The Library on Legendary

Have we got something for you today: The Library on Legendary walkthrough. Now this ain't no run of the mill, shhhhh-be-quiet-I'm-searching-the-card-catalog-for-Hemmingway library. No, this is a watch-your-back-before-a-flood-of-carrier-forms-explode-setting-off-a-grenade-chain-reaction sort of library.
If you know what I mean.
Worth a look even if you've beat the game on Legendary.

Service Restored

Well, it is after 11 AM, and we have finished the work on the servers. All Bungie web sites should be operating normally.

Marathon: Resurrection Demo

For many of you curious about Bungie's landmark Mac-only FPS, Marathon, Team Unpfhorgiven has recently released a demo of an Unreal Tournament mod called Marathon: Resurrection. Previously only available in multiplayer beta form, Marathon: Resurrection now modifies your Unreal Tournament game to allow you to play the original Marathon demo in a modern, truly 3-D game engine. We tested it out here at Bungie Studios. Although there are a few rough edges, the overall experience was pretty amazing - especially if you're very familiar with the original game. Download the demo and test drive the Mark IV today from the Marathon: Resurrection web page
(requires full retail version of Unreal Tournament to run)

Server Downtime

All Bungie webservers will be offline for maintenance from 10:30 AM to 11:00 AM PDT on Tuesday, August 20th. We apologize for the downtime.

First Regionals Report

Our very own 909* has written up the very first report on the Halo National Championship Regional Semifinals in the Underground forum. It sounds like he had a great time and even managed to secure second place overall. Read his post* for details and be sure to congratulate him! *Links removed as they no longer exsist.

HNC Regional Schedules

I called up all of the Halo National Championship regional centers to find out tomorrow's competition times. If you're interested in watching the event check this out.

Badlanz
1602 N. Cahuenga Blvd
Hollywood, CA 90028 USA
Phone: 323.464.5269
2:00 pm

Wired Gamez Entertainment Center
12125 Day St. Suite F306
Moreno Valley, CA 92557 USA
Phone: 909-222-0266
10:00 am

Cybermax Cafe
12078 Collegiate Way
Orlando, FL 32817 USA
Phone: 407-658-6608
10:00 am

NETLAN Arena
5775 Jimmy Cater Blvd., Ste 220
Norcross, GA 30071 USA
Phone: 770-874-1063
2:00 pm

SHOCKWAVE
No. 8 Central Square 3361 Fehling Rd.
Granite City, IL 62040 USA
Phone: (618) 451-9411
10:00 am

Cyber Arena
Gurnee Mill Mall #187
Gurnee, IL 60031 USA
Phone: (847) 855-5550
1:00 pm

Cyberwiz Cafe
1259 S. Main St.
Lombard, IL 60148 USA
Phone: (630) 886-5793
10:00 am (double check this)

GamersAlley
48-B Parker Street
Lawrence, MA 01843 USA
Phone: (978) 688-1779
12:00 pm

PC Palace
2529 University Ave. SE
Minneapolis, MN 55414 USA
Phone: (612) 378-3144
8:00 pm

Kings Games
1724 East 12th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11229 USA
Phone: (718) 336-1955
10:00 am

NeoQuest Games
531 South Broad Street
Lansdale, PA 19446 USA
Phone: (215) 855-7035
1:00 pm

Velocity Games
8492 Hwy. 6 North
Houston, TX 77095 USA
Phone: (281) 858-5683
3:00 pm

Studio Movie Grill
4721 Park Blvd
Plano, TX 75093 USA
Phone: (972) 964-3789
10:00 am

Netwerk Games
12644 164th Avenue SE
Renton, WA 98059 USA
Phone: (425) 235-6800
10:30 am

I couldn't get ahold of anyone at Next Game (JAPAN CENTER - 1501 Webster St., San Francisco, CA 94115, (415) 292-0698) or at Tazraz.com (10001 Grant Street, Unit 136, Thornton, CO 80229, (720) 929-9190), so if you're planning on going to watch at one of these centers then give them a call. If you know more specifics or if I've made any mistakes feel free to post about it to the Underground forum.

Another HNC Qualifier Experience

I just picked up a tip at HBO pointing to this excellent writeup from Jester about his Halo National Championship qualifying round experience.

Halo National Game Change

Sorry for the slow news, today was the annual Bungie company picnic and pentathlon. There's big news on the Halo National Championship, however, that can't wait. A serious issue has come up with one of the game settings, so serious it requires a settings change. The game on Rat Race for the Regionals will use the following settings:

Game 2 August 17th
Game Type: Race
Race Type: Any order (instead of rally)
Laps to win: 10 (instead of 25)
on Rat Race

If you'd like more clarification on this post something to the Underground forum. Sorry for the late notice--we would not have made this change unless it were absolutely necessary.

Get Your HNC Rules Here

The Halo National Championship rules page at EB has disappeared inexplicably. We're investigating. Meanwhile the fine folks at iGames have posted the rules in their entirety right here.

I'm Gone For One Week...

And look what they come up with. Candyman has created another Bungie Comic, this time featuring Jason Jones, Jaime Griesemer and the Online Team's very own intern, known affectionately around here (when he's not called Pegboy) as Skip Weasel. Ah, and no one discovered our easter egg in the last comic! Tsk tsk!

HNC Tournament: Regional Centers

Congratulations to everyone that advanced to the regional playoffs in the Halo National Championship! Here's a list of the 16 regional iGames centers for the upcoming round.

Badlanz – Los Angeles

• Club LAN
• Gamers-X Fullerton
• Ground Zero Cards Comics Computers
• Internet PC Xtreme
• OtherWorld Comics

Wired Gamez Entertainment Center - Los Angeles

• Icelan
• Gamers Edge
• DreamLAN
• The Arena
• Gamers-X Diamond Bar

Next Game – San Francisco

• Fun N Games
• EnZone
• Evo entertainment
• Rivalution Network Center 2
• ARENA 1337
• Neutral Ground
• Cyberfun Cafe

Tazraz.com - Mountain Region

• Game Cube
• iTech Centers
• FragNet

Cybermax Café - Florida

• E2 Cafe
• NetFX Internet Gaming Center
• RingX
• BAWLS Gaming
• Club-Hub
• Cyber Nexus Cafe

NETLAN Arena – Georgia – Tennesee – Western Virginia

• Dragon Computers & Gaming
• GameKong
• G2K Games
• OpryLAN.com
• Yourgame.net
• PhoeniXtreme
• Redline Gaming

Cyber Arena - Wisconsin – Northern Illinios

• UConnect
• MPC Cyber Center
• Ping-Time
• Virtual Magic Cyber Game Centre

Cyberwiz Café – Illinois - Michigan

• Digital Ops
• The Gamer's Hub
• Combat Cyber Cafe
• PING
• Pastimes Cards, Comics & Games

SHOCKWAVE – Missouri – Southern Illinois – Central Indiana

• Impact Gaming Center
• MECHNET!
• Net Heads
• Cyber Storm LAN Centers
• Duckets GameStation

PC Palace – Minnesota – South Dakota

• Treasure I-LAN
• The Stomping Grounds
• Downtime PC Game Rooms
• Game Tech
• NorthLAN Gaming Center

Kings Games – New York

• Cyber Conxion
• Java & Bytes Internet Cafe @ LCC
• Spraga.Com
• MAXIMUM MHZ
• Web2Zone - Cooper Square / NYC

NeoQuest Games - Pennsylvania

• eXtraNet.CAFE Internet Gaming Arena
• PC Zone
• Challenges
• Cyberspace Matrix
• Cyber-Stop
• Infinite Quests

Studio Movie Grill – Northern Texas - Oklahoma

• Lan Madness
• Lan Shark
• The Gaming Center - TGC
• PVN Game Zone
• Strike Net

Velocity Games – Southern Texas - Louisiana

• Gamers Conclave
• Hyyperlynx Gaming Center
• Velocity Games
• Dmerz's Domain
• LAN's Edge (North Cross Mall)
• NetZone Centers

Netwerk Games – Washington - Oregon

• Nexgen Computer Gaming
• The Gamer's Edge
• Visiontronics Computers and Games
• Orion Gaming
• Wired

GamersAlley – Upper New England

• Adrenaline Zone
• GameSlave
• The CybArena
• Drive-X Computers
• PC-Gaming Arena Enfield

Down in the trenches...

You may have noticed bungie.net is operating a little slower than normal, and for a while around 9:30 AM PDT it wasn't available at all. The Halo 2 announcement drastically increased the traffic to bungie.net very quickly; so much so that we were having a little trouble keeping up due a small bug in the way anonymous users "authenticate". However, a small repair was made around 9:30 that should help any of you getting those "Group not found" errors when trying to see the screenshots. Rest assured, if anything else comes up, we shall be on top of it - I'll be closely monitoring the site all day.

More Spots Available In Orlando

Cybermax Cafe in Orlando, Florida filled its initial 250 spots in the Halo National Championship and so has added 50 more. If you're in Orlando sign up before they're filled.

News From The Underground

In the Underground forum today:

• pfhorslayer annouced Aquaduct, an Xbox tunneler for MacOS X.
• 117's discussion about age requirements for the Halo National Championship is heating up.
• Continued discussions about what people want to see in Halo or in a sequel.

One More Addition...

So we got forums for everyone this week. We got a great strategy guide this week. We even got our first Bungie cartoon. "What more could I ask for," you say? A new desktop based on the excellent Legendary Skull that Bungie's own Chris Barrett created. Too much good stuff. Must...avoid...Bungie...overdose...head...explosion...

Forums For All Chapters!

After several weeks of testing our site-level forums we've finally launched forums for all chapters! Check out your chapters to see if they have a forum yet. If not send a note to your founder requesting one. Here are a few of the many groups that already discovered the new feature and launched their own forum (membership in Chapter Founders has its privileges):

• Naked Apes of SilverMoon
• Crocodile Bungie
• Elite Enforcers Halo Lan
• Halo for Teens
• HALOID
• MPHS-BRTLTT Halo League
• Stop The Die
• W. Seattle Local #44

Biggest LAN Event Ever?

Wow! The Halo National Championship just passed 10,000 competitors! There's talk that this is the biggest LAN gaming event ever. We're going to call Mr. Guinness, you go sign up if you haven't already. Oh yeah, we've also got a nice little tournament-related treat coming your way, check back soon.

New Feature: Comics

We've added a new feature to bungie.net: Comics. There's not much there now, but check back often to watch them accumulate. You can reach them over on the right in the new Inside Bungie section.

Maintenance Complete

The datacenter network maintenance is complete, and all services are functioning normally at this time. We apologize for the downtime.