Non-optional social obligations

[relotixke]

I first encountered Marathon as a demo released on some message board my dad liked to frequent in the spring of 1995. Skeptical of his assurance that "the rest of the game must be here in the demo somewhere, they've just hidden it somehow" I came to the conclusion that I must find a way to buy the whole game. Being only 12 years old, I cooked dinner every Saturday night for the entire summer to earn enough money from my parents to buy the 4 floppy disks the game came on.

I think I did eventually get to the last level on our old quadra 605, but the world moves on fast for 12 year old girls, so I can't remember if I ever actually finished the game.

Anyway, I can't say I'm really a particularly good Marathon player, but I think it probably has one of the best plots of just about any game I've ever played. I've only recently gotten into playing 3rd party maps, though, so I'm kind of a noob where that's concerned.

I found this forum while attempting to play Marathon Eternal X. This pretty much seems to be the most sarcastic forum on the entire internet, so I decided to actually join instead of just lurking. The fact that it's a marathon forum is just a fun bonus.

[gmanyo]

Welcome, new person. Have fun with all the 3rd party content. I recommend Tempus Irae, though others don't like it as much.

[relotixke]

Welcome, new person. Have fun with all the 3rd party content. I recommend Tempus Irae, though others don't like it as much.

That one is next on the list. Someone I talked to on the subject recommended Evil, Eternal, Rubicon, and Tempus Irae. So far, I'm having fun with Evil and Eternal, so I don't see any reason to stop going on his advice.

He also stated that RED was not his favorite. I've heard that it's hard, and since I'm not really the greatest player in the world, its possible that it'd be too much for me.

[brilliant]

Welcome to the Pfhorums! I hope to see you online sometime!

[irons]

This pretty much seems to be the most sarcastic forum on the entire internet, so I decided to actually join instead of just lurking. The fact that it's a marathon forum is just a fun bonus.

Excellent. But by the time you're done here, the Marathon part will not be a bonus.

[Marathoner325]

Welcome to the Pfhorums. You may also be interested in visiting the Marathon Story Forum, which is currently getting a lot of activity. (http://forums.bungie.org/story)

[screamingfool]

the sarcastic nature of this forum, in my opinion, is due to the two main groups of members and how they came to marathon. many were young mac enthusiasts when the games were released and are in in their mid twenties to thirties and have bonded with the game not just for the incredible level of storytelling and ease of content creation but also because there were no games of this caliber for the mac at the time and that this OS people identified with to unreasonable degrees always seemed on the brink of going under.

The younger group of members are growing up in such a different computing world that comparisons are kinda useless. They came to marathon mostly due to the halo association and that it's a free open source game that will run on most any operating system. While this forum does not predate their birth, some amount of current members, their social standards and to a degree expectations around third-party content have been formed by other communities some of which are twice as old as this member group.

i'm not saying anyone has more right to post here but the old guard tends to spar in a (mostly) good natured way with the youth when things get too far form the decorum historically associated with marathon. having seen this play out for a few years i've been nearly impressed that some kids i'd wanted to slap the shit out of have, in short order, become pillars of the community and buffers between those without the patience for daddy zerøs and the daddy zerøs themselves

[relotixke]

I guess my own interest is pretty much based on nostalgia. Marathon was the only game we ever had to run on our Mac that was of any kind of quality.

I used to get in serious arguments with kids at school about the superiority of Marathon compared to Doom. Being in the minority, I usually lost those arguments, but I tell you what, now that Halo is big potatoes and doom just has a movie staring The Rock, I can feel marginally vindicated.

I mean, you know. In a really silly, juvenile sort of way.

[raithe]

I guess I'm stuck in between those two groups, because I played marathon when I was a kid, and then later when I was about 15 I remembered it came back to it.

[irons]

Haha, maybe if the groups were really divided strictly by age.

[screamingfool]

you're over 13? no, you're not

post evidence

[irons]

Do you realize that he's probably going to post a neofailstache?

[VikingBoyBilly]

I guess I'm stuck in between those two groups, because I played marathon when I was a kid, and then later when I was about 15 I remembered it came back to it.

[Ares Ex Machina]

15...that was the age when things changed for RAITHE. That was when he became a man.