So most everyone here knows who Bungie is. And most everyone here knows what the Halo series is.
But has anyone ever played something by Bungie that isn't Halo?
I was talking about this to my dad (since he seems to know almost everything about everything, and especially with games, since he is a graphics programmer) and he said that Bungie released a game called Marathon soon after Doom was released. It had a lot of things that Halo does now. In Halo 3 they make a whole lot of references to Marathon and I'm sure the 2 previous games did as well. He talked about it's weird 2.5D graphics and that it sometimes made it hard to play and what not. It was kind of a big deal among gamers and critics when it came out. When Dad released Tomb Raider (1 or 2) a game reviewer just compared TR to Marathon, saying, "In Marathon, you could do this and this and this, and you can't do that in Tomb Raider. So I don't like it."
While I have never personally played it, I get the idea that Marathon must have been a good game. Have any of you ever played it? Or can anyone here highlight some other things that Bungie has developed?

Yes. I can safely say that we've pretty much heard of Marathon.

If you talk to anyone here, there's a pretty good chance that they've played Marathon and its sequels before, myself included.

Marathon, far and away, is one of the best games I've ever played. I liked Durandal (the second one) the best.

Also, if you've never played it, do it. Now. Marathon is now Open-Source, meaning it's 100% FREE. It, and the others, can be downloaded via Marathon's website at marathon.bungie.org.

HOWEVER, you MUST get Aleph One to run it, otherwise the game will not work.

Lastly, be sure to check out the spin-offs of the main game! Ones that I recommend are Marathon: Rubicon and Marathon: Eternal.

Have fun, sir!

There is only one path and that is the path that you take but you can take more then one path.

Marathon: Infinity is my favorite game ever. EVER.

Well crap, I thought I had a good topic going here.
Apparently everyone has heard of it already

To this I'd like to add...

"Cross over the cell bars, find a new maze, make the maze from it's path, find the cell bars, cross over the bars, find a maze, make the maze from its path, eat the food, eat the path."

Don't worry, king, you can expect other people to come to this topic rather quickly.

It's a little bit famous, really.

Just remember guys, Charon doesn't make change.

And furthermore, We're Everywhere.

I've been looking for a job recently, so I was cruisin' around in my pimped out Pfhor corvette, checkin' out the scene, and I saw this one place that had I sign out that said, for carnage, apply within. Beats flipping burgers, this thing what kicks...

I played it and doom when they were pretty much new.

I swear I got a demo of it on a MacWorld disc (or floppy) when I was about 10. So yeah, I must've played it when it came out.

I also got a three disc game with our first computer (a performa), called Myst.

And The Daedalus Encounter, with Tia Carrere!


Aaaaah, sweet, sweet nostalgia.

Pretty much everyone here has heard of/knows about/played Marathon and its sequels. Good games.

Ah, that's cool. I'm spending my summer working in a converted church in Venice, Italy. But I think there's going to be problems though, I can't stop thinking this whole trip's going to be my own private Thermoplyae you know? Oh well. What college are you going to?

If they brought out a new version of Marathon now, would it be called Snickers?

Well if they did, if I had a rocket launcher, I'd make somebody pay...

The breeze from references swishing over my head is very refreshing. I should stop by here more often.

Shlimazael: There are obviously many things which we do not understand, and may never be able to.

I'm off to Habe Quiddam University, where I plan to study Eupfhoria and Pfhoraphobia as a double major. Although, I wish I could stay at home, it's like a requiem for a cyborg you know? By comittee, the admissions office wanted to send me one thousand slimy things, so I told them to defend THIS! They should have read the label, it clearly said shake before using.

Whoa, there goes another breeze. This is really cooling me down!

Ah that's cool. I've got a bad case of Hang Brain so I got stuck with a 2-year school just off the Okefenokee Tourist Trail, you know, the one next to Carroll street station? Man it's crazy down there, nothing but strange aeons and couch fishing. It could be worse though, I could be breathing canned air, or even breathing nothing at all, like the gators of NY. Ah well.

And don't get me STARTED on Hard Vacuum...

I saw this one guy on the street with a cardboard sign that read "Honk if you're an Underpaid Cyborg." Then I just remembered that old maxim: smells like Napalm, tastes like Chicken! I also found myself pondering the meaning of Aye Mak Sicur, and what all it entails, when suddenly, I had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting an Abandoned Rental Truck. "Not THIS again..." I thought to myself.

Yeah, I know, Poor Yorick. But eh, I suppose it's better than 10001 Nordic Nerds, or Blasted Vent Cores.

Since you mentioned other Bungie games though, I'll point out that Myth and Myth 2 were awesome. Sadly no game much like them exists nowadays as far as I know.

Off the top of my head, every game Bungie has made:

• Gnop! - a clone of pong
• Operation Desert Storm - a top-down war strategy game
• Minotaur - a 2D sprite-based RPG
• Pathways Into Darkness - a FPS on par with Wolfenstein 3D
• Marathon - came out in 1994. You're 14 years too late, kid
• Marathon 2 - newer engine and a deeper storyline
• Marathon Infinity - a mind-boggling plot, and the best map editor on the Mac for the next decade or so
• Abuse - a sci-fi side scroller
• Myth 1 & 2 - a 3D fantasy RTS. Somebody else made Myth 3.
• Weekend Warrior - a game show-themed third person adventure, made in conjunction with Pangea
• Oni - an anime-themed FPS with emphasis on melee combat
• Halo 1 2 3 - originally conceived as a strategy game, and originally for Mac before Bungie was acquired by Microsoft
• Pimps at Sea -

So anyway, most Mac gamers know and love Marathon, and most people here are Mac gamers. But most people in general don't know about Marathon, and spreading the word is good. Go play the trilogy using Aleph One, and then you can come back and tell us how awesome it is.

P.S. Your Dad is cool.

Well it would seem to be useless to spread the word here, since probably everybody here knows what Marathon is.


I figured y'all would think that. He's working on Guitar Hero 4 and some iPhone game right now.

Best game of all time.*

*They announced it so many times on April 1st, and I never did see it out in stores, but damnit it sounds unbelievably awesome.

Pimps at sea...
Sounds like GTA without the road

Ew. That's a bit painful. I hope you get well soon or you may have to come and take your medicine. Argh! Now you've got me doing it.

Has anyone played Pathways into Darkness? I was never able to.

You Think You're Big Time? You're Gonna Die Big Time!

Try again.

Hmm....you haven't played a lot of these, have you?

I played Pathways into Darkness.

I said "off the top of my head," so I felt obligated to not check my facts for once, and trust myself. I've played Abuse, and at least the demos of Pathways and Oni. I haven't played Minotaur.

I have no idea why I said Oni was a FPS. I wrote third person shooter originally, then changed it for some reason. That's the only outright error I think I made. Perhaps calling Abuse a "run and gun platformer" would have been more accurate, and I neglected that Minotaur was multiplayer.

Hmm...

Y'know, since so many of us know/play the Marathon Series, maybe we ought to make an Ambrosia Marathon League?

Saves you from Killing Your Televison, and then we can really Feel The Noise.

Minotaur wasn't an RPG (more like a multiplayer deathmatch if I'm remembering correctly), Pathways wasn't like Wolfenstein much at all (I'd guess it took more from Ultima Underworld, but I haven't played it), and Abuse was only ported and published by Bungie. Also I think Desert Storm was an action game and Weekend Warrior a poor deathmatch game. I suppose none of this matters much (and I do feel a bit loser-ish for videogame history talk), but meh.

Also, the whole "Halo was supposed to be a RTS" line is a bit odd (directed at Bungie, not you). From what I gather they were knocking around a few ideas very, very early on. Ok. What the game was when it was announced up until the buyout was a 3rd person guerilla war type game without levels and with a large, open world, which sounded cool. Too bad they came out with a rather generic FPS (then again, I guess Marathon was one of these too, with bits - including the antagonist - stolen from System Shock). Halo and Oni were both over-promised and under-delivered.

Pathways is really good though, it and Myth are probably their best games. The pseudo-philosophy in Marathon starts to grate a bit, and the "flip the switch, find the door it opens" gameplay is poor, but the game still can be fun.

If you get a chance, def play Pathways into Darkness and Myth I and II.

Poor Yorick.

I played that when i was a lad and it was new.

PiD was awesome. Really hard, at least back in the day. I don't know if it would be easier today. Can't seem to play it on the intel MacBook w/o emulating old OSes, which is a pain for those of us who don't want to go through that mess. sure, it wasn't Colony Ship for Sale, Cheap! hard (did anyone get through that platform bit without cheating? I just made myself invincible and rocket launched myself up to the door), but much harder than almost every FPS I've played.

It would be awesome for Bungie to do a PiD remake, or something similar. the FPS/RPG/Exploration thing was well done. And still pretty much unique in gaming.

I've played several of the Marathon games. My dad is a huge fan of them. Never got too far really at the time because I never really liked first person shooters as much as fantasy games.

Myth games were awesome. I downloaded a demo of the second and third. I believ the third is called the Wolf something.

As of last Sunday, I offically purchased an Xbox and Halo 2.

I've played games like Myst and Riven. My dad again, owns Riven, and I considered downloading a demo of the former. Never did.

Bungie games are pretty amazing.

Where's that crap coming from? Tomb Raider is an adventure game with shooting, not a first-person shooter. A comparison of the two doesn't even make sense. It's like trying to compare Halo with Tony Hawk.

My parents played Marathon. My dad played at his work with his engineer friends on lunch break. I remember watching my mom play too. Of course this is back when they were in their 30s and still hip

I'm actually playing Rubicon as we speak. I managed to figure out how to get OpenGL to work (running the application in a window), and I'm able to save my games (it wouldn't for some reason).

hehe, yeah, odds are extremely low that you will find anyone on these forums who has not at the very least heard of marathon, and i'd lay money on there being less then ten active members who have not played all three.

I've only played the first, on Aleph one, and didn't really get anywhere. It's a good game, but I couldn't really get into it.

As far as I can remember, I've only played the first. I just don't think we bought the others. The first was fun though. I'm actually interested on playing the others if I have the chance.

And yes, I think the two most well known companies that develop games around here are Bungie, and of course, Ambrosia.

ok, there's two, looking to become one, show me another 9?

While I didn't spend the time trying to get myself up the way they wanted, I did have 3x shields at the time, and rocketeered myself up to the top, without dying. I then made it a point of finding the nearest shield regenerator the next level. So not really cheating, but not following the elevators, which I tried to do for many an hour with my old Apple mouseball mouse (that insensitive thing...).

Of course. Some of us played Marathon in the days before cheating.

I haven't actually played any of the Marathon games, but based on a few youtube videos, it seems to be like a cross between MDK and Halo, which are two of the best games I've played in my life.

Step 1: Click here.
Step 2: Click on the name of your operating system of choice.
Step 3: Click on the word "Marathon."
Step 4: ????
Step 5: Profit!

Many people here have played marathon and some still do (myself included). Oni is another great game, I think it's one of the few games that combines hand to hand combat and shooting very well, it also has an interesting storyline.