s fault, and the principal parties are keeping their mouths shut. A couple of days ago, Hellface, a Gearbox programmer, posted a vague but promising message on the Gearbox forum – it’s hard to say if it means anything’s coming soon,, but it DOES suggest that in the next week or two, there WILL be news coming. (Whether it’s about the HEK specifically, I couldn’t tell you.) The clearing of clouds? We can only hope. (Thanks to BGH for the heads-up.)

Wolfy, from Sector 7, points out that they’ve posted the third in a continuing series; they’ve analyzed the latest Halo 2 Multiplayer screenshot. When you’re done reading this, you can check out one of the many threads on our forum devoted to the same topic…

Eric Smith points out that Halo just received one of three Editors Choice awards from PC Magazine for best Action/Combat Game for 2004. Nice!

Nice catch. A month ago, we posted a note about a mention of ‘Halo 3’ in a Steve Ballmer speech last fall; we warned that it had never been confirmed, but nevertheless, it was an interesting tidbit. Narcogen, over at Rampancy.net, did a much more thorough reading of the ‘History of Bungie‘ article put up at B.net (I’d actually set it aside for a slightly quieter time), and found a mention of the speech (and a refutation, more or less, of the Halo 3 comment) buried in the Halo 2 section. Nice to have this to point to down the road!