The Bungie Store is taking pre-orders for Halo: The Flood . At 6.99 USD it's a bargin! Also please order from the Bungie Store since their profits go towards fan gatherings.

Marty O'Donnell the Halo music compser will be heard on the internet radio show X-treme Gaming Raido Tonight at 9:30 Eastern Standard Time. You will need a shoutcast compatible MP3 player to listen in.

Before Halo was even released, fans got a glimpse at what Microsoft's advertising department would think of years later.

Enterprising Halo fan Mark Levin took pieces of the Halo trailer from E3 2000, and edited it to go with the audio track from Budweiser's humorous wazzup advertisement campaign, creating Halo Wazzup [HBO].

Now, more than two years later, Microsoft took Levin's cue, signing a deal with Anheuser-Busch Inc. to launch an interactive bar promotion in various pubs and bars around the U.S. between now and the end of the year.

Corey Brotherson at GamesDomain has the full story, aptly titled Sipping A Bud, Playing The 'Box .

From Blackstar Productions:

Ben Dussault created a great HALO video using HALO game footage and music from the film The Rock . Blackstar Productions provided the compression and hosting. Check it out.

Thanks Blackstar.You can see the new movie at the BSP site.

The Warthog Jump refuses to die.

A contest that the Official Xbox Magazine sponsored has drawn in a boatload of fan-submitted Warthog-jumping videos, which have been collected and now, digitized. And we've mirrored it, just because we love you so much.

It includes a lot of traditional stuff, some of it well-done, some not, and a few truly spectacular stunts. Noted at HBO.

GameSpot has posted a whole batch of new Halo 2 screenshots. Some appear to be screenshots from the Halo 2 trailer, but there are also quite a few totally new ones. You'll see some nice captures of the Warthog and Master Chief (still no action shots).

Louis Wu at HBO noticed a new page of screenshots at Bungie.net's Truth & Reconciliation Halo site. They're full screen shots of cooperative play action. They're gorgeous, and all I can think of is... why can't we play like that? (It's a rhetorical question.)

Blackstar has posted a new fanfest LAN play highlight film entitled Work Or Die at Blackstar Productions, be sure to check it out.

Louis Wu over at HBO snagged this one: Not only is the Halo 2 Trailer the first game trailer we've heard of to get previews, but now it's even getting reviews, this one from Monsters At Play:

I'm sure there will be other video previews released during the development of Halo 2, and we can only hope they are as ass-kickingly awesome as this one. So far, Bungie has given us no reason to doubt that Halo 2 will be anything less than a supreme gaming achievement.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go watch this sucker a couple of hundred more times.

Me, too.

Ferrex, Jay Weinland, shibby, Kyle Burke, Louis Wu and others in the HBO forum all posted or submitted suggested changes to the Halo 2 Trailer script. The result looks a lot like the one Louis already posted at HBO. We're updating ours in the interest of accuracy. Changes are in italics.

The most significant of which are the addition of two other characters-- Pilot and Tech. These appear in the HBO version, courtesy of Electric Sheep. Some of the dialogue in our original version attributed to the Admiral and the General apparently came from other characters. These changes have now been made also.

With the help of Ferrex, we've put together a rough script of the dialogue in the Halo 2 trailer. There are some missing bits, but it still makes food for thought.

BlackStar Productions has mirrored the large QuickTime version of the Halo 2 Trailer.

You're undoubtedly downloading the Halo 2 trailer by this time, but while you're waiting head over to bungie.net and read the spiffy new Making The Halo 2 Trailer (Part 1) article.

The Halo 2 Trailer is finally out, and we've got it right here at Rampancy. It's available in two QuickTime 6 versions: a large, 27 Mb file and a smaller 17 Mb version.

They are optimized for playback under QT6 on OS X. They should play under other software versions (OS 9, QT 5) but in this environment there may be problems with full screen playback (so-called present mode).

The small version is 320x192 (doubled), 15 fps, with 16 bit, 96kbps MP3 audio.

The large version is 480x288, 29.97 fps with 16 bit, 128kbps MP3 audio.

Both trailers are also available at RHL.

Thanks to Louis Wu who provided the upload.

The countdown at Xbox.com now says that the Halo 2 trailer will be released at 6 P.M. Pacific time today, about sixteen hours and ten minutes from now.