This is where it all started. I worked in an office with networked macs.... 5pm was 'To be king' time. Even the bosses joined in. Wall to wall multiplayer carnage. Best times ever. it even reached to the point I made some arena maps and screwed around with weapon sprites and animations. I don't even use WASD controls because of this game. Bungie's default: Space Alt z x. I use it in fps to this day. LEGENDARY game by Bungie.
We played this at our ad agency from around 1995-99ish. Mostly just playing the multiplayer battles with about 6-8 of us joining in. Mayhem! One guy started building custom maps, including a giant and tall open arena. With low gravity. It was awesome. Also, he built a map of our OFFICE space!
This is the first review I've watched that actually put the game into historical context. Bravo. I've watched a few that have completely ignored this, or in one of the worst reviews I watched: Completely misinterpreted the time period and why this series is as important as it is. Which is one of it's faults weirdly enough. Reloading in a FPS game? Yes, but without a reload button. Mission objectives that revolve more than just picking up colored keys? Yes, but you're going to have to read the mission description and memorize where to go: There's no markers. I kinda wish there would be an attempt to at least give the option of these basic quality of life improvements. I can imagine someone not knowing the limits of what was traditionally accepted in this time-period being turned off. That being said: It's a goddamn classic and beyond it's crazy vertically designed levels, it shows how well story can be conveyed by writing. It's pretty simple: Good writing is good writing. I can remember characters, motivations, and alien politics years later. I still don't know what Destiny was actually 'about'.
Well said mate. I'm on board for a Marathon update/remaster/reboot to translate the story and in-game experience for modern gamers and fix some of the half-baked innovations. Until then, Aleph One at least keeps it alive and playable Glad you enjoyed the vid. Working on a Marathon 2 review soon.
@Smugglerscomedy Man, I didn't see those when I typed that a month ago. Now that I've watched them... I'm kinda at a loss struggling to put words in-order to encapsulate my thoughts on how bad they are. It would be easy to just not agree with his assessment, it's his review and opinion after-all. But in those particular reviews: The problem again stems from a complete lack of perspective and context in the review. Coupled with a complete inability to respond to basic criticism in comments without maturity or any substance of defense besides at best smugness. Those videos are a complete disaster. Being lax in a review and having an opinion that reflects your interests is fine. This idea of the "all-in-one" impartial reviewer is something I think gaming needs to rid themselves of. The issue is when you're not upfront on your inherit bias's, reviewing something that is either specific to that time period without that context, or worse: misinterpreting that context. Which his reviews do in-spades so many times I couldn't keep up. Coupled with not many high-profile youtube reviews of this game, and you start running into bigger problems regarding misrepresentation that I know he's incapable of handling. At least the down-votes are a proper reflection of those videos. Long story short: This channel deserves more views and subs. Quality should be rewarded.
damn video is like its from a rly popular chanel and guy knows what he is doing then i just noticed 117 sub in 2 years and 4 videos WTF ? this guy deserve more views
@@lionocyborg6030 And before Pathways into darkness was Minotaur, tho not an FPS. Marathon was the first FPS I ever played. I secretly bought it with cash through a catalog as a kid, cuz my parents wouldn't let me buy it. And played it on an LC III, which could barely run it.
Johnny Z My first FPS was Half Life 1 on CD, second was Halo 1 (not counting Freespace as that was a flight sim) and my first 2.5D FPS was Duke Nukem Advance. However, Marathon went on to become my favourite: both the trilogy and Sonic 2006 defined 2012 for me, which is when I first heard of Aleph One and the fact it was on Windows. I'd have loved a PC port of Minotaur as well with a botmatch option, as what little footage I could find of it looked cool, like Ultima 4 crossed with Mazewar (but without Ultima's iconic Mazewar themed dungeons).
fun fact: many mac users with lower spec hardware never even knew there was music in the game. My bro and I played Marathon on an ancient LC III in the 90's and it simply didn't have the ram (or the right version of sound manager) to play the music. Imagine dropping 50 bucks on a game in 1994, and there's no music. Totally different atmosphere, I guarantee the game is much better without the music. We also played with keyboard exclusively, using shift + up or down to look up or down. it was pretty whack lol
Had a similar experience with doom. Without the music the game has a superb horror atmosphere. The dead silence interrupted only by the grunts of the demons, the sound of doors and noise of your guns.
Fists do damage relative to the speed you are moving. On the difficulty you were playing you could have stepped back strafe runned for 1.25x max speed and one hit killed them.
@@RUFUSsVideoGameGraveyard usually when i start replaying this game i don't even shoot the first 3 green pfhor that you run into, i just knockout punch them lol
@@quackmasterson5128 I tend to favor melee as much as I can for basic Phor when I go back and replay this game, it's sooooo incredibly satisfy to charge across the room or down a long hallway to deliver a skull-splitting punch at the end and get that splat sound it makes
There's now a version of Pathways into Darkness for Windows users! :) While the CD copy of the original game was ported to Mac OSX, we didn't get a windows version so W'rkncacnter (named after the Marathon species of elder gods) made a faithful port of PID to the Marathon engine. simplici7y.com/items/aleph-one-pathways-into-darkness The System Shock 1 window based HUD is gone in favour of a more System Shock 2 lite one, meaning the game is fullscreen, the game isn't simply a Marathon game with a Pathways skin on it either: there's a bunch of plugins that emulate the original movement, time limit etc but with some modern features like mouselook options, so it feels like a Bungie version of ECWolf3D. All the monsters and your 6 chaos emeralds used for PSI attacks are there too. Even the Labyrinth level that references the sadly now dead but awesome looking Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete is working right. I rank Pathways into Darkness, original and Aleph One port, as one of my favourite horror games of all time next to Quake 1.5, DUSK, Fran Bow and System Shock 2.
This trilogy alongside Sonic 2006, Thundercats (the good one from 2011), Black Mesa's initial shareware mod release and Sonic Adventure 1 defined 2012 for me. So much so that I played this before Doom despite hearing of Doom first thanks to the third game and watching my dad play episode 2 & 3. I even combined the Marathon glyph with that of Thundercats 2011 to use as my profile pic.
@@RUFUSsVideoGameGraveyard Thank you. :) I saw Thundercats for the first time soon after playing Marathon and I was surprised to see the Pfhor there as the bad guys and Mumm-Ra's pyramid is a stolen Forerunner keyship. I guess that makes Mumm-Ra himself a Flood Combat Form keeping his conscientiousness and free will (somewhat), being able to take a full Primordial form when conjuring power from the W'rkncacnter, hence the Ever Living form. Granted, the Pfhor in this show don't have their iconic 3 eyes, but I guess that's a copyright thing. Grune even wields Tartarus's Fist of Rukt from Halo 2! Pity they didn't cast Sgt Johnson as Panthro.
@@Sone781 it's in the 2011 anime version, not the cringey 80s original. Despite that, Slithe in the original still looks kind of like a two eyed hunter without armour and like the Marathon's front dome, the cats seem to get their architecture ideas from Aperture Science.
Aleph One is actually based on the source code of Marathon 2. A lot of the source code for Marathon 1 was 68k assembly, so Bungie didn't think releasing the source code would be very helpful. This lead to the release of M1A1, which was the Marathon 1 assets ported to the improved Aleph One engine (for instance, M2 doesn't have damaging floors (they were replaced with liquids), so they had to emulate it with scripting). Later, Aleph One was patched to actually load Marathon 1 assets natively, so M1A1 is just a historical note nowadays.
Mouse control was not so good in the original Mac version. That was improved quite a bit in Aleph One, the modern port for Mac, Linux and Windoze. I always played it with just the keyboard back in the day. It was also my first multiplayer game, incidentally, and I first got to do that at a charter school that was loaded with Power Mac 6100s all on a LAN.
You know, I don't remember the music in this game. Either I turned it off, or it was always bugged and never played. I remember Marathon as an extremely atmospheric, mostly-silent game where a Hunter's "woo-WOO" could startle the crap out of you.
Oh how I played this back in the days on my Macintosh. Alone, and with friends. Also used to build levels for Marathon to play with said friends, but I don't remember if that was for Marathon 1 or 2. This review brought back some memories, thank you!
14:04 "you have punching, which is pretty fucking useless." Fun fact, punching actually does more damage if you're moving/running at enemies (it's momentum based), which can be useful for saving ammo (and mandatory on Total Carnage difficulty, since you don't start with enough ammo to deal with the initial group of Pfhor in level one.)
This is single-handedly one of the best well-written, well commentated, and well thought-out videos/reviews I've ever had the immense pleasure of watching. As a long-time Bungie fan, just around 2002 when Halo: Combat Evolvedwas introduced to me, I almost feel dirty and unfortunate enough to have only experienced Bungie's launching point for their immanent and well-deserved success. Sure, I played every Bungie game up until Destiny 2, but this game seems sorely underappreciated, especially in 2019. Sure, this game had a niche appeal and even then, a very low selling market well below Doom (1993), but this game seems *way* better thought out story-wise even against MOST "triple A" budget games. It has tons of interesting lore that is told and conveyed *through* gameplay, rather than completely separate; i.e, completely unmarried and boring. All in, all, I found this review extremely helpful in knowing that someone out there has devoted this much time and effort into evaluating one of my favorite companies to date: Bungie. So, thank you, Rufus, for all the hard work you put into this review. It was thoroughly entertaining as it was enlightening/educational. +1 sub, and I can't wait to see some of your videos as of old and as of late. Cheers. -WarLocked
I remember playing this on my dad's computer as a kid. I love this game! NOTE: My mind was blown after you said that Halo is a spiritual successor to Marathon. It makes total sense! Now I have a new appreciation for Halo.
Fantastic review Rufus! A lot of the stuff you said about the game I pretty much agreed with. It's too bad you didn't like the tracks too much. I actually tend to like them, but I was a kid in the 90s (maybe you were too, if I missed any mention of such in the video) and I guess they kind of hold a charm for me. I tend to like the newer HUD as well because having a full-screen display is real nice in my opinion. The reason the original one was made so "bad" is because the smaller screen was pretty much a necessity at the time for the sake of performance.
8:52 I have played Combat Evolved and seen its logo god knows how many times and I've never noticed the Marathon logo. They put that damn thing everywhere!
Nice work! I usually recommend people just read the story to the original Marathon and start with the sequels - first impressions are a big deal and man the level design in this one is often painful.
actually they do explain why the terminals in the phfor ship work with your suit, durandal apparently did something to allow you to interface with them, its in one of the terminals, this game is way too in depth :P EDIT: also, the iOS port has been updated to work with newer iphones and the xbox 360 port of the second one is retrocompatible with the XBONE now, speaking of which, please do the second game, i beg of you
I do remember Durandal explaining that he modded your suit - but that wasn't till the very first terminal in Marathon 2! In the original it just works for no obvious reason. I think Bungie realized they fucked up and made sure to explain it as early as possible in the sequel. Very good news about the iOS port, I didn't realize they finally updated it! Will post a link in the description. I'm planning to do the whole trilogy eventually, so stay tuned friend.
@@RUFUSsVideoGameGraveyard In the level "Have Quiddam" you actually receive an item called an "Alien Energy Converter." Although it's a plot point that is somewhat glossed over, it seems that the implication is that this device allows the player to use Pfhor shield generators when we arrive on the Pfhor ship a couple of stages later.
I'm honestly surprised this series hasn't been revisited. Whether it be a remake or a game like DOOM 2016 that continues the story. As of typing this, the Marathon trilogy is back on iOS.
2:26 yes Durandal was in charge of opening doors, flipping elevator switches. 17:06 the puzzles was basically doing Durandals job. haha no wonder why he went rampant.
The red bar of health is actual health: only the yellow and purple bars are shields. If you died immediately after losing your shields, you wouldn't be "bigger, stronger and a better shot" as the manual states like the cyborg your character is, now would you? The reason they share the same metre like Perfect Dark is either Bungie likely saw how useless Doom's armour system ultimately is despite the small amount of actual protection, or they just didn't think to try and do the Halo thing early. In universe, I think the Half Life style shield terminals first charge auto repair systems that fix Marcus's body when he gets hurt and the shields are charged after that. Some chargers only have enough voltage to power the auto repair systems, hence why some only give you health and others either one or both the two shield bars at a time. And yes, the officer is called Marcus Jones as revealed in the mod Marathon Eternal X. Bungie have neglected to make an official Marathon 4 for decades now so until then it's his canon name.
Omg my early childhood. I was born in 1991. I remember my dad had this on his apple mac when i was really young (less than 10 for sure i think?). I used to play the demo so much not realising its a demo and it was so hard! This brings back insane memories. I’d love to play it again. I remember just figuring the game out. This quest. It was immense. Imagine a remake of the game similar to how Halo re-did HALO 1 and 2.
God i could cry. Watching him start the first level. Just so many memories flooding back. Stuff that as a kid i didnt realise was something. Eg the infrared. Im pretty sure i thought i had super powers as my gun went golden 😂 i dunno. This game was amazing. People say “my childhood” but for me this is like before that, this is EARLY childhood man. Wow simply the emotions are too much watching this. The first game i ever played like this where it really challenged your brain and to me as a kid it was fuxking scary too.
I was at 2001 MacWorld (with my MUG trip) and saw Where the Mac Halo demo was right across where Microsoft was demoing Mac Office! So it was no surprise the Microsoft people told how great this game was and two years later it was on the new X-Box!
Just FYI, this game was a long time in development, and late being released, and was originally intended as a sequel to Pathways Into Darkness, which predates Doom. So it's really not accurate to label it a "Doom clone."
Marathon and series were certainly not overlooked or forgotten. The Bungie crew segued directly to Microsoft and the Halo series and continued to make video game history. I seriously doubt anyone has forgotten or "overlooked" it as you say. The Marathon series are STILL playable on current macOS. There was even a very good level editor that inspired awesome user-maps.
UPDATES! There is now an Android port of Aleph One! Download all three Marathon games for FREE here: github.com/daniele-rapagnani/alephone-android/releases Also the old iOS port of Marathon has been updated to work on current iPhones and iPads! Download it FREE here: itunes.apple.com/app/marathon-1/id419805412
This game scared the crap out of me as a kid. It still scares the crap out of me as an adult. But as a game with a high density of shooty bang bang, i’m glad it exists. Also I really want you to review Rubicon. It might be a fan game, but it’s the better of the two. By that I mean it’s not Marathon Eternal
Currently playing through 2 again to get footage and refresh my memory, hoping to post that some time this month. Not sure about infinity yet, but it's high on my to-do list!
I hate the lack of jumping too. While the "Sprint of Faith" gameplay is _much_ better to the point of being actually fun instead of in Doom, it's an unnecessary handicap to not at least give sourceport players the _option_ of jumping if they wish like GZ Doom. Thankfully, Megabyte on the Marathon modding site Simplic7y has you covered: simplici7y.com/items/jump-script
Thanks for the tip! For this vid I was mostly trying to have a retrospective look at the original gameplay, hence only using A1 improvements minimally (resolution and HUD). But this will help those who find the jumpless gameplay too annoying.
Just looked it and marathon and rise of the triad were both released on the same day which means both are the two first fps with rocket jumping, nether one came with it first with rocket jumping before the other, although you could say rott did it first since it was in development before the release of doom 1, so rott did it first technically
True, probably should have said first game *released* that featured rocket jumping, as the Marathon demo came out November 23rd and ROTT shareware came out December 21st. I've seen plenty of pretty compelling nerd arguments either way though - it's so weird a coincidence that they were released on the same day, I'm happy to let them share the crown.
Dude it was such a pain. You have to raise the bridge in the room, run across it, "touch" a totally unmarked spot on the wall to the left of the teleporter (no sound plays) then book it back across before the bridge drops. Took me like a dozen tries.
Don't know how I'm seeing this for the first time a year later, but I enjoyed this review. You did some good work with the synopsis of the story at the beginning. Have you done an M2 review yet? If not, I look forward to checking it out.
Found another example of a certain percentage of the Marathon fanbase being dicks who refuse to make an old Doom style engine suck less for the sake of tradition: someone else on the Pfhorums asked for jumping and crouching too back in 2006 (I think) and a couple of people, namely RyokoTK and even Hamish Sinclair himself of all people, simply trolled him for even _thinking_ of the idea and told him to "go play Unreal torunament", nevermind they themselves wouldn't be forced to use it. Hamish had a reasonable explanation for why it either couldn't be done or be hard to implement, but A. there's no reason people would know that and B. he was still a dick about it. RyokoTK was the more malicious: Quotes from good people: "Now I know why so many people leave these forums in disgust, Your putting down his creation before he has even started it." "I agree... this wave of negativity lately realy is quite disturbing... or in american terms "a turn-off"" "Ugg you guys are kind of mean, its not as though you would HAVE to play with it (ala headshot script) only that IT POSSIBLE. Which apparently it isn't. Besides, people might convert over some Damage Incorporated maps where jumping WAS permitted and developed for, so don't automatically jump the gun and pish posh it as a modern invention." RyokoTK: "That's because his idea sucks; it's not a feature that has a place in Marathon. Maps would have to be altered in order to adhere to this vast augmentation of mobility. "Modernizing" Marathon is a terrible idea. If you want a game with jumping and sniper rifles, then GO PLAY UNREAL TOURNAMENT." Quote from a good person (in response to Ryoko above): "yahh... like what I said earlyer about the negativity thing... lol what about MML?* isnt that modernizing? (probably mostly graphically)" *MML is Marathon Markup Language, used for injecting certain modern features into Aleph One. Lua is also used. Here's the full thread (caution: trigger warning): pfhorums.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&p=11310#p11310 Once again, the comparisons to a certain subset of the Sonic fanbase are astounding.
Man, i loved that game... back when I was all Apple.. close to broke but making great products.. Now I hate apple with their shit obsolescent designs.. how times change.
I found a mod for this called Marathon 1 Redux that works as sort of both a facelift and a slight re-imagining of the first Marathon. I've only played through it a little bit, but it might be worth checking out: simplici7y.com/items/marathon-1-redux You'll need the Aleph One game engine to run it.
"Overlooked for many years." Brother, did you not see MandaloreGaming covered the entire series and single handedly launched a revived interest in Marathon with those reviews?
I think you're probably talking about how that game can only run at 30fps. This is a limit of the original game engine that Aleph One was never able to fix. It probably looks smoother when you're just watching a video but when I was actually playing the game I noticed it too, especially if I had just played a modern game at a higher fps. I just ignored it and, after a couple of levels I couldn't even tell anymore.
Good news! I just tried out a newer version of Aleph One and they've recently found a way to increase the frame rate without breaking the game. Download a new version from their website and go to Preferences > Graphics > Framerate Target to turn it up.
Trust me, there's plenty of debate on this - I've always pronounced it "duh-RAN-dul", as have many others I've heard, but I have read that the original devs pronounce it "DUR-in-daal", and this is indeed closer to the correct French pronunciation of the mythical sword he is named after. So who the fuck knows.
@@RUFUSsVideoGameGraveyard I've always pronounced it the same as you guys. All this talk about Durandal makes me want to go play M2 now, and relive some comfy 90's childhood memories.
Played this game once and never read terminals and forgot about it, revisited only to be completely inmersed in the story and reading every single terminal… same bungie dna that immersed me into the first halo… to me the rest of the halos sucked
The enemies and its graphics including the animation are awful. The guns are terrible and its "dancing" and the huge muzzle flash are annoying. It's only for the player harder to see what's going on. A real console solution, but this time for Mac! Weird.. Classic Dooms look much more better and they are much more enjoyable.
Bungie should make a modern reboot of this game and go above and beyond with it.
bungie's not known for reboots
Facts
That's just Halo
@@heraldofoblivion499 yes and no
They just announced it.
This is where it all started. I worked in an office with networked macs.... 5pm was 'To be king' time. Even the bosses joined in. Wall to wall multiplayer carnage. Best times ever. it even reached to the point I made some arena maps and screwed around with weapon sprites and animations.
I don't even use WASD controls because of this game. Bungie's default: Space Alt z x. I use it in fps to this day.
LEGENDARY game by Bungie.
We played this at our ad agency from around 1995-99ish. Mostly just playing the multiplayer battles with about 6-8 of us joining in. Mayhem! One guy started building custom maps, including a giant and tall open arena. With low gravity. It was awesome. Also, he built a map of our OFFICE space!
This is the first review I've watched that actually put the game into historical context. Bravo. I've watched a few that have completely ignored this, or in one of the worst reviews I watched: Completely misinterpreted the time period and why this series is as important as it is.
Which is one of it's faults weirdly enough. Reloading in a FPS game? Yes, but without a reload button. Mission objectives that revolve more than just picking up colored keys? Yes, but you're going to have to read the mission description and memorize where to go: There's no markers.
I kinda wish there would be an attempt to at least give the option of these basic quality of life improvements. I can imagine someone not knowing the limits of what was traditionally accepted in this time-period being turned off.
That being said: It's a goddamn classic and beyond it's crazy vertically designed levels, it shows how well story can be conveyed by writing. It's pretty simple: Good writing is good writing. I can remember characters, motivations, and alien politics years later.
I still don't know what Destiny was actually 'about'.
Well said mate. I'm on board for a Marathon update/remaster/reboot to translate the story and in-game experience for modern gamers and fix some of the half-baked innovations. Until then, Aleph One at least keeps it alive and playable
Glad you enjoyed the vid. Working on a Marathon 2 review soon.
@Smugglerscomedy Man, I didn't see those when I typed that a month ago. Now that I've watched them... I'm kinda at a loss struggling to put words in-order to encapsulate my thoughts on how bad they are. It would be easy to just not agree with his assessment, it's his review and opinion after-all.
But in those particular reviews: The problem again stems from a complete lack of perspective and context in the review. Coupled with a complete inability to respond to basic criticism in comments without maturity or any substance of defense besides at best smugness. Those videos are a complete disaster.
Being lax in a review and having an opinion that reflects your interests is fine. This idea of the "all-in-one" impartial reviewer is something I think gaming needs to rid themselves of. The issue is when you're not upfront on your inherit bias's, reviewing something that is either specific to that time period without that context, or worse: misinterpreting that context. Which his reviews do in-spades so many times I couldn't keep up. Coupled with not many high-profile youtube reviews of this game, and you start running into bigger problems regarding misrepresentation that I know he's incapable of handling. At least the down-votes are a proper reflection of those videos.
Long story short: This channel deserves more views and subs. Quality should be rewarded.
@@RUFUSsVideoGameGraveyard I don't know if you already do but, perhaps you'd like to know about Paths Of Jjaro ;) (Search in Marathon's reddit)
@@nickblomgren examined life of gamming has one of the Best vídeos around marathon.
Came here to see the game and learn the story after seeing it being shown as a reboot in the PlayStation showcase.
I'd kill for The Marathon Trilogy to get re-released on modern systems
1:12 when i heard the sound track, I got all tingly.
When I saw those automated defense drones, I was reminded of the sections in Doom 3 where a robot would assist you in punishing hell's minions.
damn video is like its from a rly popular chanel and guy knows what he is doing then i just noticed 117 sub in 2 years and 4 videos WTF ? this guy deserve more views
TUNA 117 subs
Spartan 117
Damn
Before Halo, there was Marathon
And before Marathon was Project Freelance...i mean Pathways into Darkness.
@@lionocyborg6030 And before Pathways into darkness was Minotaur, tho not an FPS. Marathon was the first FPS I ever played. I secretly bought it with cash through a catalog as a kid, cuz my parents wouldn't let me buy it. And played it on an LC III, which could barely run it.
Johnny Z My first FPS was Half Life 1 on CD, second was Halo 1 (not counting Freespace as that was a flight sim) and my first 2.5D FPS was Duke Nukem Advance. However, Marathon went on to become my favourite: both the trilogy and Sonic 2006 defined 2012 for me, which is when I first heard of Aleph One and the fact it was on Windows. I'd have loved a PC port of Minotaur as well with a botmatch option, as what little footage I could find of it looked cool, like Ultima 4 crossed with Mazewar (but without Ultima's iconic Mazewar themed dungeons).
No shit.
fun fact: many mac users with lower spec hardware never even knew there was music in the game. My bro and I played Marathon on an ancient LC III in the 90's and it simply didn't have the ram (or the right version of sound manager) to play the music. Imagine dropping 50 bucks on a game in 1994, and there's no music. Totally different atmosphere, I guarantee the game is much better without the music. We also played with keyboard exclusively, using shift + up or down to look up or down. it was pretty whack lol
Had a similar experience with doom. Without the music the game has a superb horror atmosphere. The dead silence interrupted only by the grunts of the demons, the sound of doors and noise of your guns.
Honestly I like the comic book sprites, comic book sci-fi is kinda a "look" in it's own right
There is a console port of Marathon: Durandal for Xbox 360, I think it's backwards compatible with the Xbone.
I love how all your reviews include a current way to obtain and play the game. More reviewers should take your approach!
Fists do damage relative to the speed you are moving. On the difficulty you were playing you could have stepped back strafe runned for 1.25x max speed and one hit killed them.
Get the fuck out! Never knew that.
@@RUFUSsVideoGameGraveyard usually when i start replaying this game i don't even shoot the first 3 green pfhor that you run into, i just knockout punch them lol
@@quackmasterson5128 I tend to favor melee as much as I can for basic Phor when I go back and replay this game, it's sooooo incredibly satisfy to charge across the room or down a long hallway to deliver a skull-splitting punch at the end and get that splat sound it makes
props for the galaxy quest reference
Haha thanks!
I totally could not find a way to play this again before I found this video, thanks!
Happy to help mate!
There's now a version of Pathways into Darkness for Windows users! :) While the CD copy of the original game was ported to Mac OSX, we didn't get a windows version so W'rkncacnter (named after the Marathon species of elder gods) made a faithful port of PID to the Marathon engine.
simplici7y.com/items/aleph-one-pathways-into-darkness The System Shock 1 window based HUD is gone in favour of a more System Shock 2 lite one, meaning the game is fullscreen, the game isn't simply a Marathon game with a Pathways skin on it either: there's a bunch of plugins that emulate the original movement, time limit etc but with some modern features like mouselook options, so it feels like a Bungie version of ECWolf3D.
All the monsters and your 6 chaos emeralds used for PSI attacks are there too. Even the Labyrinth level that references the sadly now dead but awesome looking Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete is working right. I rank Pathways into Darkness, original and Aleph One port, as one of my favourite horror games of all time next to Quake 1.5, DUSK, Fran Bow and System Shock 2.
This trilogy alongside Sonic 2006, Thundercats (the good one from 2011), Black Mesa's initial shareware mod release and Sonic Adventure 1 defined 2012 for me. So much so that I played this before Doom despite hearing of Doom first thanks to the third game and watching my dad play episode 2 & 3. I even combined the Marathon glyph with that of Thundercats 2011 to use as my profile pic.
And it is a sick profile pic indeed.
@@RUFUSsVideoGameGraveyard Thank you. :) I saw Thundercats for the first time soon after playing Marathon and I was surprised to see the Pfhor there as the bad guys and Mumm-Ra's pyramid is a stolen Forerunner keyship. I guess that makes Mumm-Ra himself a Flood Combat Form keeping his conscientiousness and free will (somewhat), being able to take a full Primordial form when conjuring power from the W'rkncacnter, hence the Ever Living form.
Granted, the Pfhor in this show don't have their iconic 3 eyes, but I guess that's a copyright thing. Grune even wields Tartarus's Fist of Rukt from Halo 2! Pity they didn't cast Sgt Johnson as Panthro.
@@lionocyborg6030 Wait what? Why have I never heard of this? I admit I’m not super familiar with Thundercats.
@@Sone781 it's in the 2011 anime version, not the cringey 80s original. Despite that, Slithe in the original still looks kind of like a two eyed hunter without armour and like the Marathon's front dome, the cats seem to get their architecture ideas from Aperture Science.
Aleph One is actually based on the source code of Marathon 2. A lot of the source code for Marathon 1 was 68k assembly, so Bungie didn't think releasing the source code would be very helpful. This lead to the release of M1A1, which was the Marathon 1 assets ported to the improved Aleph One engine (for instance, M2 doesn't have damaging floors (they were replaced with liquids), so they had to emulate it with scripting). Later, Aleph One was patched to actually load Marathon 1 assets natively, so M1A1 is just a historical note nowadays.
Thanks Rufus! I downloaded all 3 games on my iPhone and just started playing
Mouse control was not so good in the original Mac version. That was improved quite a bit in Aleph One, the modern port for Mac, Linux and Windoze. I always played it with just the keyboard back in the day. It was also my first multiplayer game, incidentally, and I first got to do that at a charter school that was loaded with Power Mac 6100s all on a LAN.
You know, I don't remember the music in this game. Either I turned it off, or it was always bugged and never played. I remember Marathon as an extremely atmospheric, mostly-silent game where a Hunter's "woo-WOO" could startle the crap out of you.
You might’ve played the sequels, which had no music
Coming back to re watch this masterpiece
There’s a Marathon 2.
And a Marathon 3! I mention the sequels at 8:15. Haven't played them in years, will for sure make vids for them too though.
RUFUS!'s Video Game Graveyard I know Marathon Eternal isn’t official, but you should review it.
@@pass9786 after marathon evil!
Oh how I played this back in the days on my Macintosh. Alone, and with friends. Also used to build levels for Marathon to play with said friends, but I don't remember if that was for Marathon 1 or 2. This review brought back some memories, thank you!
I played this on a Macintosh Color Classic, and it was awesome. It was the first game I really enjoyed playing.
14:04 "you have punching, which is pretty fucking useless."
Fun fact, punching actually does more damage if you're moving/running at enemies (it's momentum based), which can be useful for saving ammo (and mandatory on Total Carnage difficulty, since you don't start with enough ammo to deal with the initial group of Pfhor in level one.)
This is single-handedly one of the best well-written, well commentated, and well thought-out videos/reviews I've ever had the immense pleasure of watching. As a long-time Bungie fan, just around 2002 when Halo: Combat Evolvedwas introduced to me, I almost feel dirty and unfortunate enough to have only experienced Bungie's launching point for their immanent and well-deserved success. Sure, I played every Bungie game up until Destiny 2, but this game seems sorely underappreciated, especially in 2019. Sure, this game had a niche appeal and even then, a very low selling market well below Doom (1993), but this game seems *way* better thought out story-wise even against MOST "triple A" budget games. It has tons of interesting lore that is told and conveyed *through* gameplay, rather than completely separate; i.e, completely unmarried and boring. All in, all, I found this review extremely helpful in knowing that someone out there has devoted this much time and effort into evaluating one of my favorite companies to date: Bungie. So, thank you, Rufus, for all the hard work you put into this review. It was thoroughly entertaining as it was enlightening/educational. +1 sub, and I can't wait to see some of your videos as of old and as of late.
Cheers.
-WarLocked
I remember playing this on my dad's computer as a kid. I love this game! NOTE: My mind was blown after you said that Halo is a spiritual successor to Marathon. It makes total sense! Now I have a new appreciation for Halo.
Fantastic review Rufus! A lot of the stuff you said about the game I pretty much agreed with. It's too bad you didn't like the tracks too much. I actually tend to like them, but I was a kid in the 90s (maybe you were too, if I missed any mention of such in the video) and I guess they kind of hold a charm for me. I tend to like the newer HUD as well because having a full-screen display is real nice in my opinion.
The reason the original one was made so "bad" is because the smaller screen was pretty much a necessity at the time for the sake of performance.
What blew my friends away at the time was that I had two machines and you could play it co-op over network
Aaaaannd Bungie will make a reboot of the franchise... and it will be a PvP Tarkov clone.......
i rate the third the best with 10 apples out of 10 windows simply for including Forge (TM). man i had fun making levels....
Points on the music.
This game was dope, thanks for the review.
Dude, the quality of this is really good. I hope you see some good channel growth in the near future.
Great times in my High School computer lab in mid/late 90s.
8:52 I have played Combat Evolved and seen its logo god knows how many times and I've never noticed the Marathon logo. They put that damn thing everywhere!
Pathways Into Darkness shareware was my Sunday night for months
I don't understand why this doesn't have more views.
Nice work! I usually recommend people just read the story to the original Marathon and start with the sequels - first impressions are a big deal and man the level design in this one is often painful.
I played this loads as a kid and had NO idea those main characters were A.I. Managed to beat it though.
Who else is here after the new Marathon reveal? xd
🖐
actually they do explain why the terminals in the phfor ship work with your suit, durandal apparently did something to allow you to interface with them, its in one of the terminals, this game is way too in depth :P
EDIT: also, the iOS port has been updated to work with newer iphones and the xbox 360 port of the second one is retrocompatible with the XBONE now, speaking of which, please do the second game, i beg of you
I do remember Durandal explaining that he modded your suit - but that wasn't till the very first terminal in Marathon 2! In the original it just works for no obvious reason. I think Bungie realized they fucked up and made sure to explain it as early as possible in the sequel.
Very good news about the iOS port, I didn't realize they finally updated it! Will post a link in the description. I'm planning to do the whole trilogy eventually, so stay tuned friend.
oh man, keep up the good work, just discovered your channel and its great stuff!
@@RUFUSsVideoGameGraveyard In the level "Have Quiddam" you actually receive an item called an "Alien Energy Converter." Although it's a plot point that is somewhat glossed over, it seems that the implication is that this device allows the player to use Pfhor shield generators when we arrive on the Pfhor ship a couple of stages later.
@@reidkelly1537 I stand corrected! Never put two and two together there. Well spotted.
@@RUFUSsVideoGameGraveyard IIRC Durandal even had his S'pht buddies secretly create the converter and leave it specifically for the player to find.
The iPhone version is back. It was updated
I'm honestly surprised this series hasn't been revisited. Whether it be a remake or a game like DOOM 2016 that continues the story. As of typing this, the Marathon trilogy is back on iOS.
2:26 yes Durandal was in charge of opening doors, flipping elevator switches.
17:06 the puzzles was basically doing Durandals job. haha no wonder why he went rampant.
The red bar of health is actual health: only the yellow and purple bars are shields. If you died immediately after losing your shields, you wouldn't be "bigger, stronger and a better shot" as the manual states like the cyborg your character is, now would you?
The reason they share the same metre like Perfect Dark is either Bungie likely saw how useless Doom's armour system ultimately is despite the small amount of actual protection, or they just didn't think to try and do the Halo thing early. In universe, I think the Half Life style shield terminals first charge auto repair systems that fix Marcus's body when he gets hurt and the shields are charged after that. Some chargers only have enough voltage to power the auto repair systems, hence why some only give you health and others either one or both the two shield bars at a time.
And yes, the officer is called Marcus Jones as revealed in the mod Marathon Eternal X. Bungie have neglected to make an official Marathon 4 for decades now so until then it's his canon name.
YES! Thank you for making a new video :)
Omg my early childhood. I was born in 1991. I remember my dad had this on his apple mac when i was really young (less than 10 for sure i think?). I used to play the demo so much not realising its a demo and it was so hard! This brings back insane memories. I’d love to play it again. I remember just figuring the game out. This quest. It was immense. Imagine a remake of the game similar to how Halo re-did HALO 1 and 2.
God i could cry. Watching him start the first level. Just so many memories flooding back. Stuff that as a kid i didnt realise was something. Eg the infrared. Im pretty sure i thought i had super powers as my gun went golden 😂 i dunno. This game was amazing. People say “my childhood” but for me this is like before that, this is EARLY childhood man. Wow simply the emotions are too much watching this. The first game i ever played like this where it really challenged your brain and to me as a kid it was fuxking scary too.
I was at 2001 MacWorld (with my MUG trip) and saw Where the Mac Halo demo was right across where Microsoft was demoing Mac Office! So it was no surprise the Microsoft people told how great this game was and two years later it was on the new X-Box!
Just FYI, this game was a long time in development, and late being released, and was originally intended as a sequel to Pathways Into Darkness, which predates Doom. So it's really not accurate to label it a "Doom clone."
Marathon and series were certainly not overlooked or forgotten. The Bungie crew segued directly to Microsoft and the Halo series and continued to make video game history. I seriously doubt anyone has forgotten or "overlooked" it as you say. The Marathon series are STILL playable on current macOS. There was even a very good level editor that inspired awesome user-maps.
I played all the games…at least three times. I love the Marathon Trilogy.
Happy 30 years Marathon
Loved the Soundtrack!
UPDATES!
There is now an Android port of Aleph One! Download all three Marathon games for FREE here: github.com/daniele-rapagnani/alephone-android/releases
Also the old iOS port of Marathon has been updated to work on current iPhones and iPads! Download it FREE here: itunes.apple.com/app/marathon-1/id419805412
This game scared the crap out of me as a kid. It still scares the crap out of me as an adult. But as a game with a high density of shooty bang bang, i’m glad it exists.
Also I really want you to review Rubicon. It might be a fan game, but it’s the better of the two. By that I mean it’s not Marathon Eternal
Dude, I shit my pants HARD back in the day. RUBICON is def on the list.
ETA on the Marathon 2 and Infinity videos?
Currently playing through 2 again to get footage and refresh my memory, hoping to post that some time this month. Not sure about infinity yet, but it's high on my to-do list!
i imagine an AI programmed to open doors would cheat and technically open his own door to freedom/immortality.
I remember playing this from a demo CD I'd get in magazines lol
I hate the lack of jumping too. While the "Sprint of Faith" gameplay is _much_ better to the point of being actually fun instead of in Doom, it's an unnecessary handicap to not at least give sourceport players the _option_ of jumping if they wish like GZ Doom. Thankfully, Megabyte on the Marathon modding site Simplic7y has you covered: simplici7y.com/items/jump-script
Thanks for the tip! For this vid I was mostly trying to have a retrospective look at the original gameplay, hence only using A1 improvements minimally (resolution and HUD). But this will help those who find the jumpless gameplay too annoying.
Dat Craig Mullins in the game thumbnail.
Just looked it and marathon and rise of the triad were both released on the same day which means both are the two first fps with rocket jumping, nether one came with it first with rocket jumping before the other, although you could say rott did it first since it was in development before the release of doom 1, so rott did it first technically
True, probably should have said first game *released* that featured rocket jumping, as the Marathon demo came out November 23rd and ROTT shareware came out December 21st. I've seen plenty of pretty compelling nerd arguments either way though - it's so weird a coincidence that they were released on the same day, I'm happy to let them share the crown.
How did you manage to get to the secret at 9:42? I’ve never been able to do it
Dude it was such a pain. You have to raise the bridge in the room, run across it, "touch" a totally unmarked spot on the wall to the left of the teleporter (no sound plays) then book it back across before the bridge drops. Took me like a dozen tries.
This video is the soundtrack of my childhood. I was 9 and my parents eventually wised up and destroyed my cd of the game lol
THAT OUTRO SEQUENCE OMG xD xD XD XD
Don't know how I'm seeing this for the first time a year later, but I enjoyed this review. You did some good work with the synopsis of the story at the beginning. Have you done an M2 review yet? If not, I look forward to checking it out.
Just did M2 a couple months ago, Infinity coming soon as well!
ua-cam.com/video/ay06PFbKFxc/v-deo.html
if you held the energy weapon charge feature too long. . . . it goes critical and kills you.
Totally Awesome!
Great video!!
Yep I played this
Found another example of a certain percentage of the Marathon fanbase being dicks who refuse to make an old Doom style engine suck less for the sake of tradition: someone else on the Pfhorums asked for jumping and crouching too back in 2006 (I think) and a couple of people, namely RyokoTK and even Hamish Sinclair himself of all people, simply trolled him for even _thinking_ of the idea and told him to "go play Unreal torunament", nevermind they themselves wouldn't be forced to use it. Hamish had a reasonable explanation for why it either couldn't be done or be hard to implement, but A. there's no reason people would know that and B. he was still a dick about it. RyokoTK was the more malicious:
Quotes from good people: "Now I know why so many people leave these forums in disgust, Your putting down his creation before he has even started it."
"I agree... this wave of negativity lately realy is quite disturbing... or in american terms "a turn-off""
"Ugg you guys are kind of mean, its not as though you would HAVE to play with it (ala headshot script) only that IT POSSIBLE. Which apparently it isn't. Besides, people might convert over some Damage Incorporated maps where jumping WAS permitted and developed for, so don't automatically jump the gun and pish posh it as a modern invention."
RyokoTK: "That's because his idea sucks; it's not a feature that has a place in Marathon. Maps would have to be altered in order to adhere to this vast augmentation of mobility. "Modernizing" Marathon is a terrible idea. If you want a game with jumping and sniper rifles, then GO PLAY UNREAL TOURNAMENT."
Quote from a good person (in response to Ryoko above): "yahh... like what I said earlyer about the negativity thing... lol
what about MML?* isnt that modernizing? (probably mostly graphically)"
*MML is Marathon Markup Language, used for injecting certain modern features into Aleph One. Lua is also used.
Here's the full thread (caution: trigger warning): pfhorums.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&p=11310#p11310
Once again, the comparisons to a certain subset of the Sonic fanbase are astounding.
Man, i loved that game... back when I was all Apple.. close to broke but making great products..
Now I hate apple with their shit obsolescent designs.. how times change.
It’s still available on iPadOS 👍🏻
I found a mod for this called Marathon 1 Redux that works as sort of both a facelift and a slight re-imagining of the first Marathon. I've only played through it a little bit, but it might be worth checking out: simplici7y.com/items/marathon-1-redux You'll need the Aleph One game engine to run it.
Anyone know where that ending skit comes from?
Galaxy Quest ;)
@@RUFUSsVideoGameGraveyard Thanks
Great Video
"Overlooked for many years." Brother, did you not see MandaloreGaming covered the entire series and single handedly launched a revived interest in Marathon with those reviews?
to be fair, this video was released way back in 2018
@@MrTheta-lc8zy To be fair.
@@GPBlue-zl3sx also want to further specify that this video was released in 2018, mandalore did his first marathon video in 2022.
hey man i know this is an old video, but i was wondering how you got the framerate so smooth. it's really choppy on my computer.
I think you're probably talking about how that game can only run at 30fps. This is a limit of the original game engine that Aleph One was never able to fix. It probably looks smoother when you're just watching a video but when I was actually playing the game I noticed it too, especially if I had just played a modern game at a higher fps. I just ignored it and, after a couple of levels I couldn't even tell anymore.
Good news! I just tried out a newer version of Aleph One and they've recently found a way to increase the frame rate without breaking the game. Download a new version from their website and go to Preferences > Graphics > Framerate Target to turn it up.
@@RUFUSsVideoGameGraveyard holy shit, cheers dude!
How many here from the PlayStation live stream?
Very few. Sad. 😢
Man, imagine if halo was a Mac exclusive...
4 disks? i thought it was like 10 or 12. i may be from an alternate dimension
Only four as far as I can tell:
macintoshgarden.org/games/marathon
Marathon 1-3 is on iOS
"Halo , im your father.. Nooooooooooooooooooo !"
how do you have less than 100 thousand subscribers
Probably because I never update my channel 😂. Stay tuned though, already working on the next one.
RUFUS!'s Video Game Graveyard If you uploaded more, you could gain much more. Just make sure not to overwork yourself.
Punching does more damage with a running start
Yeah, it took me till Marathon 2 to work that out haha
luckily the music is removed for the sequels
esist a port for windows 95
iPhone ports are available
I added that in the description, they weren't available back when I made this.
Du-ran-dal is the right pronunciation; you weren't wrong. "Durindaal" just sounds stupid.
Trust me, there's plenty of debate on this - I've always pronounced it "duh-RAN-dul", as have many others I've heard, but I have read that the original devs pronounce it "DUR-in-daal", and this is indeed closer to the correct French pronunciation of the mythical sword he is named after. So who the fuck knows.
@@RUFUSsVideoGameGraveyard I've always pronounced it the same as you guys. All this talk about Durandal makes me want to go play M2 now, and relive some comfy 90's childhood memories.
PC
Played this game once and never read terminals and forgot about it, revisited only to be completely inmersed in the story and reading every single terminal… same bungie dna that immersed me into the first halo… to me the rest of the halos sucked
very immersive. haha
S'pht, pronounced like "sift".
Changing a value for how quickly the player falls is innovation, yeah. :|
Its been a year since this comment was posted. Sure.
Yea the ai in halo ce is trash too
How?
The enemies and its graphics including the animation are awful. The guns are terrible and its "dancing" and the huge muzzle flash are annoying. It's only for the player harder to see what's going on. A real console solution, but this time for Mac! Weird.. Classic Dooms look much more better and they are much more enjoyable.
Marathon was, and will always will be DOOM from wish.