Here is a 26 minute making of, found on the Marathon Trilogy CD-ROM*, hidden as an invisible file inside a folder containing Bungie’s first game, Gnop. Nowadays it’s harder than ever to dig into a Mac Classic OS 9 CD-ROM and watch this clip. So I’m posting this here. For posterity and because long before Halo hit the mainstream, Bungie brought many of us joy with the Marathon and Myth series.
As if you’re going to watch a 26 minute video featuring a hoard of young game developers making one of the best all time game series for the Macintosh. Many of these same folks went on to make Halo, which even takes place in the Marathon universe.
It appears that this tiny bit of gaming history has been widely forgotten, or it was never seen much in the first place. As of this writing, there is one searchable mention of it here, which is probably where I found out about it back in the day.
Highlights include:
- The bug list was written on a Dominos pizza box lid
- “The Shaft”
- Jason Jones miraculous hair, better than the average developer
- Comments on Quake by Jason Jones
- Crazy Mac OS 9 (aka Classic) crash dialogs we all forgot
- Fat CRT monitors (shot with a video camera unable to sync to the slow refresh rates)
Bungie made many games beyond Marathon, was bought by Microsoft, then released to be independent again after the success of the Halo series. Many of the core individuals in this clip no longer work there. If nothing else this is a great reminder of the hard work and challenges that a small company endured to ship what has become one the more beloved games on the Macintosh platform.
Download the clip here: Marathon Home Movies
Notes: the original clip was 240×180 pixels and encoded in the now nearly forgotten Cinepak video codec. For modern playback I converted it to an iPod/iPhone/iPad/Playstation 3/etc. compatible H.264 clip.
*Yes, I still have the original Marathon Trilogy box. I never used the stickers either.
Update: Bits of footage from this appears in an hour-long 20th anniversary video.