Steve Wozniak reminisces about Marathon

[Iritscen]

Hey guys, I haven't posted here in a while, but I just wanted to share something that surprised me. The interview is a couple years old, but Game Informer talked to Woz about his enthusiasm for games, and posted the whole interview here. He briefly talks about holding Marathon LAN games with his students starting at 44:00. Apparently he had a LAN strung between his house and some school?! It's not a big deal, but I figured maybe some of you would find that interesting, or wax nostalgic like I did.

[Crater Creator]

Dang. I just watched that whole 48-minute video without really meaning to. Maybe I'm just bored right now, but it's fascinating listening to the Woz talk about virtually anything. In addition to Marathon, my ears especially perked up when he mentioned Choplifter on the Apple ][, which well may be the first video game I ever played.

[Iritscen]

Yeah, I thought it was interesting too. I always wondered why Steve Jobs didn't care much about games, and Woz actually addresses it in this interview, which is the original reason why I watched it.

By the way, I bet Woz has no idea that the studio that made Marathon eventually got bought by MS, giving their Xbox its killer app and depriving Apple of what was probably the top Mac game developer, all because Jobs passed on the opportunity to acquire them first.

[ukimalefu]

Yeah, I thought it was interesting too. I always wondered why Steve Jobs didn't care much about games, and Woz actually addresses it in this interview, which is the original reason why I watched it.

By the way, I bet Woz has no idea that the studio that made Marathon eventually got bought by MS, giving their Xbox its killer app and depriving Apple of what was probably the top Mac game developer, all because Jobs passed on the opportunity to acquire them first.

And the craziest thing is that Steve Jobs presented Halo to the public, for the first time ever, on the stage of a Macworld Expo keynote.

[Iritscen]

Yes, I think that's a big part of the reason that Jobs was angry when he heard that Bungie had been acquired by MS. He probably felt a little foolish that Halo had been stolen from the Mac after he introduced it on-stage. Apparently MS promised him they would get it ported to the Mac, in order to appease him (since Apple was a business partner). See this footnote on the Oni wiki for details and sources, for anyone who's not familiar with the story: http://wiki.oni2.net/Oni#cite_note-18

[Crater Creator]

That's odd. I don't think the name Destineer appears on the Halo 1 Mac box art or among the opening logos. I suppose it's covered under Microsoft Game Studios.

[Iritscen]

I don't know much about Halo, but I know that the logos used on Oni's boxes (when it was published by Take-Two) seem to be haphazard and inconsistent. Sometimes a publisher or developer is left out, or one is included that was not connected to that version of the game. Fwiw, Destineer is listed as the publisher of Halo on their Wikipedia page.