Marathon (video game)

File:Marathon icon.png Marathon
Developer(s)	Bungie Software
Publisher(s)	Bungie Software
Designer(s)	Alex Seropian, Jason Jones
Platform(s)	Mac OS, Apple Pippin; later ported to Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux through the Aleph One project
Release	December 21, 1994
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single player Multiplayer

Marathon is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game published and developed by Bungie Software for the Apple Macintosh in late 1994; Bungie later released the entire trilogy for free, and it was ported to Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux through the open-source Aleph One project. It is the first of three games in the Marathon Trilogy of the same name. It spawned two sequels, Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity. It is the first video game to feature mouse look.

Synopsis

Marathon takes place in the year 2794 aboard a large, multi-generational colony spacecraft called the UESC (United Earth Space Council) Marathon. The ship was converted from Deimos, one of Mars's two moons. The plot of the story sets the player as a security officer and focuses around an invasion of the ship and (to a much lesser extent) a colony on the nearby Tau Ceti by hostile extraterrestrials. The plot is primarily revealed through various computer interfaces called terminals, which relay crew logs, maintenance documents, historical accounts, and stories. It is through these terminals as well that the player receives mission information from Leela, the ship's artificial intelligence, as well as Tycho and Durandal, the science and utilities AI in Marathon respectively. The relationship between and history of these artificial intelligences serves as a significant plot device in the story.

Plot

While being transported from Tau Ceti to the Marathon on the Mirata, a shuttle, a security officer (the player character) is nearly killed when Durandal tampers with the Mirata's airlock. Immediately afterwards, an unidentified alien ship appears and destroys the Mirata. The Security Officer survives by ejecting seconds before the explosion. Durandal briefly contemplates (audibly to the Security Officer) whether or not he should inform the aliens of the Security Officer's survival, but soon states that he has "a distraction." Hours later, the security officer's escape pod then reaches one of the Marathon's docking bays.

Upon arrival, the security officer is contacted by Leela. Leela informs the player of the ship's state and that she has been under attack by some form of cybernetic beings. With Leela's help, the security officer activates the Marathon's internal defense network to slow down the invasion. Leela informs the security officer that Durandal has been in contact with cybernetic servants of the aliens. These servants call themselves "the S'pht" and they are slaves to a race known as the Pfhor. Soon after, Leela learns that Durandal has become "rampant" and has had the ability to freely think for quite some time. Leela then has the security officer cut off Durandal's access to vital areas of the ship. While the security officer is successful, Durandal retaliates by allowing the Pfhor access to previously denied areas.

Leela and the security officer complete several tasks afterward, such as rescuing several crew members being attacked in a recreational area, decompressing a highly infested area, and sending a message to Earth to warn them of the invasion. Abruptly, the security officer is kidnapped by Durandal, who states that he has a desire to play a "game." After a few brief but desperate battles, Leela rescues the security officer and informs him that in his absence, the situation has deteriorated into utter chaos. Leela has started to lose her battle against the attacks by the S'pht. While Leela struggles, the security officer rescues a security detachment that has been overrun and disables a bomb in engineering. While the security officer is successful in these endeavors, Leela is destroyed by the S'pht. Leela leaves the security officer with a prerecorded message stating that she has left Durandal with instructions for one last attempt at repelling the invasion and that the security officer must help him if it is to be a success.

Durandal has the security officer help him increase his ability to control the Marathon's teleporter array. As the security officer does this, Durandal reveals his intentions and plans to escape the end of the universe. He also lets it slip that the Pfhor are slavers and thousands of crew have been transferred over to the Pfhor ship for slavery. Once Durandal gains the ability to teleport the security officer great distances, he has the security officer explore the Pfhor ship to learn more about it. Durandal discovers a large cybernetic organism that is responsible for controlling all of the S'pht both on the Pfhor ship and the Marathon. The security officer is tasked with destroying the device. When the security officer accomplishes this, the S'pht rebel. Durandal then transfers himself onto the Pfhor ship and departs, but before he does, he informs the security officer that Leela was never actually destroyed and the S'pht have released their grip on her. He leaves the security officer with the words "I hope you learned something from our games."

Leela and the security officer then break the last hard point of hostile forces. Pfhor troops begin surrendering to unarmed civilians. The invasion on Tau Ceti, Leela states, was unsuccessful, as nine Mjolnir military cyborgs had been hiding among the population. According to Leela, ten were smuggled onto the Marathon three hundred year prior when the ship left Mars and several historical files were deleted. This would have been long before Durandal became rampant and while it worked out for the better, the implications frighten Leela.

Gameplay

Marathon is a first-person shooter, and it therefore the player experiences the game through a first-person perspective. It takes place in real-time, pseudo-3D rendered world with ceilings and floors of various heights and widths. All surfaces in the game are texture mapped and dynamic lighting. The player controls the movement of the main character primarily through use of the keyboard. Using assignable keys, the player can move forward and backward, turn left or right, sidestep left or right, look up, down or forward, and glance left or right. Additionally, Marathon features free look, whereas the player uses the mouse to rotate character view. The mouse may also be employed to fire weapons. Marathon was one of the earliest games to employ free look and give the player the ability to look up or down, and the first major release that used the mouse to do both.

Much like other first-person shooters from the same time period, gameplay involves the player progressing through various levels, killing enemy creatures and avoiding numerous obstacles, all while seeking to survive. However, unlike similar games, Marathon features a plot that exists as a fundamental element of gameplay and player advancement. The primary channel through which this plot develops is the computer terminals located throughout the game's levels. The player accesses these terminals to interface with the artificial intelligences of the Marathon, who also provide him with information regarding the levels.

In order to advance from one level to the next, a player find a terminal from which an AI can teleport him to the next level, or less frequently, either an actual marked or unmarked point of teleportation. Unlike other games of the time, simply finding an exit point is often insufficient for successful advancement. Marathon levels frequently require to execute objective-based missions in order to advance. These missions may involve exterminating all hostile forces ("extermination"), conducting a thorough exploration of the area ("exploration"), retrieving one or more items for use later in the game ("retrieval"), activating one or more switches for a particular purpose or installing repair chips into receptacles ("repair"), or ensuring the majority survival of defenseless civilian crew members. Each level is unique in its objectives, some having more than one, and some having none. As a result, each level of Marathon is unique and dynamic.

While the player completes the levels in a fixed order, many levels are non-linear and either allow or, in some cases, require extensive exploration. Obstacles include "crushers" (ceilings that crush the player), pits of harmful molten material or coolant, locked doors or platforms that must be activated by remote switches and puzzles that may involve precise timing and speed to complete successfully. One level in the game lacks oxygen, forcing the player to find a recharging station to replenish his suit's supply before asphyxiating. Some levels (generally those on the alien mothership) have low-gravity and/or magnetic fields that interfere with the player's motion sensor.

There are seven weapons available for the player to use in the game: a fist, pistol, assault rifle, fusion gun, rocket launcher, flamethrower and an unidentified alien weapon that can be picked up by killing a special type of Pfhor. Unlike other early first-person shooters such as Doom, the player collects ammunition for these weapons in magazines as opposed to individual rounds; each magazine contains a certain number of projectiles, and when a magazine is depleted another is loaded. Some weapons have secondary triggers or other dynamics. With these weapons the player fights a variety of monsters throughout the game (generally Pfhor and their enslaved races). The selected difficulty setting (which the player can change in the preferences at any time) determines the placement, strength and vitality of each monster. Monsters may have melee or ranged attacks and have many other complex dynamics such as friend and enemy monsters or immunity against or weakness to certain attacks. Health is replenished at certain stations on walls. While these stations have an infinite supply, their placement is relatively infrequent.

In addition to the single-player game, there is a multiplayer deathmatch mode that can accommodate as many as eight players on the same computer network connected to a single host machine. The basic premise of the game is to have the best kill-to-death ratio of all competing players and/or teams. While third-party maps support cooperative play, this feature was left out of the original game.

Legacy

Marathon is still played by a number of veteran Macintosh gamers and has a small but strong community of enthusiasts still making custom content for the game. Despite its technical accomplishments and praise from the few reviewers that graded it, Marathon is not frequently cited or well-known among the PC gaming community due to its predominantly Macintosh roots. Its first sequel, Marathon 2 was commercially-available for Windows 95, but did not have a sizable impact on PC gamers either. It was included as part of the Marathon Trilogy Box Set, which was released in 1997, and the Mac Action Sack, which contains several of Bungie's pre-Microsoft games.

In 1996, Bungie completed a port of Marathon to the Apple's short-lived Pippin video game console. The port was released as part of Super Marathon, a compilation of Marathon and Marathon 2: Durandal which bears the distinction of being the first console game ever released by Bungie, pre-dating Oni and Halo.

On July 7, 2011, a port of Marathon for Apple's iPad was released for free on the iTunes App Store.

External links

• Marathon on Bungie.net, Bungie's official Marathon series website, containing screenshots and information.
• The Trilogy Release, a site with downloadable copies of both the original Macintosh Marathon and the port M1A1 for other platforms.
• Marathon Open Source Project, home of the open-source Aleph One engine