New Bungie fans who wanted to experience Bungie's earlier science fiction shooter classic, Marathon, up until now were out of luck. The vast majority of stores simply didn't have it for sale, and only a few copies turned up now and then on Ebay. And although a marvelous new project, Aleph One, would allow the game to run on modern operating systems, you still needed the data files from a retail copy of the game to make them work, and only the files from Marathon 1 were available online, in the form of the M1A1 scenario download.

Now, Bungie has officially sanctioned the free (as in beer, not speech) release of the entire Marathon Trilogy, and Bungie.org is hosting the files. So far only the Mac versions are up, but a method for creating files that Windows users can use with their copies of Aleph One is being developed. Go to the site to get the files, or just read the FAQ. The Aleph One page today also notes that the Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity files from the Trilogy Release site are fully compatible with Aleph One; and if there's another Marathon file or scenario you want to see online, you can email them at trilogyrelease@bungie.org.