Retronauts continues its contributions to 1Up's ongoing Halo 3 coverage by taking a look back at Marathon 2. In case you've been under a rock since July, Freeverse has ported the game to XBLA as Marathon:Durandal.

Thanks to chewpathingy in the HBO forum.

At least, that's what Brian Ashcraft at Kotaku says about the pre-Tokyo Games Show press event held by Microsoft, where they did show some Halo:

Now, they are showing a Halo 3 trailer. Because, you know, the Japanese really love Halo. It's a new trailer! They showed the Japanese TV ad, too. The Halo 3 Xbox 360 will be open priced when the game goes on sale here.

Check the Kotaku story for their coverage of the event.

A thread in 4chan claims to have a screencap from the endgame cinematic and summarizes the end of the game.

WARNING: The link may contain spoilers. Don't click it if you don't want to know what may, or may not, be the end of Halo 3.

MasterChief2829 pointed out a link to an eBay auction that claims to have the full retail Halo 3 package, including an unboxed shot.

It appears to be a PAL version of the game from Australia.

Cinema Blend Games has a series of pieces by Steve West they're calling their Halo 3 Primer. It covers:

• Multiplayer
• UNSC weapons
• Covenant weapons
• Equipment
• UNSC vehicles
• Covenant vehicles
• Characters
• Story
• Community
• Editions/Accessories

A lot of information there-- most of it not new, but it's nice to have it all in one place.

Jason "Gravemind" Goodman (also known as ShadowoftheVoid) has written up part one in a series on the history of medium-range weapons in the Halo series, this one focusing on the recent nerf of the Covenant Carbine between the Halo 3 beta and now.

TrackZero at Evil Avatar got to see a closed-door demonstration of two campaign levels from Halo 3. His verdict? It's a keeper if you like Halo, at least a rental if you don't.

It takes all the best of the series and kicks it up a notch. I never encountered any issues during gameplay at all to speak of. The single player campaign missions that I saw merely came off as a tease, as I wanted to grab the controller and play the whole time. The multiplayer is a large improvement over Halo 2 (which I wasn't a fan of) and hits a great balance that's sure to please people.

Read the full post for more details about Halo 3, as well as impressions of several other games.

Kotaku has the story that says that eighty-eight Best Buy locations have been chosen to open at midnight to sell Halo 3 on September 25. See Kotaku for the full story or click the thumbnail on the left for the complete list.

In yet another example of Halo becoming so cool that the only way to make yourself look cooler in comparison is to dump on it, Steve Tilly at the Edmonton Sun drops this pearl of wisdom: Halo 2 is the #4 most overhyped game ever, just ahead of Daikatana:

One of my biggest regrets as a so-called professional game reviewer is giving Halo 2 a five-star review in 2004. But journalists are human too, and like so many others I got caught up in the tornado of hype surrounding Master Chief's triumphant return to the Xbox.

First-- you gotta be kidding me. More overhyped than Daikatana? Halo 2 was more overhyped than a game Romero advertised by promising to make fans "his bitch" and in the end delivered only schizophrenic level design, robotic frogs, and a helpless, stereotypical sidekick? More over-hyped than that?

Secondly, you should stand by what you write. If you'd predicted Halo 2 would be the best game ever before you played it and then got a chance to admit you were wrong later, that's one thing. Admitting that you got "caught up" in the hype and gave a game a rank it didn't deserve is something else entirely. It's just as likely that right now you're caught up in a backlash against Halo. How can anyone tell?

Call them like you see them-- and stick by what you've said. All else is pretense.

Thanks to chewpathingy for the heads-up in the HBO forum.

Whagi in the Xbox Live Forums warns that US and UK subscribers to Xbox Live may be targets of a phishing attempt. An email arrives that claims to require you to login to XBL due to changes to your account, but the links in the message go to a fake XBL login page that allows the perpetrators to record your username and password.

Check the forum post for full details and don't fall for it.

As soon as possible being, in this case, already. Francesca Reyes, Editor-in-Chief of Official Xbox Magazine, has already played through the entire Halo 3 single-player campaign, and her ten page review will hit the streets in the next edition of OXM, day and date with the game.

Technically nobody's supposed to say a word about the game, but GamesRadar managed to get her to say a few words about how she felt after she finished playing:

I think I was kind of in a state of shock for most of it, especially after I finished the campaign. I was happy, yes - but it didn't really hit me until I was back in San Francisco and eating a big bowl of ramen at some neighborhood joint. I sat there at the table with my bowl of ramen and a copy of Wired (the one with Master Chief on the cover which I bought for the flight home) - and I thought to myself: Wow. I can't believe I just did something that hundreds of thousands of people have been waiting years to do.

Thanks Major Silva for the heads-up in the HBO forum.

Hawty McBloggy compiled a list of top ten things to do while Xbox Live is down, (it's back up already) while GameDaily has a list of top ten things to do before Halo 3 comes out.

Just remember, this isn't really Halo news, just an amazing NBC simulation. The items range from the practical (sleeping) to the commercial (buy gamefuel) and from the sublime (live action oddball) to the ridiculous (live action teabagging).

Louis Wu posted up the former list, and Avateur pointed out the latter in the HBO forum.

You may have read somewhere else already that press reviews of Halo 3 (much like Halo 2 before it) are handled in a somewhat different way than other games. Bungie doesn't mail out review copies to journalists in advance; if they did, it's possible the game's ending would have been spoiled by now. GamePro has an article up that details this alternative procedure.

Just as was done previously in Australia and Europe, next week in North America Bungie will be setting up 24-hour gaming sessions on both coasts; one representative from each invited organization will have access to the entire game, but no one will be allowed to publish a word until September 23.

Thanks Louis Wu for the heads-up on this story at HBO.

1Up's Halo 3 coverage continues; this time, the Retronauts Blog is traveling further back in time to the colony ship Marathon. There's also an indication from Bruce "Hippieman" Morrison from Freeverse in the comments to that entry to the effect that if there's enough interest, that Marathon Infinity and even the original Marathon can also be brought to Xbox Live, just like Marathon: Durandal has been.