This arrangement of Carol of The Bells was created by Rush Coil (real name Shane Barber) for his album 8-Bit Christmas. The 12-track album is $4 to download ($10 for a limited-run CD) from 8BitChristmas.com, and all proceeds are donated to Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity. For more information on the charity, visit ChildsPlayCharity.org.

This is anniversary month for us at DoSu. So, I thought I’d compile another episode of the award winning This Spartan Life, a series that first started my machinima posts with episode one on January 14th, 2008. Soon after my post, they stopped pushing out new parts, which is a shame. But who knows! Maybe they’ll launch a new episode featuring Halo 3! (edit: yep, episode six starts using Halo 3!)

So, for those new to the show, This Spartan Life is basically a talk show from within Halo 2. It features a show host, great 8-bit tunes, interesting guests, as well as things like players that uses game glitches and character movement to effect dancing. Typical topics range from virtual spaces to machinima to 8-bit music.

This third episode (34 min.) features guests Marty O’Donnell again (the first part of this interview can be seen on episode two), writer and producer of the musical scores for the Halo series; and Malcom McLaren, musician (currently playing with gameboy music), movie producer (Fast Food Nation), and founder of the punk rock band Sex Pistols.

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This is the second episode of This Spartan Life, the machinima talk show within Halo that I talked about earlier. If you haven’t seen episode one yet, I suggest you head over and watch that first.

This second episode (31 min.) features guests Marty O’Donnell, writer and producer of the original scores for the Halo series, and The ILL Clan, pioneers in the art of prerendered and live machinima performances using Quake.

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This is a machinima talk show within Halo that I love. It features DJ Octobit ripping out some great 8-bit tunes, a host by the name of Damian Lacedaemion that interviews all their great guests, their own “Solid Gold Elite Dancers” that use choreography and game glitches to effect dancing, and even some bodyguards to keep the pubescent players at bay in the “unpredictable multiplayer universe”. They talk about things ranging from virtual spaces to machinima itself. Visit thisspartanlife.com for more episodes or wait for them to be syndicated here.

This first episode (28 min.) features guests Bob Stein, founder of the Voyager Company which was one of the first CD-ROM publishers in the coming digital era, and Peggy Ahwesh, creator of She Puppet (2001), a machinima film featuring Peggy playing Tomb Raider with various female voiceovers to create a narrative.

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