...were you blinded by its majesty?

Okay, admittedly that title and subject are more than a touch self-serving, but we figured hey, if we were gonna make mention that today is the five year anniversary of the second installment of our dear Halo franchise, we figured we might as well go all out.  How awesome are we?  So awesome.

Of course, Halo 2 would have been far less awesome without all the players.  If you counted yourself among the masses that made it your business to give our inaugural matchmaking run a good, hearty spin, thanks for playing.  If you're among the tens of thousands of players who are still going round and round in the Halo 2 hoppers, trading Battle Rifle blows and rushing headlong into, well...Headlong, double thanks. 

That's two times the thanks!

If you haven't played Halo 2 in a while, go ahead and slap our old gal in the disc tray tonight and get your nostalgia on.  You might have finished the fight, but the war still rages.  Rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.  Oh, and there's this one multiplayer map where a friggin' runaway train comes blastin' down the tracks like a lightning bolt shot sideways out of Zeus' blamhole.  It's awesome.  Trust us.

Halo 2
November 9th, 2004
Earth will never be the same...

How about a nice game of Tag?


Since we know not everyone has access to an Xbox 360 for Bungie Day, Roger thought it would be cool to run a Bungie.net contest for Recon. If you were planning on spending the rest of the day wallowing in your own terrible misery while everyone else jumped into Halo 3’s Matchmaking for their shot at Recon, it’s time to dry those tears and get focused - iIt’s puzzle time.

Hi everyone,

It's Bungie Day, and I feel like handing out some Recon. So let me tell you a story...

There's a cool event that happens every year or so at Microsoft called Puzzlehunt. Teams of a dozen, many of whom work at Microsoft, spend an entire weekend without sleep solving puzzles created by that year's hosts, fitting into a theme. Two years ago (when we were still at Microsoft), the team hosting Puzzlehunt 11 invited me to join them in writing game-themed puzzles. How could I resist coding a puzzle into the stats result of a made-up game of Halo 2? What's more, the guys at RvB were about to stop by for an early look at Halo 3, so I whipped up a quick script and asked if they'd perform and record it. They were happy to, and it became the intro to this puzzle.

The puzzle been sitting, hidden, on Bungie.net for almost two years since then, so just for fun, we'll let you take a crack at it for a chance to win Recon. Be warned: it's not at all easy, since it's meant to be a challenge to the types of people in and around Microsoft who spend a weekend each year solving puzzles for 36 hours straight. But it is solvable, since most of the teams got it.
Keep reading to see how you can get Recon.

The theme for this Puzzlehunt was Tron - teams were zapped into the computer by an evil program, and had to solve puzzles to do battle with him, and eventually escape with the help of friendly video game programs they'd meet along the way. This video introduced the Halo puzzle:

Red vs. Blue: How About a Nice Game of Tag?

Players were then directed to this page, which is the puzzle itself. You don't need to navigate away from this page to solve it. Just click the links that change what you see in the main image.

Want to play for recon? We've set up a Bungie.net account to receive your answer. Simply send a Bungie.net private message to this user with your answer as the subject. The answer is a single word. We'll search through the PMs and give Recon to the first five correct answers who we deem to be provided by legitimate solvers (so don't write a script to submit a word list! And we'll check for answers automatically, so be sure to spell correctly.) We’ll also pull a couple of random users with the correct answer out of the pile too, so if you don’t get it right away, keep at it until you have it solved.

Employees of Bungie or Microsoft, participants in Puzzlehunt 11, or others who have had similar exposure to the correct answer, are not eligible. Players who post the puzzle answer to our public forums, share it via PM, or otherwise distribute the answer will be banned from both winning Recon and from Bungie.net. Plus, they’ll only be hurting their own chances by adding more players to the random drawing.  Oh, and there's a discussion thread attached to this article.  Please use it.

Happy Hunting.

There are those that said this day would never come.


You know the rest.

Announced over at HBO, this band of merry men have tackled Halo 2 in record time.  For a look at the entire run in all its astounding glory, check out the link below.  If you find yourself without the time to ingest it all in one sitting, they've burned some extra seconds to segment it for you.  Well played.

Halo 2 Best Time (Legendary Difficulty) 1:30:29

Segmented by Level

One-of-a-kind soda machine from the offices we call home is being auctioned for the Make A Wish foundation.


We're auctioning our Halo 2 Mountain Dew soda machine. The fully-operational soda station has been at Bungie since the Halo 2 Dew promotion and we're ready to send it to a new home. The send-off will include a bunch of Bungie staffers signing and doodling on the box. Check out the auction and bid here.

Our friends over at Halo.Bungie.Org are kicking off a contest to give away FOUR brand new limited edition Halo Zunes. Visit their contest page for more details! And hurry, there isn't much time!

On June 15th the brand new Halo Zune is being released exclusively through Gamestop retailers around the country. It's a cool device that features custom Halo design stylings and comes pre-loaded with an array of Halo materials including concept art and paintings from Halo 3 (over 120 total pieces of Halo-related artwork). In addition, each device also comes loaded with an exclusive Red vs. Blue episode, many of their classic episodes and a variety of Halo trailers and VIDOCs from past and present.  There's a lot to like on there for Halo fans!

Now you could buy on one 6/15 for the bargain MSRP of $249.99 OR you can head over to Halo.Bungie.Org and win one for free!

You're going to have to work for it though - in order to win, you'll have to create either an awesome Halo song parody, original song, Halo 3 montage video or Halo machinima style video. You can get the full rules and requirements over at the HBO contest page.

We're thrilled to be able to provide the prizes for this cool contest but please be aware that Bungie Studios is not responsible for the program itself. Any questions or issues you have with the Zune Contest should be directed their way.

The Bungie Team will be looking forward to seeing and hearing some awesome community content in the weeks ahead. We'll be sure to share the best of the best with all of you.

Good luck and have fun!