[image:42829 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Bungie commemorates the fifth anniversary of the release of Halo with an announcement that touches on both Halo 3 and Halo 2.

First, there will be a Halo 3 television commercial airing during Monday Night Football on December 4th.

Secondly, in the spring of 2007 there will be more Halo 2 maps available. They won't be free, and you'll need a 360 with the hard drive (required for Halo 2 backwards compatibility anyway).

Thirdly, next spring will also see the launch of some kind of Halo 3 Public Beta. Fans will get a chance to play Halo 3 multiplayer on Xbox Live before the game is actually released.

Last but not least, a new screenshot from an actual campaign level, recently reproduced in Newsweek magazine. We've added it to the Halo 3 gallery.

UPDATE: Microsoft has an official press release on the announcements as well; a copy has been posted at Team Xbox.

Five years ago today, Halo shipped to eager Bungie fans and the unsuspecting masses of Xbox early adopters around the world. To commemorate this (and whet your appetite for whatever big news is to come later) Frankie has put up an Anniversary Panel of game journalists and fansite editors (including HBO's own Louis Wu) to ask them about what they're looking forward to in Halo 3 and what their favorite things about Halo and Halo 2 are.

The newest installment of 1Up's Three Weeks of Halo 3 looks at player complaints about Halo 2's online play and how those are being addressed in Halo 3, including weapon spawns, dual-wielding, player icons and more.

In particular, Ferrex mentions how the weapon spawn system in Halo 1 was made, and how in Halo 3, it'll be a revolution, not an evolution, since "weapon spawns have been rebuilt from the ground up."

Can't wait.

1Up continues their "three weeks of Halo 3" online series to accompany their chocked-with-Halo 3-goodness December issue. The latest addition is a Humpday Challenge writeup where Bungie cheats and multiplayer lead Tyson "Ferrex" Green graciously stops at the appropriate number of 7 kills to leave 1Up with some self-esteem. Just not much.

Coming Soon has up what it claims is an official press release from Wingnut Films, detailing a joint decision by Microsoft and Wingnut to delay production of the Halo feature film until such time as they can guarantee they'll be bringing a "first class film" version of the game to screens.

Cinema Blend linked to the story with some additional commentary along the lines of go big, or stay home. Looks like the Chief is staying home... for now.

Until there's confirmation from Bungie or Microsoft we're labelling this one an unfortunate rumor.

You'd have to have been under a rock (or on a business trip, natch) to have missed the revelations about Halo 3 multiplayer from Swedish gaming magazine, Level, last week. Similar material is upcoming from EGM, and their online presence, 1Up, is doing a special Three Weeks of Halo 3 page. They also summarized the information in that issue. MyGen summarized the information from Level, as did XboxAddict.

Out of respect for Bungie's wishes, we aren't hosting any scans, or links to scans. If you really must find them, you know where to go, you don't need to ask me.

However, nobody owns the rights to the information that's in that article, which seems to boil down to the following:

• Halo 3 will have new weapons.

  No huge surprise there. Bungie added quite a few weapons to Halo 2 after Halo 1, as well as making changes to old weapons and adding in the dual-wielding system. New weapons appear to include the "Brute Spiker", the "Spartan Laser" and the "Nail Grenade".

• Halo 3 will have new vehicles.

  According to the article, the Mongoose ATV that was originally slated for inclusion in Halo 2, but was removed because there was no good mission placement for it, will be in Halo 3. It supposedly seats two and is weaponless, so unless you can fire a weapon while driving (now there's some dual-wielding action) the only support fire you're going to get is from your passenger.

• Halo 3 will have a new Man Cannon.

  I'm not sure what happened to the old Man Cannon. In fact, I'm not even sure what a Man Cannon is. Some articles have likened it to jump pads from Quake and Unreal Tournament, but Halo 2 multiplayer already had those-- the jump platform in Ascencion and the air vents on Foundation and in other levels. Others seem to think this is an object you carry, like a weapon, that you can aim at the ground and use to launch yourself in the air, or perhaps the Halo version of the gravity gun from Half-Life 2, allowing you to manipulate enemies and objects in the level from a distance. That last idea would be cool; the gravity gun was easily the most fun thing about HL2.

• Halo 3 will have new controls.

  The Xbox 360 has moved its black and white buttons to the shoulders, above the triggers. It has the same number of buttons as the previous controller. Apparently, in Halo 3, the shoulder buttons independently reload the gun on each hand; left shoulder button, left gun reload. When there's no weapon in the left hand, the left shoulder switches between plasma and frag grenades. There's no word on where the headlight/active camo function is going, and tantalizing hints about what the X button will do now that it doesn't need to do reloading duty.

• Halo 3 will have new eye candy.

  Your secondary weapon will apparently be visible on your body, hanging from your shoulder. Personally, I think it's a small touch, but it's great to see. Halo's two weapon restriction is a great example of a less-is-more philosophy, and while realism is not really a priority in this game, eliminating the "where does that huge sniper rifle go when I switch weapons" question is worth it. Whether there is tactical value in being able to see an opponent's slung weapon is yet to be seen, but it's a nice touch anyway.

• Halo 3 will have new packaging.

  Supposedly there will be as many as three editions of the game, culminating in a collector's edition, called the Legendary Edition, that will come with four discs of content and be packaged in a Spartan helmet (or a package shaped like one). At least one source mentioned a Halo movie sneak peek in this content, but with no studio backing for the film now, that sounds a bit premature unless it's just interviews with Peter Jackson, director Neill Blomkamp, and the Bungie gang. Not that there'd be anything wrong with that.

A blog that seems to focus more on politics than gaming marked the 10th anniversary of the release of Marathon Infinity earlier this week.

Needless to say, this game has given me and my friends many happy moments for the last 10 years, and it will continue to do so in the future, as Aleph One, which is the open-source adaptation of the game, has been available for some years. And it still plays great.

Thanks to source.bungie.org for the link.

Mr Sprout over at the new Halo Wars fansite, Halo Wars Central, was able to get an interview with Dispraiser, the lead of Slipstream Productions that was working on the Halo-themed Halogen mod for Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour. Shortly before the announcement of Halo Wars for the Xbox 360 at the X06 event in Barcelona, Spain, Bungie contacted the Slipstream team with word that Microsoft's legal department wanted the team to stop working on their mod as they considered it an infringement of Microsoft's intellectual property, the Halo universe.

However, the team has not stopped working on the mod-- it just isn't Halo themed any more:

Well, it'd take the mystery out of it if I just said what our next project is, but a lot of our fans have found the secret message (rather crudely hidden) on our old homepage. I think if I just said what we were up to it'd take a lot of the fun out of making everybody find that message... But lemme just say, if you liked Halogen for more than just the Halo name, and you saw the work we put into our creations, and our faith to our motto (Semper Qualitas), then let me say that you won't be dissapointed.

For those still unclear on what actually happened with the cancellation of Halogen, read the interview.