Cult shooter now available for free on Steam

Bungie’s sci-fi shooter trilogy Marathon is now available in its entirety on Steam. With the free release of “Classic Marathon Infinity,” fans and newcomers can experience the entire series. What’s behind this milestone in gaming history? Aleph One Developers/Bungie

Bungie’s sci-fi classic completes Steam trilogy

Fans of classic first-person shooters can rejoice: With Classic Marathon Infinity, the last part of Bungie’s cult marathon trilogy is now available for free on Steam. How PC Gamers reported, this release completes the Aleph One development team’s project to release all three Marathon games on Valve’s distribution platform. Marathon Infinity was originally released on October 15, 1996 as the conclusion of the series that made Bungie famous before its Halo success. The shooter offered 20 levels in the “Blood Tides of Lh’owon” campaign, which was playable in both single and co-op modes. The story follows on from its predecessors: after the player has defeated the Pfor and awakened the ancient remnants of the S’pht, he finds himself in a world where nothing is as it seems.

The on Steam The version released is based on the Aleph One Engine – an open source project that builds on the Marathon 2 source code released by Bungie in 1999. In addition to the faithful gaming experience, this implementation offers some optional improvements, including support for widescreen HUDs, 3D filtering and perspective, position-based audio, and interpolation for frame rates above 60 FPS.

Milestone in gaming history

The Marathon series has a special place in the history of first-person shooters. As one of the first games of its kind released for the Mac, Marathon set new standards in terms of storytelling and atmosphere in 1994. The trilogy is considered the (indirect) precursor to Bungie’s later success Halo and already features many of the elements that made the studio famous.

With the release on Steam, the series is now being made available to a wider audience. Incidentally, this is the first official Windows version of the trilogy. Previously, the games were only available for Mac, which made them a blind spot in the FPS history of many PC gamers – and also a proud exclamation mark for gamers with Macs.

Bungie supports fan project

It is noteworthy that Bungie officially supports the release by the Aleph One team. The studio commented on this and gave the project its explicit blessing: “We strongly support the Marathon community and Aleph One’s commitment to making the original Marathon for PC, Linux and Mac available to everyone, with cross-platform multiplayer. This is a true homage to the original game.” What is quite interesting is that Bungie itself is working on a reboot of the Marathon series.

This does not make the aforementioned blessing a given, as some developers like to send lawyers here. The new Bungie title, which is designed as a PvP extraction shooter, is due to be released in 2025 – but this is not certain after various turbulences. However, Bungie already released the trilogy itself as freeware in 2005. The release on Steam now makes the games even more accessible and brings them closer to a new audience. For those who don’t want to use Steam, all three games are still available via the Aleph One website.