1Up's latest Halo feature is a retrospective on the Halo series. The teaser on their three weeks of Halo 3 microsite mentions the "Halo/Marathon universe" but there's nary a mention of Marathon there, and as we all know, the two universes are separate anyway. Right?

[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).

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.

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.

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.