“Somewhere in the heavens…they are waiting.”
These were the words that inspired an entire generation of Mac gamers throughout the mid-90’s as Bungie released its sci-fi Marathon trilogy first-person shooter epic. The game, which would influence the company’s work on Halo and Destiny, showed what was possible on the Mac with a rich space opera story to boot.
Developer Dustin Wenz and Dome-C Studio LLC appear to have brought this to the iPhone and iPad as part of an open source project, and the ports of Marathon, Marathon 2: Durandal, and Marathon: Infinity are now available for free on the App Store.
The games look amazing from the trailer, and while there may be a bit of a learning curve to get used to playing Marathon on an iPhone or iPad, all the elements are there to dive back into Bungie’s epic trilogy.
Per Wenz, “Just prior to the Microsoft acquisition, Bungie released the Marathon 2 engine source code to the public, which resulted in an enhanced version of that engine dubbed Aleph One. This has been used for over two decades for community-created Marathon projects and ports. Daniel Blezek ported the original Marathon to the iPad as a side project, and we have been improving it ever since.”
The Marathon series is available for free and require iOS 15 or iPadOS 15 or later to install and run. If you’ve had a chance to try the games, please let us know about your experience in the comments and happy gaming!
Via Dome-C Studio, Aleph One, App Store (Marathon), App Store (Marathon 2: Durandal), and App Store (Marathon: Infinity)