The Power Of Ten is a simple idea: make a Myth map using only ten monster tags. Check their site for official rules. Thanks to PlayMyth for the announcement.

Okay, this is a little obscure, but I thought it worth posting anyway.

Project Magma, the guys who keep Myth multiplayer alive and provide patches so the game keeps running on updated operating systems, have launched a new website, Myth Vault, intended to be a catch-all archive for Myth-related files, including films, artworks, and even maps.

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.

Two new packs of maps at Aleph One this week: Azure Dreams and Oblivion Pack 2.0. Enjoy!

Rockslider's latest game-within-a-game that he plays exclusively with Halo 1 is called Shark; you use a Banshee underneath a bridge to induce Covenant units to leap off to their deaths. It's the newest item on Bad Cyborg's Fun and Challenges page for Assault on the Control Room.

A new Marathon film (in Marathon recording and .mp4 formats) called Spectral Falls and a new map pack called Fabrecation are available at Marathon: Aleph One. Check them out!

Project Magma has announced the availability of a public beta of version 1.6 of Myth II. The update makes Myth II on the Mac a Universal application, running natively on PPC or Intel hardware, allows it to run in a window on Windows 2000 or XP, and many other new features and bug fixes. This is a final quality-testing release before the final release.

... and to Windows and Linux as well. Appleswitch at Source.bungie.org reports that a Mac OS X conversion of the Marathon sequel scenario Rubicon, appropriately called Marathon: Rubicon X, has been released. It requires the latest version of the cross-platform Aleph One engine. Rubicon was originally released in 2001. The X conversion features new high resolution art as well as new and updated maps.

MBO pointed out an unusual Gamasutra postmortem article from last summer which I don't remember seeing before. It's not on a game itself, but of an update to a game. In this case, the 1.5 and 1.5.1 updates to Myth II produced by Project Magma.

One of the best total conversions for Marathon, Tempus Irae, has gotten an Aleph One facelift: new high resolution textures, alternate soundtracks, netmaps, even a sequel-- the works. Check it out at source.bungie.org.

• Aleph One, the open-sourced version of Marathon for Windows, Linux and Mac OS, has a new release out.
• The HD QuickTime version of the Halo 3 trailer documentary is back up at Microsoft.
• KP profiles known Cortana-hater Jillybean at Bungie.net.