Marathon Classic "Coming Soon" to Steam, Community Project Gets Bungie's Blessing

[T0@st]

Aleph One, a community project, has worked on an "open source continuation of Bungie 's Marathon 2 game engine" for several years. Bungie's classic 1990s trilogy—consisting of Marathon, Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity—is natively supported on the Aleph One platform (on macOS, Windows, and Linux). The first entry (1994) in the series debuted on Mac systems—Bungie stayed loyal to Apple OS ecosystems with successive titles, but started to shift over to PC platforms with its Myth franchise. A clean break occurred after post Microsoft's takeover, although Halo: Combat Evolved (2001) did eventually land on Mac OS X systems. Long-term Marathon fans have spotted an exciting entry on Valve's Steam store—the Aleph One Developers group has listed a "Classic" version of the first game.

PC Gamer reached out to Bungie for comment on the new-ish listing—a spokesperson responded with this statement: "Yup, this is real, and will be free. We're very supportive of the Marathon community and Aleph One's dedication here to bring the original Marathon to PC, Linux, and Mac for everyone to experience, with cross-platform play available in multiplayer. This is a true tribute to the original game!" The Sony-owned studio is working on a reboot of its classic IP, but that reimagining—as a PvP extraction shooter—is not due anytime soon. The entire original trilogy could be released on Steam by that time (possibly 2025/2026).



View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Onasi]

Absolute chad move from the community, more people need to play Marathon. It’s a… rabbit hole. And along with Myth is the best of Bungies output.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

A clean break occurred after post Microsoft's takeover, although Halo: Combat Evolved (2001) did eventually land on Mac OS X systems.

If I recall right, Halo was originally intended to be launched on Mac first. MS bought the studio, gave the game the Halo name, and used it as their platform title. So basically, Halo CE was an OS X title converted to Xbox and then ported to Mac. Boy does Cortana look different these days, too!

Never have tried Marathon.

 

[T0@st]

If I recall right, Halo was originally intended to be launched on Mac first. MS bought the studio, gave the game the Halo name, and used it as their platform title. So basically, Halo CE was an OS X title converted to Xbox and then ported to Mac.

Correct; didn't have the room to fit an entire history lesson into the article. It was pretty sad that PC gamers had to wait almost as long for a Windows release.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Correct; didn't have the room to fit an entire history lesson into the article. It was pretty sad that PC gamers had to wait almost as long for a Windows release.

Yeah, MS took forever to launch titles to PC back then. They really wanted you to buy the console, which I did. Ironically, Halo: CE was my most-purchased game title ever. Over the course of many years, I bought it for Xbox, for Mac, for PC, then the remastered for 360 version, then MCE, first on XboxOne, then on Steam. I still have an unopened Platinum Xbox version of the game on a shelf. Never paid full price for any of them. The first copy came with the Xbox.

 

[JIWIL]

Such great memories of these games, I never want to play them again. Like I haven't watched the OG Star Wars Trilogy in 30+ years.

My brother and I went to MacWorld Boston (95 I think?) and played an early buiild of Marathon 2; took home a bunch of swag, still have the original boxes of Marathon 1 and 2 laying around somewhere.

Marathon 2 had a built in physics editor, low-grav rocket arena... probably the first? These games also used a bunch of stock sci-fi sound effects... to this day I still hear stuff in a movie or TV show and it takes me back.

Thanks Bungie, and the Community doing this.

 

[thomasjpr]

A fantastic game series back in the day. A truly great story, with mechanics. It was the LAN multiplayer where it really shined. Better than anything else of that era.

 

[RandomWan]

I used to play the original Marathon arena deathmatch on the chem lab Macs during lunch break back in high school. It was always a good time.

 

[Onasi]

If I recall right, Halo was originally intended to be launched on Mac first. MS bought the studio, gave the game the Halo name, and used it as their platform title. So basically, Halo CE was an OS X title converted to Xbox and then ported to Mac. Boy does Cortana look different these days, too!

Never have tried Marathon.

Even more interestingly, Halo initially was supposed to be an indirect sequel to Marathon (there was an interesting ARG with “Messages from Cortana” on the Marathon community site during development) AND genre-wise was supposed to be a lot of things - from a vehicle combat game to an RTS to then a strategy-action hybrid ala Sacrifice and Giants: Citizen Kabuto. Development of Halo was a wild ride.