Last day of news in the Haloverse for 2004! Thanks to HBO, MGL and Demented Puppy, among others.

Framerate posted over at HaloPlanet about FragFest 2K5, a Halo tournament in Calgary from January 28-29. Check the Maasai Clan website for details.

UPDATE: The tournament has been delayed until late March, and the organizers are hoping to involve the Canadian Gaming League.

Halo and Halo 2 news for today:

[img]http://rampancy.net/rampancy_files/rampancy_images/44d893ff9aa0f8a63ee06...

We can't hope to compete with the artistry of Tiny Leyk; no, instead we're consigned by a complete lack of artistic talent to collect crumbs from the holiday table of Stuntmutt by foraging through the AutoMagic strip generator for material.

Happy Holidays all the same from Rampancy!

New regular Halo Babies strip today by Gruntsbane; thanks mrsmiley.

As further celebration of Marathon's tenth anniversary, James Willson has added code to Aleph One enabling users behind NAT firewalls to join TCP/IP network games. Test Windows and Mac versions are being hosted by Gregory Smith.

Between Marathon's tenth anniversary and this Christmas thing coming up, there's lots to do, necessitating Yet Another News Roundup:

• 1Up has an interview with Bungie Studio Manager Pete Parsons. It was conducted in early November prior to release of the game. Thanks MLG.
• Halo 2 has now sold over five million copies, reaching a milestone it took the first game two years in only three weeks. Including the PC version, total Halo franchise sales now top 11 million. Thanks Eurogamer.
• Sector7 points out entries for a Halo 2 movie due out in 2006 listed at IMDB and Movies.com; apparently IMDB is calling this now "announced" and the projected director is Ridley Scott, who has "been approached". File as rumor for now --Ed. HBO also notes this rumor, mentioning that it's even hit the front page of Variety magazine.
• Halo 2 did, indeed, win Game of the Year for 2004 from GameSpy. I have to chuckle a bit at crediting Bungie for the "innovation" of dual wielding in Halo 2, given that I was just recently reminded of the fact that Marathon 2 had dual wielding back in 1996 --Ed.
• HBO has opened a Cutscene Library with downloadable versions of Halo 2's cutscenes for convenient viewing. So far it's up to Home Field Advantage on Cairo Station. The Dialogue Databank also sees an expansion today.

Anton P Nym pointed out on our news page yesterday that Reiginko has announced a contest; participants will be asked to contribute an essay, polem, or joke and top winners in each category will receive a complete, signed set of Marathon disks.

There's a truly massive art update at Halo Babies today-- far too much to mention it all and unfair to pick out anything in particular, so go and check out the list yourself. Thanks mrsmiley.

Louis Wu, with help from Devin Olsen, Gil27 and others, is documenting a so-called Spectator Mode glitch in Halo 2 that allows players to enter a "spectator mode" of sorts, rendering the player invisible and invincible and allowing for instant travel across maps.

Tina "Jaxx" Leyk does the guest strip this week at Halo Babies. Thanks mrsmiley.

At Cooked Gamers, rapture notes that the CPL will be adding Halo 2 to their Summer event in Dallas next July.

Marshall "marshdabeachy" Beach won the contest that Mike Chambers ran for a Flash app that displays Halo 2 statistics based on Bungie.net's RSS feeds. Thanks rapture.

Because of certain individuals that felt it necessary to repost the same message over and over again, anonymous comment posting has been disabled until further notice. Only registered users will be allowed to post comments. This move is regrettable, but it seems necessary.

There's a Guest Strip explosion on Stuntmutt's blog as Louis Wu clears out the stored strips. Stuntmutt just asks that unmodified AutoMagic strips be posted in the HBO forum instead.