Special effects artist Pete Mander has put his talent to good use in devising this life-sized, scarily realistic costume modeled after the Sangheili, a.k.a. Elite, that you know and love so well from the Halo series. “Cosplay” seems like rather a cheap word to describe what Mander hath wrought; you’ll see what we mean when you check out the pictures and making-of video below.

This anime still comes from what I would call an unlikely source. Or at least a source with unlikely inspiration. The image comes from Dante’s Inferno: The Animated Epic, a series of anime shorts inspired not by Dante’s original Divine Comedy, but by the video game Dante’s Inferno.

Also mysteriously in existence is Halo Legends, an anime series based on the Halo franchise. Because when someone says “film adaptation of the Halo franchise,” the first thought I have is “anime.”

And now this morning brings the announcement of yet another anime adaptation of a western video game: Dragon Age. Like all these other game animes, it’ll be direct-to-video, with a 2011 release date.

While I find this trend to be downright odd, there’s undoubtedly some potential. Halo, at least, has a sufficient fan base that there could be an audience for the anime, and it’s not a stretch to guess that there would be overlap in the anime and Halo markets. But Dante’s Inferno and Dragon Age are each a bit of a stretch to justify. But who knows, they might be great.

Which brings us to the bulk of our exercise. Here are 10 Western games that I know would make for sweet anime adaptations, ranked from how much I would salivate over it, in ascending order:

Sorry kids.  You’re going to have to do your homework before logging on to Halo: Reach.  Bungie has announced the release date for the next installment in its history-making first-person-shooter, and it’s September 14th.

At the same time, they’ve announced some demographic info on the Reach beta, and the numbers are impressive.

Halo 2, released in 2004, was a historic game in the progression of online multiplayer first person shooting game, and it kept its following for years, right up to the middle of this month, when Microsoft ended its Xbox Live support for titles and services corresponding to the original Xbox.

But, as Eurogamer reports, there are still a dedicated few fighting the good fight with needlers blazing, and by now they’ve had their Xboxes on nonstop for eleven days.

Read on...

Many have written off a Halo movie for some time now, despite the fact that for some time, an adaptation of the seminal sci-fi shooter was not only a fanboy’s dream, but still seemed like a likely enough possibility.

But now, Halo franchise overseer Frank O’Connor has breathed new life into the hopes of a live-action Halo movie, firmly stating his faith in the creative and financial merits of such a movie at a recent conference:

First: no.

But according to a sensationalist Denver ‘news’ report on the aforementioned ‘sex box,’ “XBOX live, Play Station 3 and even Wii have become a sexual predator’s playground.”

On the basis of footage gathered from a camera crew’s expedition into what appears to be all of two Denver households, a budget- and talent-strapped local news affiliate has once again managed to approach gaming from the hoariest perspective possible: That if unsuspecting American parents allow their children to approach any electronic device more complicated than a Tiger Handheld, sexual sex predators will reach their slimy sex tentacles through the fiber-optic cables running into your house and sex them. With sex.