Well there you have it in all its glory. JJARRO WERE AT TAU CETI in great BIG green capital letters on "Never Burn Money". Talk about spelling it out for us. Of course the word JJARRO is spelt incorrectly it should be JJARO, but who's complaining. The map writing was viewed using Pfhorte 1.0d11. Versions of Pfhorte shortly after this no longer displayed the map writing in Marathon. This all occurred around the later half of April 1995. You could have continued to see the map writing after this date if you had used either Marathon Interactive Augmentor (MIA) or Marathon Map Editor (MME).

"Never Burn Money" is a Greg Kirkpatrick level and the first level to have map writing. The writing on the map is the ONLY reference to the Jjaro in the first Marathon game and the only link between PID and Marathon until the release of Marathon 2. Thus the only way you could have made the PID/Marathon connection was when the Marathon community developed the tools (technology) to edit maps thereby discovering the map writing.

Anyone who is a fan of 2001 will no doubt see the similarity between this and mankind developing the tools (technology) to reach the moon thereby discovering the monolith (Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One). Simple coincidence... or was Greg Kirkpatrick at his old tricks again?

Craig Stanton <Craig@maris.com> provides the map writing from the Infinity levels.

Rise robot rise-> "Where am I ?"

Post Naval Trauma-> "Coal burnin' 'gin"

You think your big time (both versions) -> "#Marathon rules"

try again-> "No saving for true vidboys","#0","#1","#2"

Y.A.F.N.M-> "tuncer"

Beyond Thunder dome-> "tuncer"

House of pain-> "tuncer"

King of pain-> "fm"

La costa nostra-> "fm"

dead fields-> "fm"

route 66 (both versions)-> "*"

mars needs women-> "August 1994 Macworld"

Melatonin-> "Why am I falling"

Craig goes on to say:

In map view on "La costa" there is a note which reads 'FM was here', so if FM is a person Tuncer might be as well!

Yup you could be right. FM could be a person but I'm not sure about Tuncer. I'd need some evidence. ;-)

Craig Stanton <Craig@maris.com> writes:

...in "no artifical colors" there was "Tuncer/GK carnage rules". And other maps refer to GK ruling, so Tuncer seems more like a person every moment.

Yeah but he could a Simulacrum. Better make sure. Shoot him once to check. ;-)

Just to set the record straight - "Tuncer" stands for Tuncer Deniz (Production Manager at Bungie). It was all a joke folks. :-)

Responding to treellama's comment above that the Marathon: Durandal XBLA survival level 'Sonic Electronic Ball Breakers'
"looks like it was going to be a bigger map." Chelsea Bridge
writes:

treellama is right: Sonic Electronic Ball Breakers was going to be larger. i quickly came to the
realization that a smaller, tighter map made for better games of survival, so i scrapped ideas
for additional architecture. as you might guess, then, Sonic Electronic was the first completed
of the four that were shipped.

On the Infinity level Eat the Path there is a secret lava room with floor and ceiling textures laid out in the form of words. This is different from the above Map Writings but it is included here for completeness.

The secret lava room can only be accessed if you choose the less obvious path on this level. This path starts out with a 'leap of faith' used to great effect by Jason Jones in such levels as Habe Quiddam and Ingue Ferroque. On both these levels the player must drop down onto lava to progress but without knowing if there is an actual exit. Hence a 'leap of faith'.

Finding the secret lava room is not easy as there are no obvious visual clues to its existence. Once inside you will see the letters HOME written in the lava.