Classic Mac FPS Marathon Turns 10 256
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."
Re:Marathon was awesome! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Marathon was awesome! (Score:3, Informative)
RvB! (Score:5, Informative)
Check it out [redvsblue.com].
Re:Uh... not quite (Score:5, Informative)
Doom's Story: There's some human colony on Mars. Or something. There *are humans*, we do know that...
Oh yeah, and hell opened up or something inside the base. It doesn't really *tell* you before you play, or even while you're playing. You're just shooting stuff the whole time.
Also, Marathon and Doom play in a very similar way, with the 2.5D graphics and sprite-animation. In doom, both you and monsters move faster than in Marathon, though.
Marathon has a much deeper story than Doom. Marathon has pages and pages of terminal instructions from the AIs, and your missions vary from rescue to sabotage to fixing radio transmitters. You even watch as one AI goes insane and commands you!
In Doom, there are no plot changes or even really a plot at all. You just blast aliens that come out of some portal or whatever.
another game nobody talks about (Score:1, Informative)
The PC version wasn't nearly as good though.
Re:Mac-games (Score:5, Informative)
No they weren't. You need a Bungie history lesson.
Bungie's first PC game was Marathon 2. It mostly fell flat on the PC side, but that was their first foray into the Windows world.
Next up was Myth, which was a simultaneous Mac/PC release. Myth 2 followed the same tradition. Oni was simultaneous or nearly so for the Mac and PC, and also came out for the PS2. All of this was before the Microsoft Unpleasantness.
Halo was originally developed on Macs and intended for the same simultaneous Mac/PC release as all of their other stuff until Microsoft bought them out. Bungie hadn't been Mac-only for a long time at that point, and Microsoft's big change was making it an Xbox exclusive, and then finally allowing crappy ports to the PC and Mac worlds.
Re:Huh? (Score:1, Informative)
What spare apostrophe? "[T]he game's notable for its connections..." is grammatically correct, though "the game is" would be more formal. Maybe you should make sure that your knowledge of English is correct before you start making fun of others'.
Rob
Re:Frog Blast the Vent Core! (Score:5, Informative)
The 3D game was spectre. BZflag [bzflag.org] sorta captures the gameplay but not the level design.
Another classic of the time period, updated for OS X, is Oids [xavagus.com].
Bragging rights (Score:3, Informative)
http://marathon.bungie.org/story/_page2401/thes
Way back when, this page was built and if you read through all of it you'll be impressed with how detailed and immersive the plot and setting were for this game. This site cataloged ALL of that and made sense of it, and included a puzzle, the solution for which involved guessing a URL based on mathematical clues. I was the third person to find the solution to this puzzle, and... well, all you Xbox/Halo newbs are all just poseurs.
Marathon rocks.
Re:Frogblast the Vent Core! (Score:1, Informative)
Add in the fact that many of the gamers weren't gaming back when the marathon series came out, that only a small subset of gamers had access to either the first or the third (as they were mac only) and you can see why it isn't common to have heard about/played Marathon.
The Halo universe is rich enough to have a fan base without people having to know all the intricate details of every one of Bungie's past games.
Tell me, are you the sort of person that thinks people aren't "true" fans of Terminator or Twelve Monkeys unless they have seen La Jetée?
You sure sound like it.
Playing Marathon on Windows (Score:2, Informative)
And with M1A1 you can play through the original Marathon on Windows (only Marathon 2 was ever released for Windows): http://orbitalarm.bungie.org/downloads/alephone.ht ml#M1A1_SE [bungie.org]
I've been playing through M1A1, and it still holds up pretty well.
Re:you *sure* it's open source? (Score:4, Informative)
You can probably find a copy on ebay pretty cheaply.
Re:Re; Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
It is correct only if 1) we recognize "game's" as a contraction, or 2) "game's" shows possession.
Addressing (2), it is clear that their is no intent to express possession. Addressing (1), "game's" is no more an acceptable contraction than is "possess'on."
There is no Law of Grammar stating, "Thou shalt know the derivation of contractions and keep it holy: substitute an apostrophe for a vowel in the final three letters of a word."
The only correct rendering of the phrase in question is, "The game is notable... "
You missed case 3: "___'s" as a recognized contraction for "___ is."
"The game is notable
"The cat is on the table" vs. "the cat's on the table."
"He is eating" vs. "he's eating."
"Anonymous Coward is an idiot" vs. "Anonymous Coward's an idiot."
See now?
Wikipedia article (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mac-games (Score:2, Informative)
You need a Bungie history lesson.
So do you.
You're right about Marathon 2 and Myth but thats it.
All accounts of Myth 2 say they shipped together, but the Mac version was available first because a Virus was found in the PC Gold Master and the PC version recalled. In most Cases stores pulled all versions from the shelf Mac and PC. After that you would find it as a Hybrid Box sporting an orange sticker claiming to be Version 1.1 (and for all intents and purposes the same game, just Virus Free)
When Bungie announced they were selling to MS, both Oni and Halo were in production. In fact, so was Myth 3.
Oni was in Late Beta when sold and was finished by Rockstar, originally intended as a Simultaneous release for Mac and PC in the same box. I am unsure if they shipped at the same time, but I know they didn't ship in one box. It did not however, include the Multiplayer Death match Jason Jones told me had so many latency issues at the MacWorld Demo.
Myth 3 was finished by someone else as well, Gathering of Developers if I recall correctly. I believe Myth 3 wasn't even at First playable yet, if it even left the drawing room stage.
But both Oni and Myth 3 were published by Take-Two Interactive
Halo was supposed to be released on Mac and PC from the start, but it was going to be on the Mac FIRST. I was at the MacWorld Keynote speech where Halo was first introduced (the same one we first saw the clamshell iBook). I believe it was Jason Jones on stage with Steve Jobs who narrated the trailer they were playing before the crowd as he explained what we were watching was played on a G4 with a ( then unavailable for the Mac) nVidia video card running hacked drivers.
He emphasized that the game would be for the Mac First with later release for the PC. The audience had been in quiet awe during the presentation when this caused the crowd to erupt into cheers.
And please, mods - If You Don't know if someone is right, don't mod them up Just because it sounds right !!
-Malacon