Back in the old days of computers, late 80's for me, the basic game for us gamers was the ascii rpg. Adventures written by people with a love of coding. There were no hyped graphics, no flashy boss fights, just some text and choices that take you through the world. But, many of the younger gamers I've talked to are all about the pixel count, the gore. Some won't even consider playing a playstaion game,let alone anything older just because it doesn't look good.
Now I'm not saying that it's not good for a game these days to have good graphics, but I've never been one to give up the old school. The old Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger, Parasite Eve, Legend of Dragoon, the old Zeldas, Megaman.At least those are the ones I can still play. As far as computer games, it becomes harder. Many of the older games don't make good movement into XP let alone Vista. Even the fact that I grew up a Mac user. Many of the games I used to play were Mac only.
One in particular, a game that few know of but many have seen some of what came from the trilogy. I speak of Bungie's "Marathon" trilogy. A FPS that had class, story, and took some strategy. Back in the days of Doom and Duke Nukem, Marathon had something that kept me coming back for more. The controls were simple: run, shoot, strafe. What made it different was there was no crouch or jump. You didn't need to crouch and if you wanted to jump, there was always your assault rifle's grenades. With some extra health you could climb your way up the length of a wall to a fun little secret. Your allies get mad if you killed too many, cannon fodder as they were.
The story was told through terminals through out each level. Some, secret, terminals would give some special backstory or a complete non-sequitur story that is just fun to read. You are a cyborg, a space marine, who (starting with the first Marathon) is tasked with gaining control over not just the Alien threat but a rampant AI named Durandal. Your health does not recharge, but youo can recharge it at ports through out the level, though few as they are. You can drop from great heights and take no damage. The levels are dark, atmospheric, full of secrets.
After a little time, the source was released by Bungie and mods galore flowed out of the internets. Many were fun but only a few held my interest: Marathon: Evil and Marathon: Tempus Irae. Both were mods for Marathon: Infinity, the last of the trilogy. Complete revamps but major fun. Then, for the original Marathon, was Trojan. Again, a complete revamp but awesome fun.
The reason I am talking about this is because I have found a way to play these games, minus Trojan, on a windows machine. Just look up Alephone and Marathon. Just about everything is the same, the only thing missing is the grenade climbing that could be done in the First game. This is because AlephOne uses the second games engine. Those of you with a Xbox 360 can find the second game, Marathon: Durandal, on your live game downloads.
So you can be quite sure that once I get a new machine, I will be downloading the games and playing them. The graphics show their age, but the games are more than just the graphics.
The game that was born from the Marathon trilogy, is Halo. Many things I saw when I played Halo 1 and some of 2, reminded me much of Marathon.
The last I'm going to say is, just because they're old doesn't mean they aren't good. Some of the older games I have are still my favorites. It's all about the gameplay and story.
[end gamers rant]
NNM
Yes, more Miku
