Major League Gaming has sent a reminder that this weekend's Philly Eastern Regional is set to be the biggest US Halo tournament to date with 300 participants and a $16,000 purse.

Over at Bungie.net, SketchFactor has put together an excellent summary of the goings-on at the Halo PC World Championship, the tournament sponsored by iGames beginning last fall and culminating in the showdown on February 17 in Gardena, California. Top honors went to Jonathan "BEAST" Finglass of the UK; Sketch's article contains the final standings for the top 19 players. The US representative, Noah "Chummp" Evans, finished 5th.

Doobie writes that Dustin "Dc80s" Charest and the PS clan are going to hold a Myth: The Fallen Lords tournament next month. Read his post or the tournament page for the complete details on maps and game types.

SketchFactor pointed us through Truth & Reconciliation to a page at iGames where they are summarizing the Halo for Windows Worldwide Final results.

Currently it looks like Jonathan "Beast" Finglass of the UK is doing particularly well. It's not entirely clear to me if the tournament is over just yet; all the grids on that page are full, and the previous grids were named quarterfinals and semifinals, but there's no announcement of any winner there yet, but neither are there schedules up for more rounds, at least not yet.

Sketch promises a full writeup later in the week.

Forum Administrator Tonya Welch posted in one of the CPL forums that Halo will not be cut from their summer event; apparently the earlier threats to that effect caused some amount of controversy. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

Editor's Note: The following is a press release sent to Rampancy by AEG. Click the "read more" link at the bottom of this summary to read the entire article, including a list of finalists.

Microsoft Game Studios today announced that 19 gamers representing nine nations will be duking it out on February 17 at the Halo® for Windows® Worldwide Championship in Los Angeles, California. The Halo for Windows Worldwide Championship is a truly global event; spanning more than 275 iGames centers and worldwide partners gaming centers across five continents, including locations in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, Australia and the United Kingdom. The exciting championship and semifinal rounds will showcase some of the world's greatest Halo talent. Halo fans are invited to stop by and catch all the action, which starts at 1 p.m. PST on February 17. >From 6-10 p.m. PST, all fans are invited to come play Halo for free in a LAN frag-fest on 60 PCs.

Frankie has written up a postmortem-cum-pictures on the Bungie Winter Pentathlon 2004, featuring competition between four teams, Grizzled Ancients, Old Skool, Middle Skool and Newbies in five events: Halo 2, Top Spin, Pictionary, Mario Kart and EyeToy.

The Grizzled Ancients won the competitions for Halo 2, Mario Kart and EyeToy, earning the full five points for each to win the Pentathlon. Old Skool took second place, based on their top performances in Top Spin and Pictionary as well as taking three of five points each in Halo 2 and Mario Kart.

Congratulations to Charlie Gough, Lorraine 'Mehve' McLees and the rest of the Grizzled Ancients on their win, as well as kudos to Marty O'Donnell, Chris Butcher and the rest of the Old Skool team for their good showing.

Our favorite team, Middle Skool, distinguished themselves in neither success nor failure, despite the doubtless heroic efforts of Rampancy's founder and unofficial Halo team captain Tyson 'Ferrex' Green, pulling 3 points out of 5 for Pictionary and EyeToy (both favorites of hardcore videogaming stalwarts, of course) .

Condolences to Frankie, SketchFactor and the rest of the Newbies team, who finished last, garnering goose eggs in Halo 2, Pictionary and Mario Kart and redeeming themselves only with solo points in Top Spin and EyeToy.

synide at cookedgamers writes that Angel Munoz of CPL is threatening to cancel the Halo PC tournament portion of their summer event if more teams do not register before February 13. Apparently fewer teams have registered for PC Halo than for all other games. As of this writing, only five teams were fully registered, with another 22 teams requiring one or more players to complete their registration. (Full disclosure: cookedgamers itself needs 3 or more players to register).

The CPL is extending their 25% discount on admission until February 13; currently to register for all five days of the summer event is $60. The full title of the event is the Cyberathlete Extreme World Championships 2004, which takes place between July 28 and August 1 in Grapevine, Texas.

Word from CobaltNova comes that the Halo Fan Site Awards 2004 have begun; a full list of all ten nominated sites can be found there, but the contest itself seems to be run from Blam-Halo.co.uk, so it's there you'll have to go to vote. Of course, if by chance you've already made up your mind, you can vote for Rampancy right here. No pressure. Thanks MereCatfish.

The Plinth of Art contest over at HBO ended awhile ago, and just now the winners have been announced. Congratulations to Sep7imus, BOLL and Sam Koch, who will receive hand-drawn, framed One One Se7en strips by Stuntmutt, quite an honor. Speaking of honor, honorable mentions Patroclus, Neil Corné and Max Power will each get hand-drawn, unframed single frame comics.

All the details, as well as the winning strips and images of the prizes are avaialable at the Plinth of Art winners page.

Fluffy has posted at Battleground: Halo that as of January 1, they will end their Halo Beta ladder and start the official one. More information is available at TCLN: Halo.

SketchFactor has put up an admirably detailed account of the Cyberathlete Professional League's 2003 Winter Championship held last weekend in Texas. 35 5-man teams competed in the Halo event. Team [xeno] battled back to win in the championship game of Assault on Blood Gulch against Demise, the same team that had bumped them into the loser's bracket in an earlier round. Team [xeno] took $9,000 of the $30,000 prize pool. Next summer's event will also feature Halo and will have an even larger prize pool-- $50,000.

HBO has followed up on their September story about a video showing the Halo50K Tournament finals featuring TDT vs DM playing CTF on Battle Creek. (Who says the military has a monopoly on alphabet soup?) Video CD Productions had a streaming version back then, but now there are QuickTime and Windows Media versions, hosted at Mythica and files.bungie.org. Links are in the HBO news story. We're also mirroring the QuickTime version here at Rampancy, which is 33.5 Mb, 400 x 300 pixels; it's in our Halo Movies section and available for download from RHL. It includes player commentary.