Major Nelson says that Marathon Durandal is one of two games that will hit Xbox Live Arcade this week; specifically, on Wednesday, when XBLA gets its weekly update.

Durandal wll cost 800 points. For more information and screenshots, check the Marathon Durandal page at Xbox.com.

Luke Smith has posted an interview with Freeverse's Bruce Morrison over at Bungie.net to explain how and why Marathon is coming to the Xbox and the role that the Bungie community played in it:

Ok, this time it is for real, because it's from the horse's mouth, which is certainly the most trustworthy orifice on a horse. Bungie.net says that Marathon: Durandal is being brought to XBLA by none other than Mac game developer Freeverse. They have a page on Marathon: Durandal at their site.

It will include single player, eight player cooperative play, and multiplayer.

Eight player coop? Zang!

Kotaku is liveblogging the Microsoft press event at E3 Lite, and Brian Crecente has Marathon on his list of XBLA titles being mentioned. Stay tuned while we confirm.

Rumors of such a port have been floating around for some time, and recently a German ratings board had the title appear briefly in its database according to a German gaming site.

No, I don't mean an XBLA release of Marathon, as it seems that is not to be; but rather, what was thought to be a long-dormant project to make a total conversion of Marathon 1 for the Unreal Tournament engine-- Marathon Resurrection-- has finally been released as a Final Candidate.

If you find the open source version of Marathon, Aleph One, still too low-tech for your tastes, but still want to sample Bungie's pre-Halo SF trilogy, have a look.

According to XBLArcade.com, German website xbox-arkiv says that the German ratings board, the USK, has been asked to rate Marathon 2: Durandal, indicating that a port of the Bungie shooter classic, already open sourced and available as Aleph One will be making its way to Xbox Live Arcade sometime in the future.

A new version of the open source Aleph One engine for playing the Marathon games has been released. 0.17 offers a number of netplay-related improvements, and as such is netplay-incompatible with previous versions.

1Up.com obviously didn't get enough Bungie in their "three weeks of Halo 3" coverage, because now the company is getting a mention again-- this time for Marathon.

Unfortunately, it's not a flattering mention. Marathon 2 is featured in their Best Worst Ads 3 feature, on page six, which shows their ad from 1996 that compares video games to a skinner box.

Four Aleph One netmaps and a Lua CTF script for Marathon fans today over at Aleph One, courtesy of eX and W'rkcacnter.

A blog that seems to focus more on politics than gaming marked the 10th anniversary of the release of Marathon Infinity earlier this week.

Needless to say, this game has given me and my friends many happy moments for the last 10 years, and it will continue to do so in the future, as Aleph One, which is the open-source adaptation of the game, has been available for some years. And it still plays great.