July 15, 2005
Marathon's Story.
Huge, aging Mac nerds need only click on this link. Wow. "In addition to these questions is the question - who is communicating this message to us? The first line is typical of Leela "Your last mission was a success, but I have terrible news". The reference to your last mission is presumably the clearing of the Engineering Section of Pfhor to prevent them from detonating a bomb (Shake Before Using...). If you had successfully completed the earlier level "Bob-B-Q" you would have received the following message from Leela..."
-
Ah, I remember first being introduced to Marathon. Way back in college, we were in the room of one computer cognescenti-type who showed us this game he got to play test. It was in its 'beta' version, needing Mac fanatics such as himself to play it to death and give feedback. He allowed both of us to give it a whirl. Though not my first ever experience with "first-person shooters" I found the atmosphere unnerving and then, at the appearance of the floating aliens, downright terrifying. A year or so later, in another dorm, Marathon had been released, and another computer guy had hooked his Mac up to a surround sound speaker system. When you heard the insectlike clatter of the aliens to your right, you knew they were there. Woe betide you if you heard anything behind you! As you might expect, the whole game scared the bejeezus out of me, so I never managed to make it through (well, that, and I kept on getting hacked up or atomized or whatever). Thanks for the memories, AS. I think I'll have nightmares tonight. (-:
-
In case you haven't been paying attention to the state of the Marathon trilogy lately, you can play the games for free now, since Bungie is apparently Microsoft's good half (or tenth, or something). Download them here, and if you don't have an old machine running Mac OS 9 lying around (and I don't blame you if you don't; brrr), download Aleph One to play it. If you want to get it up and running on Windows, look here. For OS X, it's a bit easier: just download the Mac .sit file for Marathon 2 or Infinity, decompress it, drop a copy of Aleph One in the same folder, start it, and go. I highly recommend that everyone play through one of these at least once. The story is amazing and fully justifies the site linked to in the FPP. And dealing with rampant AI is always fun. (The latter part of my nick comes from the title of "vidboi," given to those who always punch switches, never use Caps Lock for running, and always shoot the Bobs. See here for more.) The number of this thread is 9169, which is a 16 surrounded by two 9's, that is, 9 + 9 = 18 ⇒ 1 - 8 = -7, and 16 ⇒ 1 + 6 = 7...
-
Psh you use caps for your run key.
-
... Yeah, I do. *hangs head in shame*
-
i chuckled at a scene in one of the Battlestar Galactica episodes that aired all at once on scifi recently. A small landing party drops out of jumpspace into a swarm of cylons, and a character shrieks, "they're everywhere!" before dying.
-
Actually, I'm pretty sure that Bungie gave away teh source code before Microsoft bought them, following in the footsteps of id and other game makers.
-
They had given away the source, but the entire game (including, crucially, the levels) was only made available in January of this year.
-
I am huge (199 cm tall, 112 kg), aging (aren't we all), MAC fan but not nerd, but I am confused. What does this have to do with me being huge and aging?