Gamertell

According to our traffic reports, you, our valued readers, crave more data on the Halo 3 “Marathon Man” achievement. I will not lie, this warms my heart. It means that there are new players still trickling into the game, a phenomenon I heartily doubted would occur. At the very least, it means that old players who remained firmly entrenched in the multiplayer milieu, that denigrating digital pit of infamy, are at least taking a look at the campaign mode.

So, for your reading pleasure, I hereby confer upon you a series of posts which contain transcripts of these enigmatic forerunner structures taken directly from the game, along with my humble analysis of each. For the locations of these back story tidbits, refer to the excellent post by our very own Phil Madison via our not so very own GamesRadar. Enjoy!

Click through for the full transcripts…

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Further demonstrating the increasing availability and decreasing price of memory, Target has put out a Speed Racer themed gift card that features a USB 2.0 Flash drive built right in.

The plastic promo gift card features a tiny USB cable (an inch long) that clicks flat into the card and can be ejected using a tiny mechanical switch at the bottom edge. It also has an activity light on the upper right edge of the card.

The internal Flash drive shows 62.8 MB total capacity with 51.6 MB of it filled with Speed Racer movie promotion items including a cheat code for the Wii version of the upcoming Speed Racer videogame…

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For those of you who have decided to take my advice and download the Japanese arcade game Ikaruga for Xbox Live, here are a few tips that should help you enjoy the game…

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If you are not dialing in to a local BBS (Bulletin Board System), you have no idea what you are missing. While there are hundreds across the USA, there are likely a few dozen in the nearest city.

BBSes can be a video game aficionado’s delight with plenty of information being traded to help you get through that particularly nasty level or flick that joystick the right way at the arcade. (And you can often download some choice Playboy calendar pages in ASCII. That’ll get your dot matrix printer totally hot).

Here are few suggestions for first-time BBS users…

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Five teens arrested and charged for the virtual theft of furniture from various residence in Habbo Hotel, a popular virtual networking hang out website for youngsters.

Many people reading this article may not see why Amsterdam police officers and creators of Habbo Hotel are taking this problem way too seriously. The crime committed is that the teen and the virtual furniture and items are paid for with real world money. The arrest of one of the online thief makes this the first ever online law enforcement action.

The thief, a Dutch 17-year-old who has yet to be named, is accused of computer fraud and stealing more than £2,800 (approximately $1,400 in US dollars) of furniture and other from the virtual homes of other members on Habbo Hotel and moving them into their own virtual rooms. The 17-year-old is not alone in this virtual criminal activity, having received help from four 15-year-olds who were traced and called by the Web site’s owners and taken for questioning by the Dutch police.

“We are trying to bring charges of theft. It is a little difficult and new. There has not yet been a judgment in a case like this,” said a spokesman. “The furniture may not be physical objects but because it represents a certain value we think theft is involved.”

Habbo Hotel, which was launched seven years ago by Finnish Internet company Sulake, claims the website has 80 million registered users in 31 countries. The site allows users to create their own characters and decorate their personal hotel rooms using credits which they pay for with real money.

Officials from Sulake believe that the six teens have gained access to other members rooms by tricking the members into giving up their personal login and password information.

“The accused lured victims into handing over their Habbo passwords by creating fake Habbo websites,” explained a Sulake representative. “In Habbo, as in many other virtual worlds, scamming for other people’s personal information such as user names has been problematic for quite a while. We have had much of this scamming going on in many countries but this is the first case where the police have taken legal action.”

This case has already raised concerns over internet security and teenagers having the ability to spend money online.

“We got involved because of an increasing number of sites which are pretending to be Habbo,” the Sulake representative added. “People might then try and log in and get their details stolen.”

Because the trickery wasn’t big enough to warrant full attention by Sulake, users are asked by Sulake to protect themselves by never giving out their passwords, beware of phishing scams and for added security type in the URL by hand to access their accounts instead of using the auto-login function on their PC.

Read [Reuters] Also Read [The Telegraph] Site [Habbo Hotel]

So, you’ve beaten Halo 3 on Legendary, you’re a headshot honcho, pink mist sprayer, laser master, and your online medal chest looks like that of a war hero and you’ve even found all 13 skulls But you still only have 960 out of 1000 possible achievement points. You just can’t find that last terminal to unlock the coup de grace, the illusive Marathon Man achievement.

The achievement is a thinly veiled way of Bungie giving props to its past. Terminals such as these were used in the FPS, Marathon, developed during the early days of Bungie and were used to reveal plot before the days of voice overs. And in Halo 3, they are intentionally difficult to locate, but once all seven are found a forty-point achievement is unlocked.

If you are finding this one tough to unlock then the folks at GamesRadar have discovered the secret. In order to unlock the Marathon Man achievement in Halo 3 you have to find, activate, and read through seven terminals scattered throughout the single-player campaign.

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