Fightin' Aliens Is Not a Sprint: Introduction

A quarter century ago, a piece of software was let slip upon the earth. It was enough a part of my late childhood/adolescence to deserve Honorary Cool Uncle status. (No dig intended to my actual uncles, who’re great, they just all lived on the West Coast and I didn’t see em much.) This game helped raise me, alongside honorary family members like Isaac Asimov and Mary Shelley. That game was Bungie Software’s Marathon.

On the surface it’s pretty straightforward. You’re a security officer on a colony ship that gets attacked by aliens. You’ve got to go all around the massive ship fixing stuff, finding parts, and shooting a lot of said aliens. But the depth of the game’s story, the brilliance of its design and writing, and the look and feel of its world cement it in game history. Bungie’s way more famous for making Halo, of course. But Halo is a direct descendant of Marathon, and it owes an awful lot to its predecessor.

Luckily for us, some very dedicated people have put a lot of effort into making versions of the original that are playable on modern hardware. I’m gonna be playing through the whole game for the first time in years, and writing all about it on here. Let’s go explore the extremes of human ambition and dive into some tricky philosophical puzzles(and shoot aliens).