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Will Marathon see its 10th birthday? Its 20th?
Posted By: Steve LevinsonDate: 5/13/02 10:04 p.m.

In just a few years, Marathon will celebrate its 10th birthday. The fact that so many die-hards still love this game speaks to its greatness, even in the face of the far more advanced technology available today. I have no doubt that many of us will still be here discussing it in this forum when it reaches age 10. But what about the future? As game technology marches ahead, will Marathon become obsolete? No, I believe that the Marathon story - they type of action and game play is timeless. But will it be playable? That I think is the real question. How many of us could open a Word 1.0 file today? Marathon's future clearly will be dependent on the success of the open source community and its fans.

Whether you use a Mac or a PC, the bottom line is that the Classic MacOS is a dead end. Mac OS X is the default on all new Macs, now, and it is only a matter of time before Apple sells machines that cannot boot under any classic Mac OS. This means that the original versions of the Marathon Trilogy will not run on any modern computer. Fortunately, M1A1 and similar efforts guarantee that future generations can enjoy Marathon for years to come. If you have a newer Mac that can run OS X, you should give it a try. It doesn't crash. It just doesn't crash. And it runs reasonably well, even on my old beige G3 Mac. The carbonized version of Aleph One is stable and works very well. Marathon lives on!

Now, the real point of my post. Some of my favorite scenarios have been created by the people who regularly contribute to this forum. Some, however, don't seem to feel that compatibility with A1 is important. There is one very recent wonderful scenario that carries a disclaimer - and for good reason. One of the levels causes A1 to crash at multiple points. A1 may not be finished yet, but the vast majority of maps do run on it without any modifications. Please, please take the time to make your scenarios fully compatible. I would like to think that I will be able to play them forever, but that won't happen if they are allowed to die along with OS 9.

Sadly, one of the best scenarios of all time, Trojan, will never be ported to A1. What a shame - and how short-sighted.

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Replies:

Will Marathon see its 10th birthday? Its 20th?Steve Levinson 5/13/02 10:04 p.m.
     Re: Will Marathon see its 10th birthday? Its 20th?Mark Levin 5/14/02 12:06 a.m.
           Completely AgreeKhral 5/14/02 8:55 a.m.
                 Re: Completely AgreeSteve Levinson 5/14/02 10:18 a.m.
                       Re: Completely AgreeMark Levin 5/14/02 11:15 a.m.
           Re: Will Marathon see its 10th birthday? Its 20th?Kanen Faud'r 5/14/02 12:31 p.m.
                 Re: Will Marathon see its 10th birthday? Its 20th?Steve Levinson 5/15/02 11:30 a.m.
                       Re: Will Marathon see its 10th birthday? Its 20th?Kanen Faud'r 5/16/02 3:50 p.m.



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