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Marathon's Story Page
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Marathon's Story Page
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This Day in Marathon.
Day #802. Happy Marathon Reveal Day. On this day 31 years ago Bungie revealed their new game Marathon at Macworld Expo 1994 in Boston. Bungie had shown a Marathon Alpha at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco earlier that year but fans were highly critical of the quality of the game.   The late Spring '94 release date came and went. Marathon needed more work. If you are getting a déjà vu feeling about all this... welcome to Marathon where (circumstances are cyclical). But back to the Marathon reveal on August 2, 1994. People queued up for hours to play Marathon using a Virtual Reality (VR) headset.    In a MacFormat magazine interview Jason Jones explained how this 'magic' was achieved. We knew we were eventually going to get into VR. We didn't expect it to be this soon, but from the start, we set up Marathon to let you look up and down, which is an important feature for a headset. We set it up so you could render a stereo image. If you plan from the start it's not a big deal.Not a big deal? To this day no one has been able to replicate playing Marathon on a CyberMaxx Virtual Reality headset leading some to believe that it was all faked like the moon landings. Others point to timeline shenigans, alternate realities and in-game characters now wearing CyberMaxx headsets.  Happy Marathon Reveal Day. (circumstances are cyclical). |
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This Day in Marathon.
Day #801. It's a new month. It's sketchy Friday. It's Happy Marathon: Durandal Day! What happened last month? Where are the sketches? What is Durandal Day? Decisions, descisions... On this day 18 years ago Marathon: Durandal, an 'enhanced port' of Marathon 2: Durandal, was released for Xbox Live Arcade on the Xbox 360. It was developed by Freeverse Inc. in association with Bungie Studios.  Marathon: Durandal offered high definition graphics and support for 720p widescreen displays.  It also came with a heart pounding Survival Mode. The Survival Mode rule was simple. Survive long enough to extract. Only there was no extraction and you always lost all your gear. Times were tough for gamers back then.  Survival Mode came with four specifically designed levels to test your fortitude. 1. Calm Like Your MomYes, Mom jokes were back!  Bruce Morrison (aka hippieman) explained how Survival Mode was conceived. It was built originally to test the enemy spawning code, and one of the guys kind of come up with the ruleset logic in an afternoon. We played it on Beyond Thunderdome. Then another long time Marathoner came up with a few custom maps (on an old Ti Mac Book Pro), and our intern at large just kind of all of a sudden made a map having never touched Forge or Marathon before. It all came together really fast and just felt good.To celebrate the launch of Marathon: Durandal Bungie released the Marathon Durandal Tee.  However it was quickly pointed out that the Marathon Durandal Tee actually said Marathon 2 Durandal. The shirt was quietly removed from the Bungie Store and the person responsible was sent to Gr'ndl Prime for conditioning. As was the way. The Marathon Durandal Tee has become something of a collector's item assuming you can can find one. The smart vibrant orange Marathon Durandal logo was carefully stored away for future use.   Happy Marathon: Durandal Day! |
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Page maintained by Hamish Sinclair Hamish.Sinclair123@gmail.com
Last updated August 1, 2025