Bungie's Marathon for 360 makes the grade in Germany
by Jared Rea 
{ Jun 12th 2007 at 11:00PM }
Our lemonade stand colleagues over at Xbox 360 Fanboy may be one step closer to joining the Illuminati as their wild speculation has finally paid off. Mac gaming legend, Marathon: Durandal, looks to be compromising your Xbox 360 in the near future. The odds in favor of this arriving via Xbox Live Arcade are staggering.
Spotted on the USK website (Germany's take on the ERSB, if you will), the spiritual predecessor to the Halo series has received a 16+ rating, meaning that the sale of which is restricted to those under the age of 16, as mandated by the Youth Protection Law.
Or Jugendschutzgesetz, as they call it. Curious.
Being that Marathon: Durandal is in fact the sequel to the original Marathon, we're more curious as to why this popped up first. Now that we think about it, with Bungie's hands full of Halo 3, one must wonder exactly how they have the time to develop such a title. Suspicious, isn't it?
Spotted on the USK website (Germany's take on the ERSB, if you will), the spiritual predecessor to the Halo series has received a 16+ rating, meaning that the sale of which is restricted to those under the age of 16, as mandated by the Youth Protection Law.
Or Jugendschutzgesetz, as they call it. Curious.
Being that Marathon: Durandal is in fact the sequel to the original Marathon, we're more curious as to why this popped up first. Now that we think about it, with Bungie's hands full of Halo 3, one must wonder exactly how they have the time to develop such a title. Suspicious, isn't it?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DaiMac79 @ Jun 12th 2007 11:25PM
This is great news, this game is one of the best of the early FPS computer games, better in some ways than either Doom or Duke3D IMO.
One would think that the reason Durandal may release first is that the maps and graphics for Marathon 1 have long since been converted to run on the m2/infinity engine, so hopefully MS would put all 3 games in one package for, say, 800 points, if it has a good online mode with matchmaking I would buy it in a heartbeat.
RoboJoel @ Jun 12th 2007 11:38PM
All the games are freely playable on MacOS, MacOS X, Linux, and even Windows thanks to the open source Aleph One Durandal Engine, complete with very competent network play. I don't see why it's that big of a deal that they are being released on Xbox Live Arcade.
I'm definitely going to download it day and date of release, however... just to get that extra polish. Such a classic series, I still prefer DOOM (I managed to survive Windows 3.1 and 95 before the not so wonderous MacOS 8 wooed me :P ). But Marathon is where it's at when you are looking for story driven, frantic, and surprisingly smart FPS gameplay in the classic sense. Quake and Unreal be damned.
dmerc @ Jun 13th 2007 12:04AM
This news has me so completely and utterly geeked although I have to ++ the hope for this being a 3-pack with all the Marathons in a single download with Bungie bringing in the Halo matchmaking system for multiplayer.
Hopefully this will also lead to a resurgence of frogblasting of the ventcore, se7vens popping up in the oddest places and acknowledgment that Marathon has one of the best shotgun implementations in any FPS.
_woLf @ Jun 13th 2007 12:22AM
What is with the weird graphics?
Seems a little strange to make that just for this blog post. O_o
mko @ Jun 13th 2007 12:32AM
Hahahah, Bob: "there everywhere!"
GoonieGooGoo @ Jun 13th 2007 12:45AM
Aaaah......MARATHON....brings back memories of me linking my Mac Powerbook 540C to my friends Performa 630 via whatever the hell that proprietary local networking cabling Apple used to use.....
Good times.....I am hoping that they do not rehash the computer gone mad in HALO 3. But I won't care anyway....i do miss the BETA so.
Daniel @ Jun 13th 2007 1:07AM
Good news. I was starting to miss rampant AI ravings.
Hopefully this supports usb keyboards and mice.
john @ Jun 13th 2007 1:36AM
Awesome. I was hoping this would happen. The first one was a good game, but the 2nd was better, and it had a far more interesting story. Seeing as the games are very similar, it would be trivial to bring the other two out. They'd better give the graphics the XBLA-enhanced while they're at it.
PyroMyrmidon @ Jun 13th 2007 1:52AM
Durandal was the only game of the trilogy to land on a Microsoft OS(with the exception of Aleph One and such things), so I'm going to go ahead and guess that that's the reason why Durandal is showing up and not the other two.
rasgueado @ Jun 13th 2007 2:05AM
How they have time? Bungie's made I few bucks... I'm willing to bet that they just hired a few people. I hear people do that.
Jared @ Jun 13th 2007 2:14AM
#10 - I want you to watch this very carefully..
*Wink*
ssuk @ Jun 13th 2007 2:17AM
rasgueado: well, it's an old game which they retain the source code for, quick tampering with the controls, make it 360 friendly... Shouldn't take more than a team of 5-8 people to pull off... I miss the old days with games like Gunstar Heroes, created by a team of very few people (6 people, I believe it was) now-a-day it's more like a film's staff ammount to create a game...
Noxat @ Jun 13th 2007 2:44AM
Marathon games on XBLA would be incredible. They deserve to be on XBLA. Anyone who thinks Halo is incredible should see how advanced these games were for their time.
why not the LS2/LS7? @ Jun 13th 2007 3:59AM
Likely they started with Marathon 2 because it was more portable than the first one (only 2 ever appeared on a non-Mac platform). Also, Marathon 1 had the 3d view in a tiny window in the corner.
All in all, it's not a bad choice.
If any of the people out there responsible for this are reading, if you don't get the Marathon: Infinity code, you're missing a major fix in the splash damage (missile) detection that makes playing online rather annoying at times. You can simply shoot a missile next to someone (which is the smart thing to do) and cause it landed on an adjacent poly, it has no effect.
The only problem with this release it it will show to a wide audience how un-revolutionary Halo was if you had access to a Mac running Marathon. Also, Jason isn't all that creative when it comes to stories, and the story in Halo 1/2 is pretty similar to Marathon 1/2 (switching sides, etc).
I agree with the poster above, the shotguns (dual-wield!) in Marathon worked very well and were very satisfying to use.
incrediblebulk92 @ Jun 13th 2007 5:45AM
Wow always wanted to try this game, awesome idea to bring it the the live arcade, they should have more games like this on the arcade, long games :D
theGreenGrunt @ Jun 13th 2007 7:03AM
Im stoked!
This game is a masterpiece.
Fusion pistol turned into the plasma pistol and so on. The Spnkr missle in Halo was the Spnkr missle in Marathon and so on.
You can see where many of the Halo ideas and graphics came from. Heck even some of the aliens from Marathon evolved into Halo aliens.
Spht!
theGreenGrunt @ Jun 13th 2007 7:06AM
Guilty spark character with his floatey fellow robots are in Marathon. They dont talk but they wander around and attack you.
I miss the exploding BOBs. I wish Bungie would remake Marathon in HiDef. Many that would rock. Or make it with the Halo3 engine.
Daniel @ Jun 13th 2007 9:48AM
Frog blast the vent core!!!!1
[explosive suicide]
okenny @ Jun 13th 2007 12:03PM
I call bullshit!!
hakdragon @ Jun 13th 2007 12:34PM
I see no real point in buying this, especially since the Marathon games are not only open source, but completely free. See http://source.bungie.org/get/
Joe Smith @ Jun 13th 2007 1:28PM
Best thing about tired old games like this is how they show how far tech has come. I played this back in the day and it made me inceredibly motion sick and the graphics were painful even for 1995. If it is essentially unchanged, it will really make you appreciate good 3D, real textuires, bump mapping, lighting, phycics, etc...
LordMinogue @ Jun 13th 2007 2:50PM
I cant wait to play this game. This also adds to the speculation that Marathon and Halo are the same game universe.
Crono @ Jun 13th 2007 3:15PM
LordMinogue, I thought this was already settled? Didn't RvB use marathon for the timetravel segment?
Kommisar @ Jun 13th 2007 6:09PM
The Marathon series was probably one of the best examples of putting compelling characters into an FPS genre ever. Durandal remains one of my favorite video game characters of all time, even though all you ever saw of 'him' was text on a terminal...
As for Halo and Marathon being in the same universe... why not:
- Master Chief is an advanced combat cyborg.
- The player in Marathon is an advanced combat cyborg (this is hinted at in the first game, and essentially confirmed by some of Durandal's comments in M2).
Jamie Reid @ Jun 14th 2007 9:45AM
Uh, where on the German website does it say that it's a new X-Box version that's been rated? It looks to me like it's just the German language version of the game for Mac & PC from 1996.
Geoff @ Jun 14th 2007 12:58PM
Easy... M2: Durandal was released Mac AND PC, so there's very little porting necessary.
Ben Davies @ Jun 14th 2007 1:48PM
I have to agree with Jamie Reid- where exactly is the evidence it is going to be on XBLA? Examining the link does not indicate that it is even going to be on the xbox, or any other system. If im missing something then I apologise, but on the surface of what is provided by the link, it is only essentially stating the date of when it was released, and which platforms it is available on which are incidentally PC/Mac-PC...no xbox360. If im wrong, please tell me as I, like everyone else commenting here, would love to see Marathon on XBLA..