OddGodHMK has updated Boring Comics with another Halo-related strip - in fact, this one’s an HBO-related strip. I laughed.(Louis Wu 13:26:57 +0000)

Mid7night posted a video of his Longsword in X-Plane; he played with some Final Cut filters for added effect. If you want to play along, he’s challenged you to add a Halo-flavored soundtrack.(Louis Wu 12:44:59 +0000)

Morpheus noticed a Top 25 Enemies of All Time list at Game Daily. If I specified WHICH enemy from the Halo series made the list, I’d have to put a spoiler tag on this newspost.
(Louis Wu 12:44:29 +0000)

newguy2445 sent us a note that the Halo Wars website has updated with new information about one of the buildings available to UNSC players - the Reactor. Swing by for pics!
(Louis Wu 13:12:01 +0000)

Okay, I’m back from a really pleasant weekend away from the internet - thanks to mnemesis for keeping the front page from going blank while I was gone! Time to catch up on backlogged news… first up is an update on the Forge Hub Halo 3 2v2 tourney we last mentioned on August 1 - they want 256 teams total, and as of Friday, they were at 189. It’s unclear to me when signups end - but the gametypes were released last Friday night, and the first map, ‘Urban’, was released last night. More teaser images, and a FAQ, are here.(Louis Wu 13:10:02 +0000)

The Master Chief and Grunts statue we mentioned a while ago is wrapping up today. $1675 so far, so if you’ve got that kind of money burning a hole in your pocket and you’d like to have something completely unique in the Halo collectibles world, get to it!(mnemesis 15:33:37 +0000)

I thought this story would fizzle out. If certain people had much any sense, it probably would have. Yet here we are.

Eurogamer has an exclusive interview coming up tomorrow with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 boss Don Mattrick. They, of course, asked him about the cancelled Bungie announcement and the studio’s reaction:

“Sure they’re disappointed. Any software creator would be disappointed,” Mattrick, boss of the Xbox 360 business, told Eurogamer at E3 for an exclusive interview set to run later this week. “Harold [Ryan, Bungie president] just laughed and he said, ‘Boy, just a sign of growth inside the business, we agree’.

Last week Ryan wrote on Bungie’s website that the team was disappointed by Microsoft’s last-minute decision not to unveil the game.

Pressed on the decision to pull the new Halo title from the E3 briefing, Mattrick said: “We didn’t feel we needed to show Halo to have a great show, to pay homage to our core audience, to have a lot of news, so it was an embarrassment of riches and we couldn’t fit it in. How great is that? I think that’s awesome.”

Yup, that’s funny stuff there. Disappointing the only developer who has so far allowed Microsoft to make money on their incursion into the living room because they were audacious enough to go independent– and because you’ve got enough other stuff? Hilarious.

What exactly was that other stuff, anyway? Because all I seem to read about MS’ showing at E3 now is how there wasn’t a Bungie announcement, and… oh, yeah, Final Fantasy.

Offtopic: I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Final Fantasy tanks on the 360.

The Bungie Weekly Update is up (and has been since last night). A bit of info on PAX, and a bunch of tidbits from various people at the studio, giving some tasty yet cryptic hints as to what they’re working on. Go read!(mnemesis 16:31:05 +0000)

There’s a fascinating inside view at the development of the Halo 3 Believe diorama, as told by the ad agency that put it all together, over at Shoot Online. They couldn’t get art assets from Bungie, so they got them from McFarlane. They were able to repurpose scale models from Aliens to save some time in set building. They discovered that their Brutes had the wrong dimensions, necessitating a reconstruction of about 100 models. And on and on. With all that happened, it’s amazing how well the final product turned out!(Louis Wu 09:38:42 +0000)

Comic Book Resources has posted a review of Halo: Uprising #3 - it’s a bit kinder than most of the opinions we mentioned yesterday. (Louis Wu 09:30:38 +0000)