This one's been sitting in the hopper for awhile-- the newest Halo Babies comic is an ambitious six-panel called the Adventure of Super Chief. Check it out! Thanks mrsmiley.

Halo 3 garners a mention in today's Penny Arcade cartoon, as a pawn in the ongoing chess match between Microsoft and Sony over the next-generation console launches.

Spong, featuring a new Googlified logo, put up a story late last night (so it's not an April Fool's joke, at least not a fair one) that says the Xbox 2 will have downloadable demo content right at launch.

In other news:

• rapture at cooked gamers wonders if these are Halo 3 screenshots...
• HBO is hosting Mat "shunji" Noguchi's GDC talk on Bungie's tag system as used in Halo and Halo 2.
• Blackstar documents vehicle warping in real life.
• Team Tabula Rasa has put up its first two strategy columns: Making of a Spartan by Furiont and Sententia per Antiquus by Faewraith113.

Another big fan art update over at Halo Babies. Thanks mrsmiley.

New strip and Gruntsbane's resume up at Halo Babies today; thanks mrsmiley.

Stuntmutt's 300th One One Se7en comic is online today, along with a frightening afterword and shocking revelations.

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.)

The last in the series of Bungie Fundamentals (and the 77th strip overall) is up at Halo Babies. Thanks mrsmiley.

mrsmiley today points out the latest and greatest art update at Halo Babies; this one is heavy on contributions made with MSP-- Microsoft Paint. The most impressive are perhaps those by KloHunt3r.

New edition of Calvin and Halo today by Blackstar; at least the trash-talking is equal opportunity. Thanks Louis Wu who pointed it out and Blackstar for the comic and the tips on sniper positions in Colossus.

*_mc* mrsmiley at Halo Babies writes that he and Gruntsbane put together five new Halo Babies emoticons they said "no Halo forum should be without." We interpreted that as a direct order and installed them. For the sake of convenience, the codes needed to use these at R.net are the same as those at Halo Babies.

[image:9067 align=left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Frankie posted today in the HBO forum that the webcam image we spotted last month was, indeed, the Pippin version of Super Marathon.

More Xbox 2 specs, this time from GDC through GameSpy via Voodoo Extreme. The upshot? A triple-cored PPC, 256Mb of total memory, optional hard drive, 720p standard output and a new 500Mhz GPU. Yowza. Apparently part 2 of this series is due tomorrow.

In other news:

• Halo inducted into the Walk of Game; thanks Frankie.
• The usual mega-sized fan art update today at Halo Babies. Thanks mrsmiley.
• Mike Miller only has a few regrets about the latest part of his Halo 2 Legendary Walkthrough-- most of them have to do with boss battles... thanks Louis Wu.
• More Xbox 2 "Xenon" coverage from SPOnG: one, two.

[image:9096 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Only slightly more than three years have passed since the Xbox brought Microsoft into the console wars, and the next generation, if rumors are to be believed, will be upon us by the 2005 holiday season. Ahh.. Xbox. A console of infinite games... assuming they're all made by Bungie.

Here's a look at recent items about upcoming consoles, as well as goings-on in the Bungieverse:

• Xbox might have a removable hard drive as an option that could double as a music player.
• News.com put up a FAQ about the next-gen hardware.
• DigiTimes interviewed Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard, who admitted that Bungie "developed some games" before Halo, but "most of them were not successful." (Ouch! I seem to recall-- no pun intended-- the award-winning Myth and Marathon series, but nevermind--Ed.)
• Blackstar notes the Hurt, Agony, Pain video he did with Arashi for HBO Lekgolos, lovingly hosted by Nof at Enraged Creations.
• Start of a new mini-series at Halo Babies that explores Bungie's various penchants.
• Frankie dishes some more details (but not too many) on what Bungie is doing to counter glitchers and cheaters. Looks like about a month (but maybe more) before solutions are forthcoming. (And don't forget MonkeyChief.
• Bungie.net also has a new top story about the use of the Havok physics engine in Halo 2.
• Bungie loses another Humpday Challenge, but this one is understandable: their opponent was the US Army.
• MLG notes the Best Gamer on Campus competition.

So here we go again, clearing out the fuel lines as I get ready to leave the site on autopilot for a few days. A few things of note recently:

• Halo Babies' new comic cannot hide that mark.
• MLG interviews StK members Ogre 1, Ogre 2, Walshy and Saiyan.
• Game magazines suck according to These Damned Machines Are Killing Me.
• NextBox logo bogus, wireless controllers maybe in GameSpot's Rumor Control.
• The Halo Story Page at Bungie.org bounces back from a database problem.
• Funnyman122, user #5000 at Rampancy.net, submitted a nice brief summary of common multiplayer tricks and glitches which we added to the Halo 2 Trick Database.

When I return I'll look into replacing the Sony TV that I sold so that I can play Halo 2 and continue the Impressions series. I'm actually aiming for an Optoma H-31 projector because it is a reasonably priced DLP projector that's not too large or heavy, has decent specifications and handles component input via RCA plugs and also has a DVI port. If anyone has any better suggestions, please let me know; I've been comparing various units online now for several days and this newly-released unit seems like the best choice.

Halo Babies today comments on who we definitely don't want directing a Halo movie (if there is one). Thanks mrsmiley.