Running 3 Marathons
Bungie, creator of Halo and Halo II, just released the original set of ground breaking games: Marathon, Marathon II: Durandahl and Marathon Infinity, as freeware.
I cut my computer gaming eye teeth on two games; Cyan's Myst (late 1993) and Bungie's Marathon (released late 1994), both released first for the Macintosh platform.
Myst is a classic. Seeing this game on my old Mac back in the day was the reason my very good friend JS3deuce became a gamer.
It was a few months later I bought this new sci-fi game called Marathon. Where Myst was a contmplative, mysterious, painterly (for the time) puzzle solver, Marathon was a 'twitch' game full of blockbuster-style action. PC gamers at the time were caught up in Doom and Castle Wolfenstein; which were of the 'just-kill-what's-around-the-next-corner' genre. Marathon had that, but also had better graphics and a deep, compelling story line.
Marathon came on 6 (wow, 6!) floppies and this cool story with illustrations remeniscent of Gygax's old Gamma World pen and paper game: tentacled aliens in space suits and a mirror-visored quasi military hero taking on the alien attackers mano-e- er...alien, no one around to help on a disabled colonist ship, with not but his wits and a trusty side arm to save Earth. A hack story now, but Marathon was the original.
This game rocked the gaming world. Marathon II was released for Mac first, then PC. Marathon Infinity was Mac-only from the start. The success of the Marathon series was a double edged sword. Halo had been under development for the Mac and PC platforms for 2 years when MicroSoft stepped in and aquired Bungie, moved them from Chicago (Chicago?!) to Redmond to shift gears and release the multi-multi million dollar Halo franchise for the then brand new XBox. Mac lost a big-gun game developer, but the world got Halo.
If you don't already know it, Halo is credited with makeing the XBox a success, and Halo II is currently one of the biggest selling console games ever.
I just downloaded Marathon Infinity. Tonight...I live a low-res version of the good old days.
For more, check out this 1-Up article on the Marathon freeware release
Official History of Bungie
Cyan home page
I cut my computer gaming eye teeth on two games; Cyan's Myst (late 1993) and Bungie's Marathon (released late 1994), both released first for the Macintosh platform.
Myst is a classic. Seeing this game on my old Mac back in the day was the reason my very good friend JS3deuce became a gamer.
It was a few months later I bought this new sci-fi game called Marathon. Where Myst was a contmplative, mysterious, painterly (for the time) puzzle solver, Marathon was a 'twitch' game full of blockbuster-style action. PC gamers at the time were caught up in Doom and Castle Wolfenstein; which were of the 'just-kill-what's-around-the-next-corner' genre. Marathon had that, but also had better graphics and a deep, compelling story line.
Marathon came on 6 (wow, 6!) floppies and this cool story with illustrations remeniscent of Gygax's old Gamma World pen and paper game: tentacled aliens in space suits and a mirror-visored quasi military hero taking on the alien attackers mano-e- er...alien, no one around to help on a disabled colonist ship, with not but his wits and a trusty side arm to save Earth. A hack story now, but Marathon was the original.
This game rocked the gaming world. Marathon II was released for Mac first, then PC. Marathon Infinity was Mac-only from the start. The success of the Marathon series was a double edged sword. Halo had been under development for the Mac and PC platforms for 2 years when MicroSoft stepped in and aquired Bungie, moved them from Chicago (Chicago?!) to Redmond to shift gears and release the multi-multi million dollar Halo franchise for the then brand new XBox. Mac lost a big-gun game developer, but the world got Halo.
If you don't already know it, Halo is credited with makeing the XBox a success, and Halo II is currently one of the biggest selling console games ever.
I just downloaded Marathon Infinity. Tonight...I live a low-res version of the good old days.
For more, check out this 1-Up article on the Marathon freeware release
Official History of Bungie
Cyan home page
posted by d20 at 1:52 PM
2 Comments:
Hooah!
One word: Zork.
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