Yesterday, we posted the movie Cheers, a stock Halo music vid with decent timing. Almost a thousand of you have grabbed a copy, and we haven’t gotten any death threats or hatemail about it… so we’re going to continue with the plan; today, we’ve got a pair of these for you. They’re both put together from Halo 2 trailer footage, and both nicely synchronized to their respective music. Summer Wind, submitted by Fortune a couple of weeks ago, is set to (not surprisingly) Frank Sinatra’s ‘Summer Wind’, and weighs in at 4.8 mb in WMP7 format. The Boys Are Back was submitted by Erik Vogt (who previously created Wonderboy, no longer available at its original location, but which can be found here), and it uses the Thin Lizzy song with the same title as its soundtrack. (Eric offered a larger, less ‘small and gritty’ version… but I think this one fits nicely.) It’s in QuickTime format, and is a lightweight 6.6 mb. I THINK that clears out the queue of movies I felt we could host, despite their not meeting the letter of our Movie Posting Guidelines… but you never know, there might be more.

Stuntmutt weighs in with his own thoughts about the Plinth contest in today’s One One Se7en. I’m gonna let the strip speak for itself. Update: Oops; in the translation from Stuntmutt’s submitted strip to what appeared on the page, a (rather critical) piece got missed. My bad. Fixed, now.

Homefront, the Battleground 1942 Halo mod, has posted a big patch; it includes bug fixes, a new pistol model, a new map, and new controls for the dropships. Read the details at their site, or download the patch from FilePlanet. (It’s 11.3 mb.)

SanchezTheLlama posted a status update for Project Halo, a Halo-like game under development. Lots of pics of early models…

On December 6, 2003, we announced the Plinth of Art – a contest for the rest of us, conceived of by Stuntmutt as a way to promote his One One Se7en strip in an ostensibly more elegant manner. On January 17, 2004, the contest ended – and today, we bring you the results. Congratulations to our winners – you can find full details, as well as all the entries, on the Plinth website. Enjoy, and have a great evening!

EDBIS.com has previewed Halo 2; some questionable statements, but a preview is a preview. Info seems to come from a combination of online movies and print articles. Thanks to Battleground: Halo for the heads-up.

Narcogen, over at Rampancy.net, has begun a series of articles dedicated to helping those with less-than-stellar net connections still have fun playing Halo. The first installment of the High Ping Bastard’s Guide to Halo, focusing on vehicles, is up now. This is worth a read, even if your connection is good; all of us have experienced lag on Halo servers, and some of the suggestions are as applicable to LPBs on laggy servers as they are to HBPs everywhere.

Last night, Frankie posted the Weekly Bungie Update over at Subnova. The idea of the updates, beyond bringing a few morsels of Halo 2 goodness to the masses, is to introduce those very same masses to the various sites in the Halo universe. Lots of traffic is directed to the site by an update, and a certain percentage of those visitors stick around and check out what ELSE is available. During the yearlong period of Matt’s Halo 1 Updates, a policy was worked out whereby the site receiving the update would have it, exclusively, from Friday night when it was posted through Sunday night. At that point, any site that wished to archive the updates was welcome to do so. Because of this policy, I declined to allow anyone to post the full text of the update in our forum last night, even though Subnova was having problems. However, this morning the site is STILL down, and some of the larger Halo sites have put the update online already – so I’m going to bow to common sense and suggest that if you want to read it, you visit Rampancy.net or the Junkyard while Subnova is still offline. (We have it, as well, but I’m going to hold off until Monday to post it; I simply don’t feel comfortable doing it now.) I’m really hoping this doesn’t change the way the updates have worked; I really believe that the spreading around of information (and bringing people to sites they might not otherwise have visited) is at least as important as the info itself. Long after these updates have been relegated to irrelevancy by the game’s release, the sites themselves will be up and running, bringing you Halo goodness. Something to think about.

There’ve been a number of movie submissions recently that have gone back to the roots of Halo fan movies; gameplay (or sometimes just cutscene action) set to music. Normally, these would simply be passed over; they don’t meet our movie posting guidelines, the concept isn’t original, and (in most cases), the music is either poorly chosen or not integrated into the actual footage. However, these recent creations don’t suffer from this latter problem… and I found myself enjoying watching them. For that reason, I’m going to release a few of them. This isn’t an open invitation to submit hundreds more – we still abide by our standards most of the time. These are small movies, though, and in each case, brings something fun to the table. First up: a movie from Joe S., set to Cheers, by the Trytones. 3:29 long, 320×240, 11.5 mb, in QuickTime format. We’re hosting this on our new files2.bungie.org. Enjoy!

Today’s Guest One One Se7en comes from Owen Walsh… and it’s just disturbing.

The CPL has announced the cash prize distribution for the Cyberathlete Extreme World Championships 2004, a 4-title tournament taking place at the end of July. The Halo portion has a total purse of $50,000, with $15,000 going to the winner. The entrance fee is 25% off ($60/head vs $80) until January 30. More details can be found on the CPL website. Thanks for the heads-up from CobaltNova.

Bren the n00b did some messing around with character swapping… came out with some interesting screenshots. (He also discovered that if you swap a Camo elite into Captain Keyes’ body… he ends up behaving as though he’s human. Weirdness.)

I can’t explain it… but maybe it’s not a bad thing. Fan Fiction entries today are only 7 (for a 2-day stretch).

• Out of Phase 4, by BlackValkyire
• The fight for Omega Centauri. Part 2: At the speed of fear., by Aonghus Maher
• The Tru7h, by Sherveen Mashayekhi
• I Shall Tell You, by Frensa Geran
• Something Wicked This Way Comes, pt. 1, by Silent Death Sorrow
• Survival of the Fittest: A friendship forged, by MasterCD
• Long Time Gone Part 9, by grylsy

Go read ’em!

A new Subzero Rivalries comic has been posted – as usual, artwork rocks. (The strip itself, this time around… lots of potential, but I thought the closer was weak. In its defense: the fact that I’m judging it at ALL says something pretty positive. 🙂 ) Thanks to MarkHawk for pointing it out.

Frankie takes a break from the humilia..er, fun that the Winter Pentathalon certainly must be to post an article on Bungie.Net elaborating on recent Halo sales figures. Four million. That’s a whole lot of pancakes.

Halo tourney (with a host of other games) in Secaucus, NJ at the end of February. If you’re in the area, check out the website! Thanks to Viscily II for the heads-up.

New EchoFourNineTeen over at 343GS.com today. Features a new character I hope never to meet. Thanks to IXIGhandiIXI for the heads-up.

Gamespy has posted their ‘Most Wanted Games of 2004‘ list… and (as usual), they rank Halo 2 up near the top, behind Half-Life 2 and Doom 3. And that’s all we’ll say about that. (Credit goes to… um… Finch, for pointing the countdown out several days ago, and Pico for pointing out Halo 2’s position.

This week’s Bungie Weekly Update went to Subnova.com. Once again, Frankie favors us with his awesome artwork… but the meat is in the text. Artwork, new maps, AI improvements… it’s all there. Go read. (Thanks to 3of9 for the heads-up.)

Just so it doesn’t get buried, it’s getting its own news post; Halo Babies has put up a new comic for the week. I found it hilarious… but you probably had to be here in the early days of Halo tricksterism to appreciate it.