It is no small secret that First Person Shooter (FPS) games are still raging on within the gaming world. Whether on console or computers or mobile, they are still going strong. With the advent of the newer consoles, we saw even more FPS games racking up sales and continuing franchises. 20 years ago, Bungie (the company behind the Halo series and Destiny) launched a little game on the Macintosh computer called Marathon. Macintosh gamers were waiting with baited breath for this title. One reason was because it was to ship with up to eight player network multiplayer. Another reason was this being the Mac answer to Doom.
Marathon was more than Doom for Mac
Unlike id Software’s classic, Marathon placed you in the middle of a war with aliens, not demons. Also, the setting of Marathon was much farther into the future and much farther away. So far away as to be in another solar system "far away". In reality though, this really meant nothing to most gamers. Those that simply wanted to blast their way through and see the ending. One thing stopping you from doing that in Marathon was the fact that the story was integrated into the game. This was accomplished by conveying it to you through the computer terminals spread throughout the levels. Behind those terminals there were three different artificial intelligence's running things. One for each major section of the space station, Marathon.
Not exclusive but still impressive
The original Marathon has been ported to many platforms other than the Macintosh. Officially Marathon has hit Windows 95 (as part of the Marathon Trilogy Box Set) and the Apple console known as the Apple Pippon (who remembers that failed console?) and the Apple iPad. Unofficially, coders have ported the popular FPS to many platforms. Including the Sega Dreamcast and many other consoles that could handle the graphical workload. This was accomplished thanks to Bungie releasing the source code for Marathon.
Thank you, Bungie, for taking a chance and creating this trilogy of titles. They are not only iconic when was released but still relevant to many gamers 20+ years later.
Check eBay for some Bungie games and collectibles.
This article was originally published on Retro Gaming Magazine.