Bungie's Marathon Trilogy

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For those of you who don't know, Marathon, Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity were a FPS trilogy made by Bungie (makers of Halo) way before they were bought out by M$. They were all for Mac, but a PC version of Marathon 2 was released. Well when M$ bought Bungie they started the open source project called Aleph One which runs with better textures and uses OpenGL. The engine (which runs on XP, OSX or Linux) is free to download, but you need the game data files to play. These game data files were just recently released to be distributed freely. This means that all of you who were unfortunate enough to not play this groundbreaking FPS can enjoy it for free now (on Mac or Win).

I assume that most people won't bother actually playing these games if they're not really easy to download and install, so I tried to simplify it as much as possible. Note that Marathon 1's game files are a little set up differently than the other two games and require extra libraries, but they all follow the same installation principle: extract all of a particular game's files to a directory with Aleph One, run Aleph One, enjoy.

Aleph One
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http://sourceforge.net/projects/marathon (scroll down for download links)

Marathon 1 Game Files
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Win: http://archives2.bungie.org/a1sdl/m1a1_sdl.zip
OSX: http://archives2.bungie.org/mos.scenarios/m1a1.sit

SDL 1.2
Win: http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-1.2.8-win32.zip
OSX: http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-1.2.8.pkg.tar.gz

SDL Image Library
Win: http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_image/release/SDL_image-1.2.4-win32.zip
OSX: http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_image/release/SDL_image-1.2.4.pkg.tar.gz

Marathon 2 Game Files
----------------------
Win: http://files3.bungie.org/trilogy/marathon2.zip
OSX: http://files3.bungie.org/trilogy/marathon_2.sit

Marathon Inifinity Game Files
----------------------------
Win: http://files3.bungie.org/trilogy/infinity.zip
OSX: http://files3.bungie.org/trilogy/marathon_infinity.sit


The Marathon Trilogy has the deepest (coolest too, imho) story of any game I've ever played, which is pretty amazing considering it's a FPS. Supposedly the character you play as in Marathon is the same "cyborg" as master chief in Halo. Every teeny-tiny tidbit of information and speculation about the story of Marathon can be found here:

http://marathon.bungie.org/story/

... even someone who has played the games could easily be overwhelmed by all the information on that site.

Marathon's Story Website said:
Marathon, Marathon 2: Durandal, and Marathon Infinity are more than just excellent games for the Mac OS and Windows 95 (Marathon 2 only), they tell a 'story'. It is a complex story revealed in a novel way through a series of computer interface terminals. As you play you find that not all the terminals are easily found and even when found the text presented is sometimes difficult to interpret. Added to this is the fact that the story is not told in a linear fashion. The past and present are intermingled, a jigsaw of facts which need to be pieced together to form a cohesive story.
Click to expand...
I highly recommend everyone give these games an honest effort. I can't guarantee that you'll like it. But these games were pioneers in the genre, especially in the multiplayer aspect (why do you think Halo multiplayer is so good?), and it's worth the free download.

EDIT:
Aleph One comes with some of the same files as those SDL Libraries (supposedly needed to run Marathon 1) and it seems to run fine without them. Just make sure you have Aleph One and the game data files (Images, Map, Music, Shapes, Sounds) in the same directory. Then run alephone.exe. Nothing gets "installed" in the Windows sense of the word.
 
dude I love that game. I played it all the way back in 97... thanks men!
 
I played all of those games, and loved them to death.

Ahh, back when I had a PowerMac 8500 sitting on my desk in the basement.

Thanks a ton for the info!!!
 
So i downloaded number 1 um a little stuck what to do next since I don't see a install
 
I remember Marathon very well. Some relatives and my brother would hook up our ol' Macs and have ourselves a hell of a lot of fun on the LAN.
 
I really don't know why Bungie hasn't made a followup to Marathon. It's probably one of the most intriguing games ever made, story wise. It would also make a great movie series. Thanks for the heads up on the release as every now and then dreaded the fact I gave away my marathon trilogy set. Best FPS ever in my opinion.
 
Any amount that people think Halo is overrated, this and Myth FAR more than make up for it because of how underrated they were. I played this back in '94 i think... was on of the first reasons to set up a LAN.
 
Brucee said:
So i downloaded number 1 um a little stuck what to do next since I don't see a install
Click to expand...
Aleph One comes with some of the same files as those SDL Libraries (supposedly needed to run Marathon 1) and it seems to run fine without them. Just make sure you have Aleph One and the game data files (Images, Map, Music, Shapes, Sounds) in the same directory. Then run alephone.exe. Nothing gets "installed" in the Windows sense of the word.
 
I still can't get it to work... why not just full versions just like you install a game from cd....
 
diehard said:
Any amount that people think Halo is overrated, this and Myth FAR more than make up for it because of how underrated they were. I played this back in '94 i think... was on of the first reasons to set up a LAN.
Click to expand...

myth=most underrated game ever. wiped the floor with starcraft imo, probably because I preferred tactical movement to resource management.
 
Brucee said:
I still can't get it to work... why not just full versions just like you install a game from cd....
Click to expand...
If you have Aleph One and only the Marathon 1 game files in the same directory and running alephone.exe doesn't "work" then I don't know how to help you. I guess check the readme files in those archives and make sure you have all the requirements to run it.
 
Sweet, this is the game that got me started. I found it in a drawer with my dad's old powermac. I would play it and have to go piss like every half hour.
 
Nakamori said:
myth=most underrated game ever. wiped the floor with starcraft imo, probably because I preferred tactical movement to resource management.
Click to expand...


Word. This is the game that really got me hooked on online games. I played this game for 3 or 4 years, even after bungie pulled the plug on the server. An excellent game with a die hard community. Nothing else as ever come close to it IMO (in the genre).

I tried to get into Marathon but I never could, perhaps I'll try again...
 
BigDan said:
Word. This is the game that really got me hooked on online games. I played this game for 3 or 4 years, even after bungie pulled the plug on the server. An excellent game with a die hard community. Nothing else as ever come close to it IMO (in the genre).

I tried to get into Marathon but I never could, perhaps I'll try again...
Click to expand...

Perhaps the MAIN problem that made it difficult to get a wider audience, (at least as far as people like me are concerned) was that online multiplayer (via internet) was just about nonexistent. I seem to recall someone making a program to play over 56k, but only problem is that it was limited to 2 clients max...And I'm even less certain as to how long that was supported.

This is as far as the Mac version; I've no idea if the PC version had online multiplayer capability or not.
 
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