Major Nelson has put up his summary of the latest Humpday Challenge that pitted Xbox Live against Bungie. Xbox Live prevailed, winning narrowly in Team Slayer and 3 Plots and pulling out a tie in Multi Flag CTF. All three games were played on new maps; Sanctuary, Turf, and Containment, respectively. (Against anyone else, Bungie might have an advantage playing on the new maps, but I'm betting Xbox Live personnel probably also got a chance to test them prior to release, so that advantage may have been negated in this case--Ed.)

Hack the web server that Microsoft makes, and win a Microsoft console-- that's the proposition of the HackIIS6.0 Challenge run by Roger Grimes. Check that site for details and read the HackIIS6.0 Challenge discussion at Slashdot. The catch? This time, they're going to install all the security patches.

Prometheus posted a summary of the HBO Lekgolos Humpday Challenge against Bungie in the HBO forum. The clan took the first game impressively, winning 5-0 in "monosnipe" neutral flag on Coagulation. But Bungie regrouped to take the next two games and the victory. Thanks to Blackstar for the tip.

Xbox365 today has a press release that US registration for the World Cyber Games 2005 championship tourney is due to open April 15 at us.worldcybergames.com. At the time of this writing, the site was not yet up. Halo 2 is one of the WCG events.

The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) has announced that their Halo 2 Xbox tournament is changing format from 5x5 to 4x4, due to "overwhelming support" for that format. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

SketchFactor has posted the summary of the latest Humpday Challenge-- after a short hiatus following their humiliation against typical Japanese Halo players, Bungie rewrote the rules (they now pick one of the gametypes and actually practice as a team beforehand) and rebounded with a solid victory over Art Vand3lay, flechette, goatrope, Ducain, Sorahn, and Jphan7om of High Impact Halo. Ducain posted the story at HIH and Phan7om posted in the HBO forum (thanks Louis Wu).

VGL is letting players vote for what games they want to play in tournaments. More information on VGL's tourneys, as well as instructions on how to vote, can be found at the VGL news page. Thanks Jeff Gross.

The pistol-whipping delivered to Bungie in last week's Humpday Challenge came from the land of the rising sun, in the form of the GunShin clan. The match was arranged by Microsoft's Japanese office, who was apparently asked to find a "group of typical Japanese players". Bungie lost all three games. After a tentative 1-0 flag win on Headlong, GunShin capped off the victory with a 3-0 flag win on Coagulation in which Frankie admits Bungie never managed to get out of their own base and a stunning 100-35 Slayer win on Colossus where GunShin apparently deployed an odd variation of the plasma pistol - battle rifle combo, where the weapons were wielded by different players. (Now that's teamwork--Ed.)

Cody Miller of High Speed Halo notes in the HBO forum that their efforts to complete the entirety of Halo, on legendary difficulty, in under two hours, is currently only nine minutes short of the mark. Submissions of shorter times is encouraged. Times for Halo and Halo 2 are tracked.

dolbex writes that Major League Gaming's new online leagues are starting to fill up-- go check out the site for details on how to register your team!

Jeff Gross of the Video Gamers League writes that they have recently announced a $20,000 gaming tournament that will include Halo 2. VGL is entering its fifth season, and the schedule for this year includes events in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Orlando, San Francisco and Chicago. More information is available from VGL's website.

A few news items before I logon to XBL:

• Tom's Hardware has part two of an interview with Microsoft's J. Allard about the Xbox 2.
• Over at SacredIcon.com, prometheus has a piece on Halo machinima in his blog, Truth and Rationalization. Some interesting ideas here, and we may put up a rebuttal later.
• Joystiq is running a contest drawing on April 1; a free year of Xbox Live is on offer.

Having finally gotten a halfway decent Internet connection at home, I'm at last able to actually connect to Xbox Live and have my worst fears about my Halo-playing ability confirmed.

Frankie's Weekly What's What Update is mostly about what Bungie is doing to deter cheaters and how close they are to releasing the fixes they've been working on. Very soon now. There's also a mention of the DLC-- just that it will be announced well in advance, and be made available to users of Xbox Live and other Halo 2 owners as well.

Penny Arcade's side of the Humpday Challenge debacle is up now; responses come in both verbal and visual forms. Tycho thought that Bungie's triumphant victory would make up for their initial review of Halo 1.. but then Gabe seemed to take Frankie's rough treatment of the Fruit Fucker to heart, and felt a need to retaliate. As Frankie mentioned, they've asked Bungie for a rematch in Splinter Cell. (One might note that Penny Arcade's visuals have "marginally improved" since those days, as well--Ed.)

In a surprise move, the identity of this week's Humpday Challenge opponents was revealed in the latest Penny Arcade comic. As Gabe and Tycho feared, Bungie did indeed want to play Slayer, and ended up schooling the Penny Arcade duo and their friends, winning all three games with kill ratios of about 2:1. Frankie's writeup is up at Bungie.net now. Bungie's team included Shishka, Frankie, Bentllama, Evil Otto and Achronos.