[image:8947 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] December 21, 2004 marks the tenth anniversary of the release of Marathon, the first in a series of three science fiction first person shooters published by Bungie in the 1990s. The games were primarily made for the Macintosh platform, despite a port of Marathon 2: Durandal for Windows and the ill-fated Super Marathon port for the even more ill-fated Mac-based console by Bandai called the Pippin. Bungie also published Marathon Infinity, a scenario by Double Aught that used the Marathon 2 engine to continue the story of the nameless security guard protagonist. Later the Marathon 2 engine's source code was opened, paving the way for the development of the Aleph One project, which has ported the engine to modern operating systems including OS X, Linux, and Windows, allowing users to play the full series of games using current hardware. The History of Bungie, part of the Icons series run by G4TechTV, features a bit on Marathon, the game that gave Bungie its reputation among Mac gamers and Mac users and is, in many ways, the progenitor of and inspiration for Halo and Halo 2. HBO is making this show available for download now that it is off G4TechTV's broadcast schedule.

If you've never played the games, check them out, either by playing Aleph One or just by reading the excellent and compendious Marathon Story Page maintained by Hamish Sinclair.

If you're already a Marathon fan and want to find a unique way to celebrate this occasion, check out the Marathon anniversary wallpaper done by Jay "Anaphiel" Faircloth, who has also done digital artwork for M1A1, the conversion of the Marathon 1 scenario for the Aleph One engine, and Marathon: Resurrection, a Marathon-themed mod for the Unreal engine, as well as other Marathon wallpapers.

UPDATE: Anaphiel has updated his site with a broader selection of designs and sizes of his Marathon Anniversary Desktop.