Marathon

Marathon is a series of first-person shooter games started by Bungie. The original game was released for Macintosh in 1994, and was preferred by Mac gamers as a more sophisticated alternative to the PC hit DOOM. As with the Myth series, Bungie made the first two games (Marathon and Marathon 2: Durandal) and the third was made by another studio. In this case, the third game was Marathon Infinity, and it was made by Double Aught, a short-lived studio spun off from Bungie. Unlike Myth III, the third Marathon game stayed close to the original games' roots.

Bungie is known for cross-referencing their games, and indeed there are multiple references to Marathon in Oni, documented in the Easter eggs article.

Unlike Oni, Marathon shipped with a multiplayer feature (albeit LAN-only). Bungie also supported the modding community with helpful information on the file formats; they eventually released the development tools Forge and Anvil alongside Marathon Infinity. Later, the Marathon 2 engine was open-sourced by Bungie. This code was used to produce Aleph One, a unified engine which runs the scenarios for Marathon, Marathon 2, and Marathon Infinity as well as fan-made scenarios. The original LAN multiplayer mode was improved and extended to be Internet-capable. Later still, the Marathon Trilogy was made freeware by Bungie, so you can download it legally and play it on modern computers with the Aleph One engine (see below).

Unlike the rights to Oni and Myth, the Marathon IP never left Bungie's hands. There has been occasional speculation about a "Marathon 4" one day being developed by Bungie. There was a mention of such a project in the contract Bungie signed with Activision over Destiny. In 2022, there was an unsourced rumor that a new Marathon game was under development, possibly not a sequel but an extraction shooter set in the same universe.

Community links

Lhowon.org (serves the Trilogy, the standalone Aleph One engine, and links to the Aleph One source code)

Marathon.Bungie.Org (original home of Marathon fans, now mostly a portal page for other Marathon sites)

Simplici7y (mod repository)

Pfhorums (community forum)

Lhowon.org metaserver (for Internet matchmaking)

Marathon on Bungie.net (archived)

Picture galleries

Marathon on Wikipedia

The Marathon games are documented extensively on Wikipedia, starting HERE, with exhaustive information on gameplay, enemy types, and the storyline.