Three new tricks in our Gameplay Tricks section – a pair of Out of Map experiences from pete_the_duck, and some vehicle manipulation from Scott Kelly. Check ’em out!

And now, a word from our sponsors… in a manner of speaking. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the Halo community is the ability to see what insane – erm, intrepid people are doing to push the Halo engine. However, because Halo’s got no built-in film feature, stunts have to be recorded as video… and video eats bandwidth like Homer Simpson eats donuts. We’d like to take this opportunity, then, to thank some of the bandwidth providers from this community (and point out the newest files they have for you to download):

• Mythica.org – Brian Towne has been here since Day 1, pretty much, and has provided homes for most of the high-ticket items out there. He hosts all the iBonk movies, as well as almost everything that’s been mentioned here at HBO. Latest morsels: Eleet Ops Faction’s Various – EOF film, and the Xbox Goodies that disappeared recently from Team Xbox.
• The Repertory – Vector40 started this site up with the express purpose of giving a home to homeless movies. Latest tidbits: Various – EOF and Dan Chosich’s Montage Video.
• That Weasel Television – That Weasel started off with the Warthog Jump movie, but has recently put up the Xbox Goodies (both the full package and the music tracks by themselves), and created an HBO Video Mirror page in case there is more to add.

There are others, of course… but these three had new content RIGHT NOW. 🙂 To all in the community that make it possible for us to keep people informed about the latest funkiness… thanks!

Drunken Elite? TitaniumPez found a pretty bizarre looping Banshee on Halo… nice perfect circles, but he doesn’t seem to notice the player. Hmm…

Alan Wu did the community a nice favor, and extracted all the interesting stuff off the Xbox Japan site we mentioned yesterday. Three music clips (in MP3 format), and a bunch of mini-screenshots… plus one bizarre grunt sound. All in a package only 260k! Grab it today.

Justin Gochanour, of gyeah.com, sent us pics of another LAN party – more heavy drinking, some RIDICULOUS stats (you have to check this pic out), and some fun with guns on walls. Hope these guys didn’t drive home…

Shadow dropped off Chapter 7 of his Renegade Marines saga – ‘The Return Home‘. I want one of those 6-tube rocket launchers… man, I bet that’s heavy. Fan Fiction is fun.

A week ago, Team Xbox posted a package full of goodies, including a WMP Halo skin, a copy of the Halo trailer, and 3 never-before-released (on the net) Halo tracks… in WMP format. Total package size: 4.6 mb. It’s already gone off their servers. 🙁 Because the music tracks were so cool, I made room for them in some overflow space we have at mac.com… but I couldn’t fit the whole package. Vector40, abusing the stupidity of a provider he’s doing his best to get rid of, has agreed to host the entire package, if you’re interested in the skin and the trailer, as well. The music tracks alone, at mac.com, are 2 megs. The full package of goodies, no longer available from TXB, is 4.6 megs. Download away!

Review Roundup… we added reviews from Vision Gaming Online Network (19/20), Fragland.net (95%), Eurogamer (8/10), LoadedInc. (9.5/10), and Tilt TV (10/10) to our Reviews Database. Thanks to all who dropped off links! Total reviews to date: 88. Average score: 94.4%. Wonga.

Thanks to Paladin, who kindly sent in a translation for our most recent Danish Halo review – seems the original (random) quote I chose was pretty inappropriate. Oh, to speak more than 5 languages!

Some days, you open up your inbox and see some weird stuff.

Two years ago, Lynx deodorant made a huge splash in the Halo community due to their outright theft of the Halo font – but the furor has died down. However, today, we received a picture of a DIFFERENT Lynx deodorant – Gravity – which uses an interesting graphical logo… these guys don’t quit. 🙂 (Thanks to Rage Reset for the pic.)

Them titles is gettin’ outta hand… Ian Barnes turns in Chapter 6 of his Operation False Prophets series – check it out in our Fan Fiction section.

Nice find by protexts… The Official Japanese Halo site is up, and it’s not simply a copy of the US site (as so many others are). Nice Flash layout, nice music, good screenies (if a bit too small). Now if only I could read Japanese…

Heh – TitaniumPez caught the Master Chief… um… well, watch the show (144k).

Stosh created a Halo comic which pays tribute to Matt Soell’s… um, unhealthy interests. Check it out!

pete_the_duck has gone a to a couple of places not yet documented – one on Halo, the other on Truth and Reconciliation. You can check his website for pictures from the locations… but as of right now, he’s not willing to share his techniques for reaching them, so don’t ask us. 🙂 Update: he’s explained… and reproducing this one ain’t gonna be easy…

A quick reply by Matt Soell to a request for clarification of the PAL/NTSC situation (‘Can they play nicely together?’) turned into a veritable firestorm on several forums, here and in Europe. (Most of the unhappiness can be explained by my lack of understanding of the answer I was acting as messenger for…) Matt stepped back in tonight with a more complete answer – NTSC and PAL boxes cannot play nicely together, not because Bungie doesn’t like Europeans, but because of basic speed differences between the two versions, and because of the way Halo was written. Hopefully, in the future, games (both from Bungie and from other developers) will take into account the different refresh rates of the two television standards, and allow competitors with either system to play the other… but for now, with Halo, that’s just not an option. Read Matt’s whole post for a more complete explanation.

Last week, we mentioned a small article in Entertainment Weekly about Halo lan parties. That issue is now off the shelves… so we’ve posted it in our Press Scans section. Take a look! (We’ve also added a more useful date-sorting option to the Scans database – you can now sort the scans from newest to oldest, instead of just oldest to newest.)

The Incoming queue for the Gameplay Tricks page has finally been cleared – another 4 entries are up for your viewing pleasure. Pretty eclectic collection, this time around… check ’em out, if you don’t mind the spoilers!

Back in late February, customsex sent word that Eleet Ops Faction had a new video for the masses – it showed how to get down from the beginning of the Maw (a subject which was pretty hot at that moment), and a bug in Two Betrayals in which the death of one co-op player meant the death of the other. It was rather large, however – 31 megs – so I told him that we couldn’t host it, and that since it showed one subject he’d already covered in another vid (albeit without the music) and another subject that could be done in many, many fewer bytes, that finding a host might be a problem. Well, thanks to Vector40, that host has been found – The Repertory has put the movie up, and you can grab it from there. The Two Betrayals bug is pretty hilarious… and there’s plenty of playing with dead bodies. Again, it’s a 31 mb MPG, almost 2 minutes long. Check it out!