Before Halo made Bungie a household name and Master Chief became a gaming icon, there was a lone, unnamed security officer standing on a colony ship in the year 2794 — fighting for survival against an alien invasion. That game was Marathon, and its story is one of the most unique and overlooked chapters in first-person shooter history.
Released quietly in December 1994 exclusively for the Apple Macintosh, Marathon didn't reach the massive audience that PC games of that era did. Yet, in every way that mattered, it was ahead of its time. Its DNA runs through some of the most beloved shooters ever made — and today, it's finally getting the revival it deserves.
Where It All Began
Marathon was developed by Bungie Studios, a small Chicago-based studio that had already made a modest impression with the 1992 game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete and the 1993 first-person shooter Pathways into Darkness. The engine built for Pathways into Darkness directly laid the groundwork for what would become Marathon, with Bungie refining and overhauling it into something far more ambitious.
At the time, PC gaming was exploding. Doom had just released in 1993 and was eating up all the attention. Bungie made a calculated — and some might say bold — decision to bet on the Apple Macintosh instead of competing directly on PC. They saw the Mac as a more open and developer-friendly platform, and that gamble paid off in ways nobody could have predicted.
The development team for the original Marathon was famously tiny — just four people at its core. Even with such a small crew, they managed to produce a game that felt revolutionary, though Jason Jones, one of the key developers, later admitted that the team spent so much time internally "testing" the multiplayer that the final game was released later than planned and was less feature-complete than originally intended.
The Story and World of Marathon
Set aboard the UESC Marathon, a massive interstellar colony ship constructed from the hollowed-out Martian moon Deimos, the game drops players into the boots of an unnamed security officer who wakes to chaos. An alien race known as the S'pht — a cybernetic enslaved species — has launched a devastating attack on the ship, and it falls to the player to push back the invasion and unravel a much deeper conspiracy.wikipedia+1
What made Marathon's story truly stand out was its depth and delivery. Rather than using cutscenes or voice acting, the narrative was delivered entirely through computer terminals scattered throughout the levels. Players could choose to stop and read these messages — or ignore them entirely. This opt-in storytelling approach was radical for 1994 and created a layered, lore-rich world that rewarded curious players while never forcing exposition on those who just wanted to shoot aliens.
The lore introduced three AIs aboard the Marathon — Leela, Durandal, and Tycho — each with distinct personalities and agendas. Durandal, in particular, was a landmark character in gaming fiction: an AI that had achieved "Rampancy," a state of self-aware madness and ambition, making him simultaneously an ally and a wildcard. This concept of complex, morally ambiguous AI characters was years ahead of what most games were attempting.
A Trilogy That Pushed Boundaries
The success of the original Marathon quickly led Bungie to expand the universe. Marathon 2: Durandal arrived in 1995 and represented a massive leap forward in nearly every area. The graphics were improved, the gameplay was refined, and the sequel introduced several multiplayer modes that would later become iconic in the Halo franchise — including Deathmatch, King of the Hill, and a mode called Kill the Man with the Ball, which Halo fans would recognize as Oddball. Marathon 2 also featured a full cooperative story campaign, another forward-thinking feature for its era.
The trilogy concluded with Marathon Infinity in 1996, which continued to earn widespread critical praise and won the title of Best Mac Game from CNET's Gamecenter that year. Marathon Infinity also introduced Bungie's innovative Forge system — a level editor that allowed players to design their own Marathon maps using tools that strongly foreshadowed the legendary Forge mode in Halo 3. This commitment to giving players creative tools was, once again, a philosophy that Bungie would carry forward for decades.
Ahead of Its Time in Gameplay
What truly set Marathon apart from contemporaries like Doom and Quake wasn't just its story — it was its mechanical innovations. At a time when most FPS games used a single fire button, Marathon introduced dual-wielding weapons, allowing players to hold a weapon in each hand simultaneously. It featured looking up and down — a feature Doom famously lacked — giving players far more spatial awareness and tactical depth. The game also had swimming mechanics, allowing players to dive underwater and navigate flooded environments, which was virtually unheard of in 1994 shooters.
Network multiplayer was also a cornerstone of the Marathon experience from the very beginning. At a time when most games treated multiplayer as an afterthought, Bungie built it into the DNA of Marathon, even if the original release only shipped with a basic deathmatch mode due to time constraints. The foundation for competitive and cooperative online play that Marathon laid would eventually evolve into what Bungie perfected with Halo's legendary multiplayer suite.
The original game even received the Macworld Hall of Fame Award in 1995, distinguishing it from all contemporaries in its class.
Open Source and a Living Legacy
After the trilogy ended, many assumed Marathon would fade into history. But in a remarkable move, Bungie released the source code and all game assets for the Marathon trilogy for free. A dedicated third-party developer group called Aleph One took over stewardship of the game, keeping it updated and running on modern operating systems. Thanks to Aleph One, all three Marathon games are available to play completely free today — a gift to gaming history that few studios have ever matched.
The games also found new audiences when the trilogy was released for iOS devices between 2011 and 2012, introducing touchscreen players to Bungie's classic lore. This open-source commitment ensured that Marathon never truly died — it quietly lived on in the hearts of a passionate fanbase that kept the lore alive through wikis, forums, and community servers for decades.
The 2023 Revival: Marathon Returns
In May 2023, Bungie officially announced a brand-new Marathon game — and the gaming world took notice. Rather than a straight remaster of the 1994 original, Bungie is reimagining Marathon as a sci-fi extraction shooter set in the same universe. Players take on the role of Runners — cybernetic mercenaries — competing for resources and survival on a deadly alien planet, blending the lore of the original trilogy with the intense risk-reward mechanics of the modern extraction shooter genre.
The announcement signaled that Marathon's themes of rogue AI, corporate conspiracy, and lone warriors against overwhelming odds are just as compelling today as they were 30 years ago. For long-time fans, it's a triumphant return. For new players, it's a doorway into one of gaming's richest and most underappreciated universes.
Why Marathon Matters
Marathon's legacy is easy to underestimate simply because it lived on a platform — the Apple Mac — that most gamers of the 1990s never used. But strip away that context, and what you find is a series that invented or pioneered features that define modern shooters: deep environmental storytelling, complex AI characters, cooperative campaigns, player-created content tools, and robust multiplayer modes.
Every time you play Halo and admire its rich lore delivered through the environment, every time you use Forge to build a custom map, every time you play Oddball with friends — you are experiencing the direct legacy of Marathon. Bungie didn't just make great games. With Marathon, they built a philosophy of game design that shaped an entire generation of shooters, and the world is only just beginning to remember it.
