"The idea is to bring together the fine folks from this community, and find an excuse to play/discuss Marathon."

Marathon Redux. Back on July 25, 2001 Grasshopper started the Volunteers series on the Story Forum. Basically the idea was to revisited the Marathon levels in order to discover new stuff or rediscover forgotten stuff. Grasshooper wrote:

Volunteers????
Posted By: Grasshopper <rowland@us.inter.net>
Date: 7/25/01 1:03 p.m.

Well, as we all know, today's the anniversary of the day the Marathon _will_ be attacked.

If anyone's interested, I'd like for some of us to go through M1 (and more if we can), in sequence, completing roughly one level a day, and discussing each level chronologically as it is completed, with a focus on the story, of course. Maybe we can bring in some additional perspectives from the arrival.bungie.org documents.

The idea is to bring together the fine folks from this community, and find an excuse to play/discuss Marathon.

Anyone interested?

-gh

So was born the Volunteers series. After a few levels Mark Levin <haveblue@mac.com> took the lead and provided some remarkable insights into the story, the levels and the gameplay. Indeed Mark's comments on Double Aught's Marathon Infinity levels have opened this almost impenetrable storyline to a much wider audience.

Below is the full list of links to all the levels revisited. Some levels have more than one thread and some threads cover more than one level.

Marathon
Arrival
Bigger Guns Nearby
Never Burn Money
Defend THIS!
Couch Fishing
The Rose
Smells Like Napalm, Tastes Like Chicken!
Cool Fusion
G4 Sunbathing
Blaspheme Quarantine
Bob-B-Q, Shake Before Using..., Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!
G4 Sunbathing, Blaspheme Quarantine, Bob-B-Q, Shake Before Using..., Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!
Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap
Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap
Habe Quiddam
Neither High nor Low
Pfhor Your Eyes Only...
No Artificial Colors
Unpfhorgiven
Two Times Two Equals...
Beware of Low-Flying Defense Drones...
Beware of Low-Flying Defense Drones...
Eupfhoria
Pfhoraphobia
Ain't Got Time Pfhor This...
Welcome to the Revolution......
Try again
Ingue Ferroque

Marathon 2
Waterloo Waterpark
The Slings & Arrows of Outrageous Fortune
Charon Doesn't Make Change
What About Bob?
Come and Take your Medicine
We're Everywhere
Ex Cathedra
Nuke and Pave
Curiouser and Curiouser...
"Eat It, Vid Boi!", "The Hard Stuff Rules...", "Bob's Big Date", and "Six Thousand Feet Under"
If I Had a Rocket Launcher, I'd Make Somebody Pay
Sorry Don't Make It So
For Carnage, Apply Within
Begging For Mercy Makes Me Angry!!
The Big House
This Side Toward Enemy
God Will Sort The Dead...
My Own Private Thermopylae
Kill Your Television
Where the Twist Flops
Beware of Abandoned Rental Trucks
Requiem For a Cyborg
Fatum Iustum Stultorum
Feel the Noise
All Roads Lead To Sol...

Marathon Infinity
Ne Cede Malis
Rise Robot Rise
Poor Yorick
Confound Delivery
Electric Sheep One
Where are monsters in dreams
Aie Mak Sicur
Acme Station
Post Naval Trauma
Where Some Rarely Go
Thing What Kicks...
Electric Sheep Two
Whatever You Please
Carroll Street Station
Naw Man He's Close
Foe Hammer
Hang Brain
Electric Sheep Three
Eat the Path
You're Wormfood, Dude
By Committee
One thousand thousand slimy things
A Converted Church in Venice, Italy
Son of Grendel
Strange Aeons
Bagged Again
You Think You're Big Time? You're Gonna Die Big Time!
Aye Mak Sicur

I'll leave the last words on this series to Grasshopper:

Thank you Mark and everyone else...

Posted By: Grasshopper <rowland@us.inter.net>
Date: 12/6/01 3:09 p.m.

In Response To: Volunteers: Aye Mak Sicur (Mark Levin)

I first came up with the "Volunteers" idea as a means to bring together the readership of the Story Page, all of us wacky thon-heads doing M1 levels once again, and talking about it. It seemed like a nice way to celebrate the anniversary of the attack on the Marathon

Well, I posted Volunteers -- Arrival, and people joined in. After two or three levels, the bar was raised pretty high -- the level comments were being written by folks who knew the levels damn well better than I did, and who could write about them better than I ever could, so I switched into "lurk" mode, like many others I suspect.

From the start, it became clear that Mark not only spearheaded the whole series, but kept it together during thick and thin.

So, to Mark and everybody else, well done.

Can't wait until Hamish immortalizes all the great work you did. And speaking of HS, his post:

Almost seven years on I'm still learning stuff.

Coming from someone who knows more about Marathon than Durandal knew about doors, that's high praise indeed.

Bravo indeed,

-Grasshopper

Volunteers revisited and expanded: Ten years on.

Philtron <electriccartilage@gmail.com> in a Story forum post writes:

"By Committee" is one of my favorite levels in Marathon, I love prison escape levels,
but the Volunteers entry on this level misses a lot of what's going on here. So I decided
I would go deep and pick up the things that Volunteers didn't notice.

Read Philtron's  By Committee  insights and views.

Want to add to the Volunteers series? Have a favorite level you want to discuss?
Then post it to the Story forum.