A year ago, on November 9, Halo 2 was released. And there was much rejoicing. And not a little bitching about mostly insignificant stuff. But nevermind that now.

To celebrate Halo 2's first anniversary, Bungie is revealing a neat little tidbit. If you play your existing copy of Halo 2 in an Xbox 360 when it comes out later this week, this is what you'll see:

But here's another bonus – the hardware in the 360 can do a lot of nifty stuff, and specifically in the cases of Halo and Halo 2, it can display the graphics in wide screen, at 720p, with full scene anti-aliasing. And it doesn't look kludgy, artifacty or smeary like an upscanning DVD player. The best way to describe it is that both games look like they're running on a PC at those resolutions.

The rest of the article is jam-packed with stuff; a retrospective of Halo 1, including demos and logo prototypes, input from Pete Parsons, Claude "Louis Wu" Errera, the Bungie Princess, and OXM's Ryan McCaffrey. If you haven't already, go check it out.