2.11.06
Whence "Frog Blast the Vent Core"?
There are obviously many things which we do not understand, and may never be able to.
- Leela, Operations AI for the UESC Marathon
It's difficult for me to untangle the roots of my degeneracy. History's funny like that. But I'm pretty sure the first cause, the primal cause, is Bungie's Marathon series.
These groundbreaking games were released between Doom and the original Quake, and the only reason for their obscurity is probably Bungie's start as a Macintosh developer. While "first-person shooters" were still in their infancy, Marathon pioneered features like secondary fire modes (years before Unreal), objective-based missions, and objective-based multiplayer. Bungie led the industry with 22khz audio samples and active stereo panning; the game engine even stole a march on legendary id Software, introducing overlapping rooms at different heights and integrating game physics moddable for each individual level. At a time when most FPS narratives amounted to "fetch the red key", Marathon's engrossing sci-fi storyline inspired an entire fan community dedicated to its exegesis. And besides all that, the Marathon games are notable as the spiritual prequels to Halo: the UESC Marathon logo adorns the hull of Pillar of Autumn, and the Master Chief is a direct artistic descendant of the Marathon's Mjolnir Mark IV cyborg - or maybe even the same unlucky guy...
The original Marathon shipped on a clutch of 3.5" floppies and barely played on my dorm-room Mac LC III, but I squinted at the screen in 1/4-size, late into the night, so my non-hardware-accelerated rig could limp along with me. Marathon 2 upped the ante with tech improvements and new characters, and was also Bungie's first cross-platform game for both MacOS and Windows. The storyline (arguably) concluded with the nonlinear pomo stylings of Marathon Infinity, but that package's editing and scenario-creation toolset spawned dozens of ambitious fan-made mods for another half-decade.
If you're interested in what the real experts say, GameSpy inducted the series into its Hall of Fame in 2001 and The Escapist, looking back from 2005, offered a comprehensive look at Marathon's legacy.
Why am I typing all of this? Well, if you're curious about one of the best and most innovative of the early first-person shooters, you can experience it for yourself with enhanced textures and resolutions under modern OpenGL acceleration. Bungie open-sourced its engine and eventually released all three Marathon scenarios for free; the fan community took over and added hardware acceleration, mouselook, and online multiplayer. They even ported many of the best user mods to play under the new system.
Your mission:
1. Start at Marathon on Windows for Dummies. (Despite the site's threatening name, this checklist is just as useful for Mac and Linux users.)
2. Once you follow those instructions, but before playing, grab the high-res texture package at the bottom of this page. (If you locate the package elsewhere, confirm that it's the most recent version, v6.1. A lot of old files are clogging those massive, tangled intarweb tubes.)
3. If you play Marathon 2 or Marathon Infinity, you should also download this high-res landscape texture package. (This isn't useful for the original Marathon, which takes place entirely in space.)
Be prepared for 12-year-old graphics. Updated textures are crisp, but enemies and objects (barrels, biohazard crates, etc.) are 2D sprites and look pretty rough. Also be prepared for very limited mouselook; like Doom, the original Marathon engine was really only 2.5D and required keyboard aiming, so the current version offers full horizontal freedom but limited vertical mouselook. If you have the patience to deal with these limitations (which once counted as revolutionary advancements), you'll find dozens of hours in these games - and maybe some wicked online carnage to boot.
...But wait - what about "Frog Blast the Vent Core?"
Well, I suppose you could Google it?
There are obviously many things which we do not understand, and may never be able to.
- Leela, Operations AI for the UESC Marathon
It's difficult for me to untangle the roots of my degeneracy. History's funny like that. But I'm pretty sure the first cause, the primal cause, is Bungie's Marathon series.
These groundbreaking games were released between Doom and the original Quake, and the only reason for their obscurity is probably Bungie's start as a Macintosh developer. While "first-person shooters" were still in their infancy, Marathon pioneered features like secondary fire modes (years before Unreal), objective-based missions, and objective-based multiplayer. Bungie led the industry with 22khz audio samples and active stereo panning; the game engine even stole a march on legendary id Software, introducing overlapping rooms at different heights and integrating game physics moddable for each individual level. At a time when most FPS narratives amounted to "fetch the red key", Marathon's engrossing sci-fi storyline inspired an entire fan community dedicated to its exegesis. And besides all that, the Marathon games are notable as the spiritual prequels to Halo: the UESC Marathon logo adorns the hull of Pillar of Autumn, and the Master Chief is a direct artistic descendant of the Marathon's Mjolnir Mark IV cyborg - or maybe even the same unlucky guy...
The original Marathon shipped on a clutch of 3.5" floppies and barely played on my dorm-room Mac LC III, but I squinted at the screen in 1/4-size, late into the night, so my non-hardware-accelerated rig could limp along with me. Marathon 2 upped the ante with tech improvements and new characters, and was also Bungie's first cross-platform game for both MacOS and Windows. The storyline (arguably) concluded with the nonlinear pomo stylings of Marathon Infinity, but that package's editing and scenario-creation toolset spawned dozens of ambitious fan-made mods for another half-decade.
If you're interested in what the real experts say, GameSpy inducted the series into its Hall of Fame in 2001 and The Escapist, looking back from 2005, offered a comprehensive look at Marathon's legacy.
Why am I typing all of this? Well, if you're curious about one of the best and most innovative of the early first-person shooters, you can experience it for yourself with enhanced textures and resolutions under modern OpenGL acceleration. Bungie open-sourced its engine and eventually released all three Marathon scenarios for free; the fan community took over and added hardware acceleration, mouselook, and online multiplayer. They even ported many of the best user mods to play under the new system.
Your mission:
1. Start at Marathon on Windows for Dummies. (Despite the site's threatening name, this checklist is just as useful for Mac and Linux users.)
2. Once you follow those instructions, but before playing, grab the high-res texture package at the bottom of this page. (If you locate the package elsewhere, confirm that it's the most recent version, v6.1. A lot of old files are clogging those massive, tangled intarweb tubes.)
3. If you play Marathon 2 or Marathon Infinity, you should also download this high-res landscape texture package. (This isn't useful for the original Marathon, which takes place entirely in space.)
Be prepared for 12-year-old graphics. Updated textures are crisp, but enemies and objects (barrels, biohazard crates, etc.) are 2D sprites and look pretty rough. Also be prepared for very limited mouselook; like Doom, the original Marathon engine was really only 2.5D and required keyboard aiming, so the current version offers full horizontal freedom but limited vertical mouselook. If you have the patience to deal with these limitations (which once counted as revolutionary advancements), you'll find dozens of hours in these games - and maybe some wicked online carnage to boot.
...But wait - what about "Frog Blast the Vent Core?"
Well, I suppose you could Google it?
Labels: history
¶ 10:36
