If you know a thing or two about Halo, you might well know that it was originally heading to the Mac before eventually ending up as the Xbox juggernaut it has since become. It was heading there because developers Bungie Software had a fair bit of history with the Mac, including an entire trilogy of Marathon titles, the third of which, Marathon Infinity, making its way onto the 1001 list.
Like Halo, Marathon Infinity is a first-person shooter set somewhere in the Universe that isn't Earth. You'll be fending off all kinds of monstrous threats as you navigate the maze-like levels to the best of your abilities, all the while pointing out references to the Halo series, should you know any.
Anyway, it's time to head towards infinity...
Fun Times
Marathon Infinity is a Mac title and I've not owned a Mac for some years now, so I didn't think I'd have the easiest of times playing it but the Internet has us covered there. Bungie released the source code for all the Marathon titles, and PC gamers were then able to play using the open source Aleph One, which comes complete with modern overhauls to the graphics and controls, as well as continued multiplayer support and whathaveyou.
So, armed with Aleph One and some keyboard controls a little closer to what we're familiar with today, I was ready to dive into the world of Marathon Infinity.
Frustrations
Space is purple in the future, and so are the aliens that inhabit it. Their attacks hurt quite a lot, even on normal difficulty, and so, from time to time, I was staring at the ceiling thanks to a simple death animation (the camera falls a little and points to the ceiling). It's a well-detailed ceiling, that. Really sells the notion that this is a functional space. Dark and dank and industrial. It looks nice.
The enemies you encounter are apparently colour-coded according to their own difficulty, but even if they weren't, running into four of them at once was always going to be a recipe for disaster. But where was I running?
Assuming I am on a space station of some sort, it is cramped and sometimes difficult to look at, with lifts and moving staircases slowly upsetting my inner ear the more I stared at them.
Motion sickness, especially with sensitive mouse settings and buttons that look to the left and right before you decide to turn in one of those directions, wasn't too big of a problem compared to other titles, but maybe I'd want to turn off the 'auto run' option and tinker with the settings some more before venturing forth.
But what am I venturing into?
Computer terminals are scattered around the place with flavour text dumps detailing the backstory. They didn't help me.
The Wikipedia entry does a little better, but the plot of Marathon Infinity feels like someone has written a few different versions of the same story, mashed them together into an order that doesn't make sense, and then named all the key players after the Scrabble tiles that fell on the floor.
To quote Wikipedia: "The story involves the player "jumping" between alternative realities via surreal dream sequences, seeking to prevent a chaotic entity known as the W'rkncacnter — an eldritch abomination — from being released from Lh'owon's dying sun. These jumps are apparently caused either by Jjaro technology or by the W’rkncacnter’s chaotic nature; at the end of Marathon 2, as the Pfhor's Trih Xeem or "early nova" device is fired upon the sun to explode it, Durandal recounts an ancient S'pht legend in which the W'rkncacnter was sealed inside of the sun by the Jjaro eons ago. The player begins as Durandal's ally, only to be transported almost immediately to a reality where Durandal did not capture the player after the events of Marathon. As such, he is controlled by the Pfhor-tortured AI Tycho."
Yeah. My thoughts exactly.
Breaking it down, it means that the spaghetti junction level design means some degree of choice (or randomness, perhaps) in which levels a player encounters before they all eventually converge into the same endpoint. Neatly wrapped up and making perfect sense, you'd hope.
Knowing that doesn't help me in finding a way out of the first level though...
After a while, the deaths and the eeeeever so slight motion sickness and the 'nope, still no idea which way I've come from, which way I'm going or which way I've even been' got too much for me and I left Marathon Infinity alone.
Final Words
Looking it up on YouTube, I find some Marmite-like reviews, where Marathon Infinity is both still revealing interesting in-Universe facts and ways of thinking about the plot, but is also an utter mess of a game with sprawling levels for the sake of sprawling levels, and difficulty that borders on impossible in the right (or, indeed, wrong) circumstances.
I did learn a lot from the videos though. The plot makes no sense, some levels require you to swim or hold your breath in the vacuum of space, and the box it came in was weirdly shaped. All important things to note, I think you'll agree. Marathon was also the series that first introduced dual-wielding guns to the FPS genre. Bonus little fact there.
I joke, but we live in a world where anybody can play Marathon Infinity now, tinkered to their own liking. With a map and a guide in hand, as well as a drop or two in difficulty, I maaaay go in for another look, thanks mainly to the work of those behind Aleph One. If I had to dig out old Macs in order to run this game, then Marathon Infinity may never have gotten played and could well be consigned to the history books.
It's a good job then that there are people willing to keep these games alive for the rest of us enjoy, because Marathon Infinity, along with Marathon and Marathon 2, is free, easy, and there's no reason to not try it out - but do adjust the settings to your liking first.
Fun Facts
The inclusion of the Forge level editor - used by the developers themselves - meant players could make their own maddening trips through the Universe, should the standard maps prove too difficult.
Marathon Infinity, developed by Bungie Software, first released in 1996.
Version played: Aleph One port of Mac OS, 1996, 2015.
Version watched: Mac OS, 1996 (The Examined Life (of Gaming))
Aleph One, 2015 (DWTerminator, Games Done Quick)