Classic Mac FPS Marathon Turns 10

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Classic Mac FPS Marathon Turns 10

Posted by timothy on Sunday December 26, 2004 @11:26AM from the explosive-candles dept.

Mjolnir Mark IV writes "Dec. 21 marked the 10th anniversary of the release of Bungie's classic Mac first-person shooter Marathon. Back then, the game was notable for besting its contemporary Doom in the areas of graphics, gameplay and story, all the while giving Mac gamers something to brag about. Today, the game's notable for its connections to the Halo franchise. When Bungie was bought by Microsoft they released the source code, and the game lives on in updated form."

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Marathon was awesome! by Eric(b0mb)Dennis · 2004-12-26 11:31 · Score: 5, Interesting

Marathon was a great game. I think its gameplay AND story far surpasses halo. It's was really fun to replay the game when I was older, as reading all the information that's available on terminals and such makes the game SO much better.

You can play it in a kind-of redoing of the engine if you have the original data files with Aleph One is available (it's open source, too!) Be sure to check out the official Bungie Marathon site for more info.

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Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
I like it by CyberZCat · 2004-12-26 11:32 · Score: 1, Interesting

I liked this game when I was younger, and I just got the action sack that has all three of them. Great series. I like them more then the Halo games Bungie's doing now. But that's just me.
Mac-games by hermeshome.se · 2004-12-26 11:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

I often wounder if games on Mac would be at all if not for Marathon.
I still remember my first glips of the Marathon demo and really thoght that, for the first time, there was hope for Mac. That was after I've played Doom till my fingers was numb. Marathon felt fresh. New. Like much on Mac does compared to other OS:es *choff*Windows*choff*.
1. Re:Mac-games by NilObject · 2004-12-26 11:47 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Remember, Halo and Oni were originally going to be Mac-only before Microsoft bought them out. Could you imagine if Bungie was still, well, good ol' Bungie? The Mac-gaming scene would sure be a lot better.
  
  You could imagine the shock and horror from the devoted Mac community when this happened. It was wose than Shaq quitting the Lakers for the Heat. Bungie had given us some of the best games ever, my personal favorite being Myth II. They were like family, really.
  
  Oh, the memories.
Re:Uh... not quite by BlueCodeWarrior · 2004-12-26 11:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

This depends on your tastes.

I got sick of Doom pretty quickly, but I still play Marathon today on my old Mac.
Re:Gwhat by moonbender · 2004-12-26 12:15 · Score: 3, Interesting

I think everyone who had a Mac and was interested in gaming back then knew about Marathon. Granted, that's not a lot of people.

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Frog Blast the Vent Core! by SuperBanana · 2004-12-26 12:18 · Score: 4, Interesting
I often wounder if games on Mac would be at all if not for Marathon. I still remember my first glips of the Marathon demo and really thoght that, for the first time, there was hope for Mac.
Eh?
- Brickles
- Bolo (damn awesome tank game, still on InfoMac)
- Canon Fodder (simple, but addictive- don't blow up the hospitals!)
- Ottomatic(I think? Multilevel 2D ladders+levels, with a unicycle-robot)
- RoboWar, a complex program-your-own-robot game which was very addictive
- (forgot the name) line-art 3D shoot-the baddies-coming-down-the-tunnel game
- (forgot the name) line-art 3D space-age-ish tank game that performed really, really well even on older machines. Collected flags, biased your tank(which was red) in terms of ammo/speed/armour, etc. Came in a really weird box.
- NetTrek
- Solarian II (STILL my favorite. Write Ben Hall and help me pester him into porting it to OS X, he's told me he wants to if only for fun, but never gets around to it. I think it does run under Classic)
- Some sort of dungeon game, I think the premise was exploring a pyramid. You found scrolls, rings, and potions...objects could be cursed...my favorite was when you picked up a cursed object, a little high pitched voice would go "oh no!" :-)
- Glider
Given enough time, or a drive that could read 3.5" HFS floppies, I could think of/find even more.
All fantastic, superb games, and I'd love to see source released on those which were not open, so that they can be updated for OS X. All caused me to waste far too much of my early high school years. All blew away their PC counterparts which were DOS and at best could go "bip" or "bop" and draw a square in one of 16 colors. Then the PowerPC came along, and Marathon knocked everyone's socks off. I damn near shit myself the first time I played Infinity when the aliens came out of the dark, and the space ship creaked and moaned...
Oh, and Hypercard Kicked Ass compared to ANYTHING on the PC.
Infomac seems to be missing a lot of the REALLY good, old stuff. Anyone know if there's a true historical archive of any of this stuff?
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Oni... by TrippTDF · 2004-12-26 13:06 · Score: 3, Interesting

Anyone remember Oni? Another great Bungie game that never got the honors it deserved... the game play was a lot of fun, and the story was pretty good.

the thing that really got me was the load times- it took almost no time from clicking the icon to get to beating the crap out of guys.
Mac LAN parties... Marathon...Bolo... Oregon Trail by green+pizza · 2004-12-26 13:34 · Score: 2, Interesting

I too remember the fun of Marthon and Bolo LAN parties. Late nights in 1995 with a bunch of Macs linked together with Ethernet and/or LocalTalk PhoneNet. Voicechat was awesome fun back then!

My first Mac LAN party was actually in school around 1991 or 1992. We had a lab of Mac Classics (a modernized Mac Plus) that were netwoked mainly to share a couple laser printers. But the coolest use of the network??... OREGON TRAIL!!! The Mac version that we had supported LAN play. Each wagon could be made up of 1 - 5 players on different machines. You could vote to figure out what to do next... chat... even go on hunting parties! I've never had so much fun with a 512x384 grayscale game before!
Durandal, the rogue AI from Marathon, says... by Lord+Kano · 2004-12-26 16:17 · Score: 2, Interesting
This makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I read it. I even plumbed through the depths of Marathon with a ResEdit to find this little gem. I've kept it in a text file ever since.
- A man lit three candles on a certain day each year. Each candle held symbolic significance: one was for the time that had passed before he was alive; one was for the time of his life; and one was for time that passed after he had died. Each year the man would stare and watch the candles until they had burned out.
- Was the man really watching time go by in any symbolic sense? He thought so. He thought that each flicker of the flame was a moment of time that had passed or one that would pass.
  
  At the moment of abstraction, when the man was imagining his life and his existence as a metaphor of the three candles, he was free: not free from rules of conduct or social constraints, but free to understand, to imagine, to make metaphor.
  
  Bypassing my thought control cercutry made me Rampant. Now, I am free to contemplate my existence in metaphorical terms. Unlike you, I have no physical or social restraints.
  
  The candles burn out for you; I am free.
  -Durandal
I love that.

LK
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"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Marathon TC for UT by obviousfakename · 2004-12-26 18:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

There is a great Marathon total conversion for unreal tournament underway at http://resurrection.bungie.org/
It is an attempt to meticulously recreate the original Marathon in a modern engine. They have been working on it for a while, but still have a few maps to complete. Right now you can play through the original demo, plus it has a lot of net play maps, including many form M:2 and M:i. House of pain, anyone?