A new Marathon film (in Marathon recording and .mp4 formats) called Spectral Falls and a new map pack called Fabrecation are available at Marathon: Aleph One. Check them out!

Gravemind has produced what may well be the single most exhaustive commentary on the Halo series to date, covering not only comparisons to Halo 1 and Halo 2 including each weapon and every vehicle, but single player and multiplayer level design as well. He caps it off with a series of mostly level-headed suggestions for Halo 3.

Captain Spark fired up his Halo dialogue website at the end of last month, upgrading to a new CMS-- PHP-Fusion. Be sure to check it out, even though he admits the current design is a placeholder (now where have we heard that before?). He's also working on an IWHBYD skull tutorial which I'm sure many will be eager to check out.

... and to Windows and Linux as well. Appleswitch at Source.bungie.org reports that a Mac OS X conversion of the Marathon sequel scenario Rubicon, appropriately called Marathon: Rubicon X, has been released. It requires the latest version of the cross-platform Aleph One engine. Rubicon was originally released in 2001. The X conversion features new high resolution art as well as new and updated maps.

The latest Bungie Spotlight is on former community member, current Bungie staffer Cunbelin, and his contributions to Halo 3:

Well My most recent item was to remake the classic human crate, better, faster, stronger! Well better at least. I've got a long list of those kinds of items both to be brought up to the Halo 3 standards and new ones to be created. I'd go into specifics but things shift almost daily in priority so it's hard to say what else I'll be working on.

MBO pointed out an unusual Gamasutra postmortem article from last summer which I don't remember seeing before. It's not on a game itself, but of an update to a game. In this case, the 1.5 and 1.5.1 updates to Myth II produced by Project Magma.

One of the best total conversions for Marathon, Tempus Irae, has gotten an Aleph One facelift: new high resolution textures, alternate soundtracks, netmaps, even a sequel-- the works. Check it out at source.bungie.org.

• Aleph One, the open-sourced version of Marathon for Windows, Linux and Mac OS, has a new release out.
• The HD QuickTime version of the Halo 3 trailer documentary is back up at Microsoft.
• KP profiles known Cortana-hater Jillybean at Bungie.net.

The Video Games Live website now has a trailer up to show the "fun, energy, interactivity and excitement of the show". It's availble in WMV (hires) and MOV (lores) formats.