Marathon

Marathon is a 1994 Macintosh game from Bungie, catalogued here for 8 defining game mechanics.

Marathon is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by Bungie, and released in December 1994 for the Apple Macintosh. The game takes place several centuries into the future in outer space and sets the player as a security officer attempting to stop an alien invasion aboard a colony ship named the Marathon. (via Wikipedia)

The game mechanics of Marathon

• Projectile SystemCombatPrimary player-versus-enemy interaction is firing and/or dodging discrete moving objects.
• Real Time Action CombatCombatCombat resolves continuously in real time; player inputs compete directly with enemy behavior each frame.
• Weapon SwitchingCombatPlayer carries multiple discrete weapons with different properties; active weapon is selected from inventory.
• Ammo ManagementResourceWeapons have finite ammunition tracked separately from weapon ownership; running dry forces behavioral change.
• Flag GatingProgressionA boolean or enum stored in global state determines whether an event, path, or interaction is currently available.
• Key LockProgressionA specific named item in inventory unlocks a specific named obstacle in a one-to-one correspondence; item is consumed.
• Linear LevelsWorldWorld consists of discrete stages played in a fixed sequence; stages are self-contained with no backtracking between them.
• Codex LoreNarrativeWorld-building is delivered through collectible, discoverable, or unlockable text entries separate from the main interaction flow.

Each mechanic links to how to build it in Godot, with the retro games that share it.

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Related games

• BloodPC · 1997
• DoomPC · 1993
• Duke Nukem 3DPC · 1996
• Half-LifePC · 1998
• QuakePC · 1996
• System ShockPC · 1994

▶ Explore Marathon in the interactive database