Marathon Trilogy

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Screenshot of the original game

Marathon is a series of science fiction first-person shooter computer games from Bungie Software released for the Apple Macintosh. Marathon is also the name of the giant interstellar colony ship that provides the setting for the first game and figures prominently in the plot of the sequels; the ship is constructed out of what used to be the moon Deimos of Mars. Unlike some other similar games of that era (for example, id Software's Doom) Marathon and its sequels, Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon ∞ were notable for their intricate plots.

The first game, Marathon (1994), was followed by two sequels: Marathon 2: Durandal (1995) and Marathon ∞ (1996). Marathon 2 was also released for Windows 95. Marathon 2 and Marathon ∞ are playable today on a variety of modern operating systems using Aleph One, an open source project based on the Marathon 2 source code. The original Marathon can also be played via Aleph One using a scenario conversion called M1A1. Bungie added further support for those who wish to play the Marathon games with The Trilogy Release, which hosts free, legal downloads of the entire Marathon Trilogy.

Games in the series

Marathon

Main article: Marathon (computer game)

Set in the year 2794 A.D. the game places the player as a security officer; in actuality, he is most likely a Mjolnir Mark IV Cyborg, dispatched to respond to a distress signal sent from the enormous human starship called the U.E.S.C. Marathon, orbiting a colony on the planet Tau Ceti IV. Throughout the game, the player attempts to defend the ship (and its crew and colonists) from a race of alien slavers called the Pfhor. As he fights against the invaders, he witnesses interactions between the three shipboard AIs (Leela, Durandal and Tycho), and discovers that all is not as it seems aboard the Marathon. Among other problems, Durandal has gone rampant and appears to be playing the humans against the Pfhor to further his own mysterious agenda.

Marathon 2: Durandal

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Marathon 2 in play

Main article: Marathon 2: Durandal

Seventeen years have passed since the events of the first game. Durandal sends the player and an army of ex-colonists to search the ruins of Lh'owon, the S'pht homeworld. He does not mention what information he is looking for, although he does let it slip that the Pfhor are planning to attack Earth, and that being on Lh'owon may stall their advance. Marathon 2 brings many elements to the game that can be considered staples of the series such as: a Lh'owon-native species known as F'lickta, the mention of an ancient and mysterious race of advanced aliens called the Jjaro, and a clan of S'pht that avoided enslavement by the Pfhor - the S'pht'Kr. At the climax of the game, the Security Officer activates Thoth, an ancient Jjaro AI. Thoth then contacts the S'Pht'Kr, who in turn destroy the Pfhor armada.

Marathon ∞

Main article: Marathon ∞

Marathon ∞ included more levels than Marathon 2, which were larger, scarier, and part of a more intricate plot. The game's code changed little since Marathon 2, and many levels can be played unmodified in both games. The only significant additions to the game's engine were the Jjaro ship, and vacuum-enabled humans carrying fusion weapons (called "Vacuum Bobs" or "VacBobs").

Characters

The Player

The Player takes the role of a security officer from the Marathon. It is speculated that this character is a "Mjolnir Mark IV Military Cyborg". This is substantiated in the game by references indicating that ten Mjolnirs were secretly smuggled onto the Marathon before it left Earth, yet only nine participated in the defense of the Tau Ceti colony. In this battle the Pfhor were defeated much more easily than on the Marathon. While this is speculation, it seems likely given the toughness of the Security Officer compared to that of the BOBs.

Pfhor

The Pfhor are an ancient extraterrestrial space-faring race of alien slavers. They seek to control the galaxy and perform numerous evil deeds in the games. The Pfhor are bipedal, somewhat taller than humans, have three red eyes and green skin. The arrangement of their eyes was changed from a triangle pointing down in Marathon to a triangle pointing up in the later games.

When in battle individual Pfhor are dressed in different colors depending on their defensive abilities and rank. Some Pfhor known as Hunters are equipped with powered armour while some others have full vacuum suits. The Pfhor make use of "Juggernauts", which are large heavily armored machines that they can fly around in. These are described in "Nebulonese" as "That Big Floaty Thing What Kicks Our Asses".

Exceedingly tough, monochrome-colored versions of all of the Pfhor (except for Juggernauts) appear in the Vidmaster Challenge, a series of skill challenges hidden at the end of Marathon ∞.

The Pfhor also utilize "Conditioned Ranks", or enslaved soldiers, who are forced to fight for the empire. Conquered races make up the majority of these conditioned ranks. The S'pht and the Drinniol ("Hulks") are the only conquered races encountered during play, while the Nahk are referred to as a now-extinct race that once attempted rebellion. The Nar are also mentioned as another race presently resisting Pfhor enslavement.

The Pfhor's solar system is eventually destroyed by a fleet of Earth and S'pht ships in 2881 A.D.

S'pht

The S'pht are a race of alien cyborgs, cybernetically enhanced by the Jjaro to terraform Lh'owon. They were enslaved by the Pfhor c. 1810 A.D., and liberated en masse by Durandal and the unenslaved and technologically superior S'pht'Kr clan in 2811 A.D. Until the end of the first game, they fought against the player and attacked the Marathon artificial intelligences, namely Tycho and Leela, to the point of malfunction. They are freed after a cyborg controlling them is destroyed.

The S'pht consist of extremely complex brains carried in floating cybernetic bodies, with neurons finer than that of a mammalian brain. It is believed that they are almost completely dependent on computers for survival. They are armed with a built-in energy pulse weapon and some are invisible.

It is discovered that there are ten clans of S'pht, and the objective of Marathon 2 eventually becomes to call the clan of S'pht'Kr who evaded capture back to Lh'owon to assist in the battle against the Pfhor. When they are called back, they have a unique exoskeleton different from the S'pht normally seen in the game.

Computer terminals with messages in the S'pht language are seen in Marathon 2 and Marathon ∞, and the goal of some missions is to access such terminals to find information about the S'pht.

It is interesting to note that S'pht believed, before their enslavement by the Pfhor, that sentience was impossible without cybernetic implants given to them by the Jjaro.

Jjaro

Little is known about the Jjaro, an extremely advanced species which disappeared from our galaxy millions of years ago (they are not seen in-game), leaving much of their technology to fall into the hands of the Pfhor. The Jjaro are known to have possessed high-quality cyborg technology (such as that used to create the S'pht), a star-destroying weapon known as the Trih'Xeem, and the ability to move entire planets by warping space around them (as used by the S'pht'Kr).

In S'pht mythology, the two creators Yrro and Pthia were most likely to be either specific members of the Jjaro race or personifications of the whole race.

The Jjaro were first used in an earlier Bungie game, Pathways Into Darkness.

There has also been a popular theory that the Jjaro are the Forerunners alluded to in the Halo games - at the very least, they fulfill a similar role in the series.

Drones

Both humans and The Pfhor employ robotic, non-anthropomorphic fighting machines. Due to their propensity for being reprogrammed, sometimes these drones oppose the player and sometimes they assist them.

Human defense drones are found in the original Marathon and are known as "Marathon Automated Defense Drones" or "MADDs". These drones resemble large, floating, 4-legged spiders and come in two types: blue ones that fire rifle bullets to assist the player and berserk green ones. The berserk drones fire grenades at the player and are the result of what Durandal describes in the game as an "accident". They are only present on a single level. The player activates the drones early in the game by installing chips into three terminals.

Pfhor drones, found in Marathon 2 and Marathon ∞, shoot bursts of energy and are weaker than their human counterparts. They resemble flying metal insect heads, and come in several flavors, some very aggressive.

Both types of drones explode when destroyed and both are rather slow.

Humans

Other than the player's character, the human characters in the game are all referred to as "BOBs" (which stands for "Born On Board"). They wear different-colored suits, but all have the same face. In the first game, the color of their suit represent their position aboard the Marathon; humans wearing green are general crew members; humans wearing red are members of the engineering team; humans wearing blue were science and research staff responsible for the scientific development attained aboard, and humans wearing yellow were security personnel. None of the humans are capable of defending themselves, and despite the fact that they all have different duties, they all act the same. Though two levels in the game require that the player exterminate hostile forces while saving the humans, they generally ignore the player (and occasionally announce in distress that "they're everywhere!").

In Marathon 2, the humans surviving the first battle with the Pfhor are put in stasis, and upon waking up, are given pistols to defend themselves. Throughout the years, many players have developed a pattern of intentionally killing the humans. If the player starts to visibly fire upon them, they will regard him as a traitor and fire back.

Because they are armed, there are no levels in Marathon 2 or Marathon ∞ where the player must prevent enough of them from being killed to achieve success. No humans wear yellow beyond the first game, either.

In Marathon ∞, there are humans who wear special suits for vacuum conditions, often called "VacBobs". Though they are protected from normally unsafe conditions, very few of them are seen in combat on either of the game's two vacuum levels. They differentiate from those humans not wearing environmental suits (though their color still indicates their work), not only in their voices (which are spoken over a radio because their faces are covered), but that they carry fusion guns. Bungie claimed to have designed their suits in a three-dimensional drawing program, then modified them to be 2.5-dimensional.

A few, called simulacrums (or "assimilated BOBs"), are actually living bombs created by the Pfhor; upon seeing the player, they will run directly towards him. They are almost indistinguishable from the genuine humans, except that in the game, they will always be wearing a green outfit, do not actually attack with weapons, have yellow blood (this can be revealed upon shooting one with an assault rifle bullet, which is not strong enough to kill), will shout ridiculous phrases that a normal person would not (in Marathon, they only said "Thank God it's you!", but in later games, things like "Kill me", "I'm out of ammo", or, most infamously, "Frog blast the vent core!"). There are theoretically (as the simulacrums are not humans, they do not need oxygen) vacuum-enabled versions, except they say different phrases. When close enough, the assimilated humans will explode and inflict severe damage upon those nearby. Certain levels task the player to destroy all the simulacrums without harming the identical normal humans, with the majority of the real officers wearing green.

According to a terminal message, there are other differences between the real human and the bomb (due to obvious graphical limitations, they are not actually seen in the game). It is revealed that they have orbs for vision, not eyes, only two toes, a bomb implanted in the intestine, and lack of external genitalia.

There are three thousand simulacrums according to the plotline.

Weapons

The weapons used by the character undergo a substantial visual, if not behavioral, change in the years between the original Marathon and its sequels. The ever-present fist (two fists in Marathon 2 onwards) is the basic no-ammo-needed weapon throughout the series, and needs no explanation.

Nearly all of these weapon concepts were recycled when Bungie created Halo: Combat Evolved, much to the joy of Marathon fans everywhere.

• Pistol: The ".44 Magnum Mega Class" (original) or ".44 Magnum Mega Class A1" (Marathon 2 onwards) is the initial weapon in all games. The bullets do a fair amount of damage, but the firing rate is slow, and there are only 8 bullets per magazine. It uses teflon-coated rounds and is capable of firing in a vacuum. The first incarnation of the Magnum Mega Class was curious in that it had what looks like a revolving chamber but was reloaded with a magazine in the fashion of a semi-automatic pistol. The second incarnation removed the revolving chamber and made the gun look more like a modern semiautomatic pistol. Both are equipped with what appears to be a red dot sight or other optical sight mounted on the slide, but they are not operational in game.

• Assault rifle: The "MA-75 Assault Rifle With Grenade Option" (original) or "MA–75B Battle Rifle (with integral 40mm Grenade Launcher)" fires much faster than the pistol (600 rounds per minute), and holds 52 rounds per magazine, however each bullet does significantly less damage and the weapon is far less accurate. The grenades come in 7 round links, and fire very slowly. Neither the bullets nor the grenades can be fired in a vacuum. The MA-75B can be considered a precursor to Halo's MA5B rifle, which also had a built-in grenade launcher prior to that game's shift from Mac/PC to Xbox. One thing that should be noted is the curious choice of caliber. According to the Marathon 2 manual, the rifle can carry "52 rounds of high velocity .75 caliber ammunition..." A debate on the Marathon Story Page has more or less chalked it up to a typo, as the feasibility of single-handedly wielding a weapon chambered in .75 is extremely in doubt, even taking into account the length of the round and the amount of powder it is charged with.

• Fusion pistol: The "Tech.50 Fusion Pistol" or "Zeus–Class Fusion Pistol" is an energy weapon fed by batteries, and works in a vacuum. The weapon may be fired in one of two modes: standard, and overload. The overload takes time to charge and (in Marathon 2 onwards) may discharge explosively, killing the player if the player keeps it in overload mode without firing for too long. Part of the fusion pistol upgrade in Marathon 2 onwards caused it to do additional damage to mechanical units. This is the only weapon capable of penetrating the "invulnerability" BIOBUS super-shield. If fired underwater, the shot will instantly discharge, harming the player and any entity in direct contact with them, regardless of the presence of a super-shield.

• Rocket launcher: The "SPNKR-X17 SSM Launcher (Lazyboy)" or "SPNKR–18/SPNKR-XP SSM Launcher" is a two-shot shoulder mounted rocket launcher. As with all player weapons, it is unguided. The blast radius is 10m, the maximum range 2.5km and the rocket speed is 110m/s. It is sometimes called the "Spanker" because of its official designation.The name given to Halo's Rocket Launcher is almost identical : M19 SSM (SPNKr). SPNKr is clearly visible in printed bold letters on the rocket launchers body in Halo.

• Flamethrower: The "Tozt.25 Flame Unit" or "TOZT–7 Backpack Napalm Unit" is a napalm flame-thrower, with 7 seconds of continuous operation per fuel tank. The fire spreads outwards up to 20 feet. For obvious reasons, it does not work in a vacuum. In the original Marathon, the physics model allowed the flamethrower to be used as a jetpack while onboard the low-gravity Pfhor ship.

• Shotgun: The "WSTE–M Combat Shotgun" is a fairly strong weapon first introduced in Marathon 2. It is an extremely cut down shotgun with a large metal loop connecting the trigger to the pistol grip. It can hold two 12-gauge shells at once, though both are discharged simultaneously on pulling the trigger. It is reloaded, somehow, by flipping the shotgun over in a circular motion, presumably using the loop. It has never been determined exactly how the reloading mechanism works, and Durandal tells players through the game manual not to bother trying.

• Submachine gun: The "KKV-7 10mm flechette submachine gun" was first introduced in Marathon ∞. It is a compact submachine gun, loaded with a drum magazine and equipped with a very large suppressor. It holds 30 10mm flechette rounds that have a projectile cross-section of 4mm. It is the only weapon (other than the fist) that can be fired safely underwater. It has a very rapid rate of fire, and works in a vacuum environment.

• Alien weapon: Dropped by the "enforcer" alien, the alien weapon behaved in the first game much like the assault rifle, but with better accuracy, less recoil and different graphics. From Marathon 2 onwards, it become a pulsed, long-range flame-thrower. In all the games, it had a random amount of remaining ammunition when picked up, and no method to insert more: the weapon disappeared when the ammo was consumed.

Themes in the series

The number seven

Many fans of Marathon have pointed out that there are many uses of the number seven throughout the series:

• The first game includes seven weapons.
  • Each pistol clip and grenade clip contains seven projectiles.
  • Using a single cannister of napalm, a flamethrower can shoot fire continuously for seven seconds.
  • The shotgun in Marathon 2 and Marathon ∞ is called the "WSTM - 7".
• In the manual of Marathon, the officer was seven years old at the time of his father's death.
• When the overhead map is viewed, some parts of certain levels have annotations that describe the name of an area. Some of these make reference to the number seven, such as "Hangar 7A".
• Some of Leela's incoherent rambling include mention to the number.
• Marathon 2 begins seventeen years after the Pfhor invade the Marathon.
  • In "Marathon 2", the Pfhor ship that assaulted the Marathon (renamed to "Boomer" by Durandal) inflicts heavy losses on the Western Arm of "Pfhor Battle Group Seven"
  • According to Durandal, there are "Seven Great Battles which every aspiring Pfhor naval officer must memorise".
  • Referring to "The Humbling of Battle Group Seven at Lh'owon", Durandal says "I'd have erased my seven times table to hear what the combat technicians on the Khfiva shouted when they learned I could focus a particle beam at nearly twice their maximum range".
  • The Title music to both Marathon 2, and Marathon Infinity was performed by a band called "power of Seven".

Nobody is entirely sure why the number seven appears frequently in the games, however, many are convinced that this is indeed a recurring theme.

"Frog blast the vent core!"

This is a phrase synonymous with the series. Explosive BOB "simulacrums" occasionally shout the phrase, trying to blend in with the regular BOBs and explode around a large amount of humans. Since sometimes they are merely only piecing together random words, their nonsense can give them away.

Here is a quote from Doug Zartman, the man who performed the BOB voices, directly from the Marathon Scrapbook:

“The idea was that some of the assimilated Bobs become insane from their conversion and run around yelling nonsense. Alex said to me ‘say something random’, and that phrase tumbled from my lips. Totally spontaneous. While I could have sat down and thought up something more random than that, it worked out well, since it sounds close enough to a real sentence that it kept people guessing and generated some fascinating (and totally wrong) discussion about what the phrase was and its meaning. One popular theory was ‘God bless the Marine Corps!’, which was a fair guess, but still wrong.”

Aaron Snyder submitted an alternative theory on the Marathon Story Page ([1]):

I just watched your most recent "VidTip" film on "Bigger Guns Nearby" and think that I've found the answer as to what "Frog Blast the Vent Core!" from M2 means: along the way, you give map views of two interestingly-named areas: "BioVent Core #88A" and "BioVent Core #88B". Between these areas is a raised hallway containing a BioBus chip (Hypervision power-up), but one can only get there by grenade-hopping.

Get it? Grenade-hopping might be renamed "Frog blasting."

So, on this interpretation, "Frog Blast the Vent Core!" might merely mean "Grenade hop in the BioVent Core on 'Bigger Guns...'!"

("Grenade hopping" is a method of projecting oneself upwards by firing grenades downwards.)

It is very popular to say in the text chat of a networked Bungie game; meant more as a joke than anything; the sheer randomness of this phrase means it can be used at any time.

The phrase has appeared hidden in other games, such as Myth, Tron 2.0, and Oni. It is also hidden in Bungie's homepage ([2]), which returns an HTTP header called "X-Blam" with the value "Frog blast the vent core!".

One of the latter stages of Bungie's successful Xbox game Halo involves the player (in green battle armour) shooting rockets or throwing grenades into the exhaust vents of a ship's reactor core.

Omitted content

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The Hound can be seen in the upper-left corner of this beta screenshot

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The unused water terminal texture

Before the release of the first game, three hostile characters were removed.

One of them, the Armageddon Beast, was apparently an unstoppable, powerful creature that emitted hard and damaging pellets. Another, the Hound, was intended to guard low spots on a level. Though quick, it was unable to climb stairs and could not attack a player from a distance. As beta screenshots and concept drawings reveal, it is possible that the Hound was meant to be a companion to the Hunter. Despite the fact that this alien creature itself did not appear in the game, it is seen on a texture used on levels during the section of the game where the player explores the Pfhor ship. Like the Armageddon Beast, it did not make the final release because Bungie felt that there were no levels suitable on which to do combat with it. Finally, there was a harmless alien civilian meant to be the Pfhor equivalent of the defenseless human crew of the UESC Marathon. Due to technical limits, it was not possible to include them, as they, like their human counterparts, would always be present in large numbers and therefore would exceed the engine's memory limits.

There were weapons removed from the game as well. In a demo version of Marathon, the player was able to obtain a weapon that appeared in the player's inventory as "Pirated Copland Beta", which used ammunition called "Copy of Windows NT". However, the player was unable to use or even see it. According to Jason Jones, this was a weapon that was removed from the final product late in development. Upon examining the game's code, it appears that there is another omitted weapon, the "Wave Motion Cannon". Like the Copland beta, it is unusable. However, it does not appear in the demo version. Very little is known about it, or why it did not make the final cut. (It later appeared in Bungie's game Oni as huge, ponderously slow but very powerful weapon.)

If one watches the Forge tutorial videos which were provided as a guide to Bungie's mapmaking tool carefully, an omitted terminal texture can be seen being placed onto a water-set level. A snapshot of this texture can be seen to the right. Very little is known about texture set modifications in the game, and this is a rare gem of information.

Connections to other Bungie games

Marathon is considered to be the second game of the "Bungie mythos", the belief that the game series invented by Bungie are connected (or identical), as many have seen some interesting connections to other games:

According to the Marathon Scrapbook (which was included in the Marathon Trilogy Box Set), "Marathon was originally intended as a sequel to Pathways into Darkness, a three-dimensional adventure that included shooter, puzzle, and RPG elements released by Bungie in 1993. It is also stated that Marathon ∞ storyline defies simple description, relying as it does on multiple realities and alternate timelines. Early versions of the story included a side-trip to the world of Pathways into Darkness (since it had been cut from Marathon 2) but this idea was eventually shelved for good". The Jjaro race is mentioned first in Pathways into Darkness (a character communicates with a Jjaro). However, this may be a chronological discrepancy, as in Marathon, it is stated that they disappeared millions of years ago, but they are present in 1994, which is the year in which Pathways is set.

The Halo series is considered by some to be connected to the Marathon series as well. The objective, which is to defeat a hostile alien race, is ideally identical to that of Halo. Both games feature AIs which are not always calm and content, and the protagonist of Marathon is a cyborg security officer similar in concept to the Master Chief of Halo. Certain weapons are near-exact copies of their Marathon looks, and the Marathon symbol itself is commonplace in Halo.

Bungie's Oni bears little connection to Marathon -- except for the Wave Motion Cannon.

Aleph One

Aleph One icon

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The Aleph One project has enhanced the Marathon 2 engine in many ways such as high-resolution texture support.

In 2000, shortly before being acquired by Microsoft, Bungie released the source code of the Marathon 2 engine to Macintosh users. After this, many fans of the Marathon series created their own applications and began projects to augment the capabilities of the game. The most known and supported of these is called "Aleph One". This name was chosen as it is larger than ∞ (Aleph refers to infinite sets), and in this case, assumed to be aleph-null.

When the project was early in its life, the Aleph One application was only available for users of Mac OS 9 with a few additions to Bungie's code. However, over time, enthusiasts have created a version for Mac OS X and ported the game to other computer systems, namely Linux and Windows (while Marathon 2 existed for PC users, only the Macintosh source code was released). It has even been made possible for owners of Sega's Dreamcast video game console to enjoy Aleph One using a specially-designed keyboard. In addition to bringing the series to other operating systems, participants in the project have added several enhancements, such as OpenGL rendering, support for three-dimensional models to replace the original 2.5-dimensional sprites and high-resolution graphics. However, improvements made are beyond simply cosmetic, with compatibility with markup language and Lua scripting to alter the mechanics of gameplay and stretch the capabilities of the engine. The addition of an Internet multiplayer mode, and new types of modes of play, like "capture the flag" have been made a reality.

Aleph One is an ongoing project, and is in an objective sense far from finished (the most recent application build was in November 2005 and was called "Aleph One 0.15.0" ), with people making improvements to the code, as well as many people taking advantage of both Bungie's tools and Aleph One's advancements to create Marathon "scenarios".

External links

• Marathon fan website
• The Trilogy Release: site holding free, legal downloads of the entire Marathon Trilogy
• Marathon Open Source Project
• Marathon's Story Site: an essential reference if you're lost in Marathon's plot.
• MaraWiki: Wiki site dedicated to all things Marathon.
• http://www.marathon.org
• the Battle Cat's Litterbox: Marathon map making tutorials and resources.
• Lh'owon Ar'kives: The most complete collection of Marathon maps and related files.
• Marathon Story Forums: Where the Marathon story line is still being discussed as of 2005.
• The Aleph One Quick Start Guide: Contains information for Linux, Mac and PC users including networking, graphics and scenarios.