Subject:      Report from MacWorld
From:         smwood@ccs.neu.edu (Steve Wood)
Date:         1995/08/09
Message-Id:   <40apq2$2rr@cisunix1.dfci.harvard.edu>
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Organization: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
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I was at MacWorld on monday and will be back on Friday. Here's a brain
dump of everything I saw. (Mostly re: Marathon)

I got to play Descent on 9500's with 21-inch screens. Wow. Oh wow.

At the Bungie booth:
Weapons have been re-designed since the Preview. The flamethrower looks
a little different, the plasma gun looks better, and the rocket
launcher
looks like a big tube. Not any drastic changes from the Preview, just
some tweaking.

Jason played all day with the name "celer manus dei". He used to be
"superoperaboy" and "habete quidam". Greg played as "Toolator" and his
name tag said "Head Tool". Heh heh. Rob's said "Resident Miscreant"

You can pick a leg and torso color. That way, you have a red top and
blue bottom, etc. The colors are redone, too. Slate was a color, etc.

Seeing someone come after you with double shotguns is very very scary.
The shotguns also take people out with one shot. Ouch.

Different types of netplay we saw:
1. "Kill the guy with the ball" (aka "Smear the queer", not very pc)-
an
object called the "ball" (when we played it was a skull) starts some-
where on the level. Everyone has a time next to their name- how long
they've held the ball. When you have the ball you cannot fire or use
the
run key... but you can drop it if you want to. So one person has the
ball and accumulates time, and the others try to blow him away. When
someone dies with the ball or drops it, it bounces away making "Boing
boing" noises. Heh heh. This is a really cool net game. The skull
graphic is awesome, and we got to see Jason charging around with a
skull
in his hands yelling "Oh Shiiiiiit" as Greg fired missiles at him. Your
motion detector has a glowing enhancement that tells you which
direction
the ball is in. Really cool.

2. "King of the Hill"- Again, there's a timer next to everyone's name.
You accumulate time by how long you can stand in a certain area. Who
ever can stand in that area the longest wins. Didn't play too much of
this.

Robert, the new graphic design guy, has funky hair. He redid all the
weapons. He also designed the "Tank Guys", "New Compilers," and
"Flying Robots". He also said the Fighters have been redesigned for
the final version but aren't in the Preview/Demo.

Doug said that Bob talks a lot more in the full game. He also says he
doesn't feel bad about wasting Bobs even though they scream with his
voice. Disturbing.

No comment on: Release date, how many monsters/levels/etc. and no word
on "If you're the tenth cyborg"

The Demo is like the Preview, but with two-player co-op on the regular
levels, and a network level too. Also lots of little tweaks here and
there. The Preview is like a rough sketch of the Demo. They didn't know
when the Demo would be out, though. They said "Two Weeks".

Me: "Modem play in Marathon 2, please please pleeeeease!"
Jason: (rolls his eyes) (groans) "Uh, we're still... working on
      that...."

Doesn't look too optimistic for modem play. Sorry.

The game we played was just 5 network levels. One of the levels had
an upper and lower level. The lower level had you waist deep in water.
It rocked.

Shadow-y powerup was in the game. Didn't see any invincibility yet.

The machine gun and pistol eject spent casing when you fire them. This
looks really really really cool. Also, they make that "Casing Sound"
(Tink Tink) that was in the beta but got taken out.

Bungie was selling Marathon 1, Marathon 1 CD, Marathon 1 Hint Book, and
two T-Shirts: "My Bob is bigger than your Bob" and "Don't make us kick
your ass"

Everyone at Bungie is really really cool. They talked with us for
hours.
They invited us to play Marathon vs. them after hours. Which we did.
Jason autographed my Marathon 1 instruction book. (I'm such a tool...)

Trivia bit: The band that does the Marathon 2 Song is Power of 7. (or
Power
to 7, something like that.)

Whew, that's all for now. Write me some questions and I'll see what
else
I can think of...

-Steve