Classic Marathon arrives on Steam and becomes free-to-play since it was first released in December 1994 and Bungie said there are plans to bring the two sequels to Valve's gaming platform in the future.
The original game came before iconic titles Halo and Destiny and is the first title in a trilogy. Classic Marathon is credited to Aleph One Developers, which is described as an "open source continuation of Bungie's Marathon 3 game engine."
Classic Marathon Comes to Steam
(Photo : Aleph One Developers, Bungie / Screenshot taken from Steam)
It's also worth noting that the group has already made the entire trilogy available to download with support for Mac, PC, and Linux. However, the release on Steam will open up the games to a much larger audience of gamers. The two sequels, Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity, are also being worked on.
While the franchise was never able to solidify itself as a blockbuster like Bungie's other games, it is a game that put the studio on the path to creating titles like Halo.
It is also being revived in another as Bungie confirmed last year that a new Marathon is being developed in the form of a PvP extraction shooter that will launch sometime in 2025, according to The Verge.
The open-source authors also promise "authentic gameplay" with modern conveniences, such as optional widescreen HUD support, 3D filtering/perspective, positional audio, and 60FPS interpolation.
In Bungie's newest Marathon game that is being developed, there will be squads of cybernetic Runners who compete to retrieve artifacts, implants, and weapons from a hostile environment.
The game was first revealed a year ago and the company said that it planned to go dark "for an extended period" until it was ready to show actual gameplay footage, said Polygon.
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The announcement of the release of Classic Marathon came alongside a post by Bungie on X, formerly known as Twitter. It said that they were thrilled to announce the Aleph One community bringing the original 1994-1996 Marathon Trilogy to Steam, beginning with the first in the franchise.
The company also expressed its gratitude to the community for its continued support over the years. The shooter franchise was essentially Bungie's response to Doom and was developed with Mac computers in mind and featured a much more intricate narrative.
A Pioneer in the First-Person Shooter Genre
Lore details that were established in Marathon continued to be referenced in future Bungie games, including Halo and Destiny, according to GamesRadar.
In the original Marathon, players will take control of their character as they fight alien forces that have boarded a human colony ship in the distant Tau Ceti system. Your primary objective is to defend the ship and the crew of the Marathon.
However, discord among the artificial intelligences that control the ship and factionalism among the alien attackers will become the key points of the game's plot. The franchise also pioneered the idea of giving the story through characters that players can talk to and environmental objects to read.
The Marathon series also pioneered cooperative first-person shooter campaigns, which are still available in the latest port. This particular feature was something that was rarely seen even after Bungie made the same in Halo: Combat Evolved.
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