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	Re: Marathon References : Descent
	Posted By: Lion O Cyborg	Date: 10/8/19 1:09 p.m.
	In Response To: Re: Marathon References : Descent (The Last Nakh) : The first Descent game, developed by Parallax Software, in tandem with : Interplay, and published by Interplay and MacPlay, had many weapons which : you could attach to your little Starfury-like ship: primary weapons which : either drained from energy reservoirs, which were steadily recharged from : your onboard fusion reactor, or fired slugs --- only the Vulcan Cannon did : this; secondary weapons which were racks of missiles. : The one which interested me was the Fusion Cannon: if the key or joystick : button used to fire your selected primary weapon was held down rather than : tapped, the FC would charge up for a stronger bolt. If, while charging, : you depleted the energy you had reserved in your batteries, it would begin : depleting your shields. You could only hold a charge for twenty seconds or : so --- I cannot remember exactly… : Well, it rather reminded me of the ZEUS pistol in M2D. Descent was first : released on the MS-DOS in March 1995; so although it is unlikely that : either Bungie or Parallax knew of the other, it is possible that someone : in Parallax knew of the original ZEUS fusion pistol, a.k.a plasma pistol, : from M1. : ref. http://budwin.net/insectoid/dos/descent/d1weapons.html : Of course, you also contended with haywire mining robots, facilities which : assembled new robots, and rescuing human hostages trapped in the mine when : the robots were infected and reprogrammed. : So, although it was much better than Id Software fare, it didn't have any : complex objectives or story aside from what was told in the briefings : between missions. : My memory is fuzzy, but maybe one or two or three of the mines resembled : levels in M1. I'm thinking the twelfth mine and Ingue Ferroque were : especially similar. I didn't bring up Descent as I thought that might be pushing it, especially after the Sonic Forces and Daikatana examples but yes, I do see Marathon similarities in that, though I missed the fusion pistol reference and the ship you fly looks more like the Arwing from Starfox 64. I beat Descent back in 2013 and it was awesome. Descent 2 less so because it was too hard on Normal, the ship bouncing around in midair made me sick and the metal-esque CD soundtrack sucked. Even the MIDI versions of Descent 1's music aren't as good as the adlib ones, which is surprising as it's usually the other way around. I'd heard of Descent as it's spiritual successsor, Freespace and Freespace 2 was part of me and my brother's childhoods. Mostly what I saw Marathon wise are that some of the graphics for the bases remind me of Marathon 1 and the BOB rescuing side mission. Unlike Marathon 1's Bob rescues, Descent's ones were actually fun. (Redux's are fun as well if playing on Normal or Major Damage, at least when I played the Alpha) The green font used for the text, especially the briefings also had a terminal vibe. System Shock 1 also has some Marathon similarities such as fully working pattern buffers (that don't work like Shadow the Hedgehog checkpoints, instead literally reviving you on death, exactly like the Vita Chambers in Bioshock), the audio logs in the floppy disk version instead working exactly like terminals (whose text is kept in the enhanced edition) and SHODAN basically being Durandal with pfhor-clone Tycho's psychopathy, but as it was made around the same time as Marathon 1 and Ken Levine wasn't involved yet, those are more likely to be coincidences. Not to mention System Shock has Space Colony ARK vibes with its tachyon cannon (used for mining instead of orbital defence) and it even predicted a line from GLaDOS in Portal 1: Half Life 1 and Half Life 2 Deathmatch also had a remake of a lost Marathon 1 multiplayer map called Halls of Death from a map pack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8g-n8ClZ1s This map pack was only released for Classic Mac to the best of my knowledge though as it isn't in the Aleph One game.

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Replies:

	Marathon References I found in other games	Lion O Cyborg	9/11/19 7:35 a.m.
	Re: Marathon References I found in other games	Rhody49	9/11/19 4:20 p.m.
	wow, are spam-bots getting better? *NM*	ukimalefu	9/11/19 9:35 p.m.
	Re: Marathon References I found in other games	General-RADIX	9/12/19 3:25 a.m.
	Re: Marathon References I found in other games	Lion O Cyborg	9/12/19 5:20 a.m.
	Re: Marathon References I found in other games	Durandal_1707	9/12/19 8:02 p.m.
	Re: Marathon References I found in other games	Yossarian	10/7/19 10:40 p.m.
	Re: Marathon References I found in other games	General-RADIX	10/8/19 3:31 a.m.
	Re: Marathon References : Descent	The Last Nakh	10/7/19 3:23 p.m.
	Re: Marathon References : Descent	Lion O Cyborg	10/8/19 1:09 p.m.

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