MaverickJ has posted a followup video (in first-person view) to his recent CTF2 vid (the new one is WMP9-only at the moment), as well as a text-based FAQ explaining all the tricks in that first one. You’ll need to be registered at the Project Spartan forums to see it. Nice tricks – I don’t think I ever knew flags would go through walls.

SleekShadow has tossed a flag 300 meters in Blood Gulch – and caught it on tape. (Apparently, there’s an explanation coming soon.) Visit his site for details and movies.

Hehe – there’s a Help Wanted notice up over at Bungie.net; they want someone who can help build the next iteration of Bungie.net. Ironically, the link to the Jobs page doesn’t work… because the Web Developer description isn’t up yet. Guess they need a web developer to post it, so that… hmm. Anyway, if you’re interested, visit the Jobs page; I’m sure there’ll be something there soon.

Anonyme points out that the Halo Action Figures are available for pre-order at at least one online store. (It’s doubtful these are sanctioned by Joyride or Microsoft; they’re still using the images released when the figures were first announced, and as we’ve seen from the Bungie Webcam, the figures have changed quite a bit since then… but the fact remains, SOME are gearing up already for this sale!)

The way-cool 2003 Bungie Fanfest T-Shirt is now available for purchase at the Bungie Store; $12 buys you flaming ninja goodness. (Another, closer view of this can be found here – it’s the black shirt in the lower left.) Thanks to SketchFactor for the heads-up.

Couple of updates; one I missed a few days ago (oops), the other new today. A week ago, we mentioned a tournament in Athens, GA – but the reported website didn’t work. Here’s the right one. And Halo Source, a website we mentioned about a month and a half ago, is now back online, and ready for visitors. Check ’em out!

The Pillar of Art Gallery showing will take place in next Saturday, July 5th, in lovely New York City. It’ll be open from 12PM onwards. At some point, we’ll then switch over to Halo LAN mode… put away the entries and then start to blow ourselves up. I’m trying to get 4 projectors and all the rest of the equipment lined up so we’ll have a really good time.

The Chelsea Studio Gallery is located at 515 W. 19th st, right off 10th Avenue. Come see all the entries, including the top 3 prizewinners, of the Pillar of Art contest. Bring a camera and get a pic of yourself holding the cool Battle Rifle or the MC’s Pistol.

As it stands, this will be the only public showing of all these pieces in one room! Stand in awe of all the mighty talent displayed!

The Gallery is open to one and all, but the LAN party is going to be handled differently, I’m sorry to say. Since we can’t accomodate 75 players, I have to limit it to a much smaller crowd. So if you’re interested in attending, send me an email with all your info and I’ll let you know if there’s space available.

We’ll do our best to take pics and videos of the event. 🙂

Halogamers.com has put up a new version of their introduction episode of ‘The Sidewinder Saga’, a Red vs Blue-inspired project that has enormous potential. If you missed the mention in our forum yesterday… now’s your chance! It’s a 400×300 QuickTime5 film, weighing in at 5.9 mb. (Hosting help is always appreciated – just let us know, and we’ll let the HBO community know.) Update: Atomi, from Bungie.de, writes to say that they’ve mirrored this – if you’re in Europe, this is your best bet! Thanks, Atomi!

Narcogen, over at Rampancy.net, has written an opinion piece on the future of interactive gaming. Give it a read!

One One Se7en takes potshots at Metroid Prime’s shortcomings… check it out.

These guys STILL don’t have the hang of the Series field in the database (6 of these 11 Fan Fiction entries had the series set incorrectly)… but we love ’em anyway.

• The Fallen : Chapter 2, Section 2, by Hikaru-119
• The Fallen : Chapter 2, Section 3, by Hikaru-119
• On A Pale Horse: Two Cruisers, by Silent Hunter
• Unknown Apprentice, by Apache119
• Covenant Invasion! Part Six, by Hunter_Killer
• Shadow Ops, Chapter 5: Rescue, by Agent Shade
• Its Just One of Those Days: 03, by Elfster
• Price of Glory Pt. 2, by loserman
• Black Knight Pelican Attack: Hot LZ Chapter 1, by JK Hazard
• Shadow Ops, Chapter 6: The Outpost, by Agent Shade
• Forsaken Forefathers part VII: Arctic Warfare, by AlphaBravo343 and Havok

Go read.

Yesterday, I said that the art queues had been cleared out, and if your work hadn’t been posted, it was because we either rejected it, or couldn’t tell who it was from. Well, there was a third possibliity – I could have just missed the piece. 🙁 There were three – two Wallpapers and one Miscellaneous Art – that escaped me. They’re up now. Sorry about that!

Live in Virginia? Like Halo? There’s gonna be a tournament on August 9 in Virginia Beach. There’s a site with almost no info… but you’ll find some more details on our forum.

Hehe – a LAN party site wrote up a list of predictions about what would happen after Halo 2 is released. It’s pretty funny. Thanks to The Friendly Greek for the heads-up.

More awesome movie content. MaverickJ has put together Part II of CTF Flag Getting 101… and man, your jaw’s gonna drop when you see some of these. (Try ’em on XBC – your opponents will tell you you’re cheating.) It’s available in two formats; a 11 mb WMP9 file and a 29 mb MPEG. For now, it’s just available at the Project Spartan forums (registration required) – but as soon as we get bandwidth back, this is in the queue. Maverick says a FAQ is coming, so hold your questions for a bit.

Sometimes, you just gotta grin.

Darksage (aka Benjamin Jacobs on our forum) put together a little video for a contest over at the Red vs Blue forums. It was nicely done – enough so that we thought it would be worth the effort to reduce the filesize by about half. (It’s now 17 mb, zipped, in QuickTime format.) If you didn’t download it yesterday, when he mentioned it on our forum, grab it now. Bandwidth is very tight these days, due to Mythica’s downtime… so any mirrors for this would be appreciated. And if you enjoy it, let him know in our forum – and wish him a Happy Birthday, while you’re at it!

Thanks to Dan Chosich, who pointed out that UGO has put up a Halo PC preview with a set of ‘exclusive PC screenshots‘ (there are three of them, but the third one has been out for a while), and a Halo 2 preview. He found this info over at the Junkyard. Good stuff!

Finn says he’s put up a little Halo Story Page update. Yeah… and the Hulk is a little bit green. Good stuff in this one…

And finally, last but not least… two new desktops for the day in the Wallpaper section. This clears out the art queue entirely. If you submitted something, and it hasn’t been posted yet, one of two things happened: we rejected it for not meeting our Image Posting Guidelines… or you submitted it with no attribution; we don’t know who you are, we don’t post your stuff.