Marathon, the classic FPS from Bungie that paved the way for Halo, is now on Steam thanks to members of the community, and its two sequels are set to follow soon.
"Today, we're thrilled to announce that the Aleph One community is bringing the original 1994-1996 Marathon Trilogy to Steam starting with Marathon 1," Bungie says on Twitter. "Thank you to the Marathon community for your support over the years. We couldn't do it without you." The original Marathon is already live on Steam, and both Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity have store pages ready to go. All three games are set to be free.
The Marathon trilogy was essentially Bungie's answer to Doom - just developed for Mac computers and featuring a much more intricate narrative. Lore details established in Marathon continued to be referenced in future Bungie games ranging from Halo to Destiny, and the franchise is currently being rebooted with the simply titled Marathon, a PvP extraction shooter that debuted at last year's PlayStation Showcase.
Bungie actually released the whole Marathon trilogy as freeware decades ago, and a group of community developers has been building the Aleph One engine to keep the games alive for ages. If you're not particular about playing your games on Steam, you can grab the entire trilogy right now for free on the Aleph One website. An upgraded port of Marathon 2 was also released on Xbox 360, and this version remains playable on modern Xbox consoles.
