mrsmiley muses about what happens when Halo Art gets big enough to take care of itself; a truly massive art update this week at Halo Babies. (I know, we call it that every time--Ed.)

Stosh wishes a happy 7th birthday to Lil Poison, the world's youngest professional gamer. For more information, visit LiL Poison's website.

Today, Halo Babies proposes an alternate use for the Covenant sword.

magnum76 on the Project Torlan-Nexus forum has posted an update on what is and is not acceptable to do in creating a Halo-themed mod, like theirs for Unreal Tournament; basically, it seems that extracting Halo content from PC Halo is okay, but extracting Halo 2 content from the Xbox is not. Keep in mind that the information comes from a supposed "Microsoft insider" and is not an official company statement.

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.

Stosh over at Bungie.net passes on word that one of the latest nightly builds of Aleph One, the open source engine for playing Bungie's Marathon trilogy, has gained several new features more common among modern networked shooters: in this case, chat and server browser features.

In other Marathon-related news:

Felonious Monks over at Geezer Gamers posted the script for a new custom game type called 7-Eleven in their forum; three-team cops-and-robbers affairs that pits thieves, police, and convenience store staff against each other. Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO for the heads-up.

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.

Devin has produced transcripts of the A Walk in the Woods and Under Cover of Night tracks from Halo; each file archive includes a PDF, a MIDI file, a PrintMusic document and a read me. We've added them to our Halo Sheetmusic section.

Ross Mills asks Halo Bible author Eric Trautmann about storytelling in games on Eric's blog:

Q: RPG videogames are well known for their in-depth stories. Without major spoilers, what 5 action games would you describe as having the best, most well-thought out story apart from Halo? (which is cheating, since you did that one's story)

Most of the reviews and feedback about the 1.1 Update to Halo 2 has been overwhelmingly positive, aside from a few gripes about the Magnum. Joe "Dyslexia" Renaud over at Major League Gaming has done an in-depth analysis of the changes in this update, evaluated from the perspective of pro gamers.