The game that proved to the computing world that the Mac was indeed capable of producing quality First Person Shooters. To this day, it is still hailed amongst many as an awesome game for its time, with a storyline that is incredibly deep, complex, and involving. Even now, very few FPSes out there - Macintosh or not - have been able to match the unbelievable story quality.

Before Bungie got taken over by Microsoft, the company released the source code of Marathon 2 as open source to the Macintosh gaming and development communities. Many brave souls with programming skills banded together and stepped up to the plate to improve upon the dated Marathon 2 engine. The new open source Marathon 2 engine ended up being called Aleph One, which in mathematical terms is the number after Infinity... Marathon Infinity. The combined efforts of these programmers and testers resulted in a highly polished and modern game that took advantage of the new technologies of today, while still retaining the look and feel of the original game.

Aleph One brought to the Marathon gaming community a huge, sorely sought after feature that has been on the wish list of many players - TCP/IP Internet play. Lots of modern games come with this option as a default, but Marathon didn't... but now that is no longer just a pipe dream. With this wonderful feature, I've been able to reinvigorate my interests in the game through slugfests with a fellow Marathon fan of mine several times a week. Here you'll get to see Marathon Net Films of these games for your entertainment.

First of all, head on over to the Aleph One homepage to grab yourself a copy of the game. Oh yeah, did I mention it is now available for all popular platforms? It's not just for Mac players anymore. Now WIndows and Linux users can join in on the carnage too.

After downloading it, stick your original Marathon Infinity files in the same folder as Aleph One, boot the game up, and away you go!

These films are guaranteed to work in Aleph One... not sure about the original Marathon Infinity. Hit the delete key to switch between player views. Aleph One seems to have some sort of bug that keeps the player's name from being switched when you switch views, but it's no big deal. The default player is Skywalker (me), and the second player (a friend of mines) is usually in light blue, blue, or red and names himself either Kiriyama or Kazuo.

You may also need the latest copy of StuffIt Expander available from the Aladdin System website to unstuff these Aleph One Net Films.

Month & Year	Week	Comments
August 2003	8/2/03	Our first week back in Marathon after a several-year-long hiatus. Just trying to polish off all that rust...
	8/3/03 - 8/9/03	The second week of our return to this great game. In one of the films, we end up playing the Marathon 2 netmap Thunderdome, just to see the difference between this version and the Marathon Infinity version. If you want to view it, make sure you have a copy of the Marathon 2 Maps inside your Aleph One/Marathon Infinity folder.
	8/10/03 - 8/16/03	Just one film - kind of a slow week.
	8/17/03 - 8/23/03	Busy week for carnage.
	8/24/03 - 8/31/03	Final week of fun... my friend just happens to have a dorm roommate that is a HIGHLY skilled Marathon player. I ended up getting my butt pasted by this dude. You'll need to download Hell Hole located at the Marathon Archives in order to view the last two films in this archive. Just type in "Hell Hole" (without the quotes) in the quick search box and you should be able to find it. Throw it in your Aleph One/Marathon Infinity folder, and it should play fine. The latest Hell Hole film is the one where I end up going against his friend - in-game handle is Shadow.
September 2003	9/1/03 - 9/6/03	First week of September opens up with only a single film, but it's a damn good film. I once again take on that awesome player, but this time I come out victorious... was a struggle, despite the score difference.
	9/7/03 - 9/11/03	Only two games... both done only in one day. We were both experiencing horrible lag and were generally having a mediocre playing day. Some interesting shots, but nothing to really shout about.
	9/14/03 - 9/18/03	Three games of three player fun. Games now will consist of me, my friend, and his friend (the one who pasted me in Hell Hole). Games were hella fun and just a little more chaotic. Lag was a bit bad, which messed up a lot of our aiming. When you replay the film, the first player is me, the next player is usually my friend's friend (named himself Quik! for some reason) and the third player is my friend, who started doing name changes for fun... might have gotten the latter two mixed up. The Post-Game Carnage Report will tell you who's who.

More films for your viewing pleasure. These films will only work in Marathon Infinity. They end up getting out of sync if you try to play them in Aleph One. These four film packs were culminated from games played while I was in THS oh so long ago.

THS Netfilm Pack 1 (12/11/98 + 12/18/98)

THS Netfilm Pack 2 (12/19/98)

THS Netfilm Pack 3 (1/9/99-1/31/99)

Nonstop carnage for January '99. Lots of newcomers to the THS Marathon scene.

Final Film Pack 4 (1999)

The very few Marathon games I've ever got to play during 1999. These films are just three of the five or six games we got a chance to play. After this last pack, we could no longer play any more games. Firstly, due to many of us abandoning THS (and thus becoming "Ronin"), and secondly because of the advisor pretty much laying down the hammer when it came to game playing.