The CAL Season 1 Championship aired as planned on haloTV last night – but most of the 500+ people who tuned in to watch had to be turned away. (They had no idea how popular it would be!) The haloTV crew capped the viewer list at 50, but a higher-res, edited version of the match will be available for download in a couple of days. Nice opener, guys!

Halo7 (with some help from Owm109) points out a page on IGN’s Playstation 2 site that contains a list of ‘official titles being shown’ at E3 this year… and Halo 2 is on it. No word about what SORT of ‘show’ we’re talking about…

You gotta love it when the editor of the largest Mac magazine decides to write an editorial about how fun it is to play Halo (and how you can join him next weekend!). Gives you that warm fuzzy feeling… (thanks again, Ghôlsbane)

A couple of days ago, eddie m noticed a page at IGN that mentioned that a ‘formerly integral member of Bungie’s development team on Halo’ is now at work on EA’s Goldeneye II. He wondered if anyone knew who this was. According to this Gamespot article posted today (thanks, Ghôlsbane), that former Bungie employee is Dan Orzulak, a designer on the original Halo team. Isn’t it nice to know we love the company so much that we stalk its former employees?

The dialogue man himself, Captain Spark, turned in a huge collection of Stacker quotes a couple of weeks ago. Using HaloPC, turning off extra sounds, and carefully planning who was onscreen during the filming allowed him to get pretty amazingly clean recordings of almost 200 new quotes, including some really funny ones I’ve never heard before. Go check ’em all out in our Dialogue Databank! (There are still quite a number of queued sounds to be added; this isn’t all there is.)

Today’s Calvin and Halo focuses on some little-known Covenant species…

I missed this, three days ago, when it went live, and I didn’t even pick up on the references when shunji alluded to it on IRC yesterday… but Rampancy.net noticed it, so I got it on the rebound. Mat Noguchi, tools/sound programmer for Halo and Halo 2, has written a technical, but understandable-to-the-layman, explanation of why Sound is such a big deal in games, and why it will continue to be a thorny problem for a while yet. Go take a look! (It uses Halo as an example, which is what makes it relevant here.)

haloTV, in beta, goes live. A venture led by cookedGamers synide and rapture, haloTV will be broadcasting Halo movies in streaming format for those interested in a quick fix. You can watch existing movies, but the strength of the format will show in examples like today’s CAL Season 1 Finals (8:30 pm CST, which is actually 2:30 am UTC tomorrow, with pregame show kicking in an hour earlier), broadcast live as they happen. Good luck, guys! (Public heads-up came from RIDIK, on our forum.)

SexyJosh points out a couple of writeups (and a movie) of some local Halo tournaments his group participated in; you can find the writeups, and a link to the movie (13.8 mb, 5:44 long, QuickTime format) on their site. Toys-R-Us tourney + Halo freaks = potential for Barbie abuse…

(GT)Juggler continues with the modding vids; Modtacular (GT video 8) is now up for download in the media section of Halo GT. Format is QuickTime MP4 – you’ll need the latest version of QuickTime to watch it. It contains clips of dozens of mods – everything from a Longsword on Blood Gulch to a maze-like map to, apparently, the ultimate mod for insecure folks; a gun that says ‘Killtacular!’ every time it fires. Check it out… there’s some bizarre stuff in here! And before anyone asks – it was all done on an Xbox, no PC footage here. (Comments can go in this forum thread. But don’t ask him about the format – he’s tired of telling people to download a new version of QuickTime.)

The Cyberathlete Professional League is unhappy with Halo PC registrations for the Extreme World Championships this summer; they’ve set a deadline. If there aren’t 32 teams registered for the Halo PC Tournament by Monday, April 26, they will cut the cash prize in half, and teams that want to cancel their registrations will be offered a full refund. Don’t let Halo go unrepresented this summer – sign up now! Thanks to synide, of cooked Gamers, for the heads-up on this.

Today’s One One Se7en might have some… problems. Apologies.

I’d tell you what Halo: Resolution was about today… but that would require that I understand it, first.

Looks like a big collection of Fan Fiction, doesn’t it? If Mark Lieberg actually compacted some of his work, it would only be 21. Something to think about…

• HALO 2 MINISERIES BOOK, by Delta Force
• Halo 2: Chapter 2 ; Part 1, by Mark Lieberg
• Halo 2 :Chapter 2 ; Part 2, by Mark Lieberg
• Halo 2: Chapter 3, by Mark Lieberg
• Halo 2: Chapter 4, by Mark Lieberg
• Death Valley (Part 1), by Justin Key
• Death Valley (Part 2), by Justin Key
• The Enemy Within-Chapter Seven: Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down, by Mind_Affecting_Parasite
• Battle for the Norah: Part Sixteen, by Sterfrye36
• Earth’s Destruction Chapter 7: Left Behind to Die, by Sentinel
• Assauly Part 4: Stranded, by Joe Ehret
• The Second Chance, by Howard the Duck
• No Other Alternative Part 2, by Watsaru
• Downfall Part 1 Running For The Answers, by Apache119
• Retaliation: Chapter Four, by Blue Jaguar
• The Birth of New Heroes: Prologue , by Arinoth Koby
• Halo 2: The New Front (Chapter 5: Good Version), by System Failure
• The Huntress, by The Huntress
• Seargent Vick: Part 1, by Helljumper
• The Iron Hands of the Prophets (Finale): Two Betrayals, by MadJackal
• The Moral Redemption of Dr. Halsey (Part 3), by Ross Becalick
• Prodigal Son: Part 7, by Scott Devary
• Halo 2: Chapter 6 ; Part 1, by Mark Lieberg
• Halo 2: Chapter 6 ; Part 2, by Mark Lieberg
• Halo 2: Chapter 6 ; Part 3, by Mark Lieberg
• The Arisen Dark, by RabidChicken
• Meanwhile…., by Wraith

Now go read!

Steve Campbell and Tony ‘Octanus’ Poitra are the latest Halo-related additions to the Junkyard’s Spotlight collection. Steve brings his… interesting view of reality to his reminiscences of the early days in the Bungie community. Go read ’em both! Thanks to Mhaddy for the heads-up.

Wow. MonoxideC has finished his Halo PC AotCR Multiplayer conversion – you can download it from Halomods (7 mb). It replaces Derelict in the map rotation. Thanks to James for the heads-up.

Ducain has brought his own tricking site, High Impact Halo, online. A great place to go for nicely done movies! Check it out. (Comments can be put in this forum thread.)

Tournaments coming up soon: X Tournaments has a 3v3 tourney scheduled at 5 pm on Saturday, April 10; details can be found on the website. (There’s also a movie of a 2v2 tourney a week or two ago, for registered users.) Also, CJ (from the Enna Wars team) posted recently about a tournament in the Chicago area in June; they need feedback to know whether it’s worth doing. Apologies to tourney news I missed; some folks gave me less than 48 hour notice on posting, and sometimes, I just don’t make it. 🙁

Subzero Rivalries has put up another episode – Spring Break comes to Sidewinder. Thanks to MarkHawk for the heads-up.

Strato has posted a download link (and new pictures) of the finished UT2k4 Blood Gulch map we mentioned a few days ago. (It wasn’t finished then, and apparently shouldn’t have been posted.) Go grab a copy; there are three servers online running this map!