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Background
Who is Bungie? Bungie Software was founded in 1991 by Alexander Seropian. Their first, low-exposure products were Gnop and Operation Desert Storm. Jason Jones then joined the company, and together they released Minotaur. Bungie became recognized as one of the top Macintosh game developers with the success of Pathways Into Darkness and the Marathon series. They went cross-platform in 1997 with the release of Myth: The Fallen Lords and have since become one of the top developers, period. More information about Bungie's early days is available on Bungie's page here. In June of 2000, Bungie was acquired by Microsoft and became Bungie Studios, a unit of Microsoft's gaming division.
- Gnop: Bungie's first game, released in 1990. Gnop is Pong spelled backwards. Kinda says it all...
- Operation Desert Storm: A top-down tank game released in May 1991. Set during the Gulf War.
- Minotaur- The Labyrinths of Crete: A top-down RPG-type game, released in February 1992. Minotaur was unique in that it was network-only, supporting up to seven players. Minotaur is currently available as part of the Mac Action Sack.
- Pathways Into Darkness (Pathways or PID): A cross between a first-person shooter and a RPG released in August 1993, PID made what you did as important as what you shot. You played one member of a Special Forces team sent to a mysterious pyramid in the Yucatan Peninsula to deal with a dormant alien about which the Jjaro (other aliens) had alerted the President in 1994. Featuring real-time 3D graphics and otherworldly artwork, Pathways was also the first of Bungie's games to feature a detailed and complex story, which laid the groundwork for the Marathon Universe (or "Maraverse"). See the Pathways Into Darkness page for the full story. PID was Macworld's Best Role-Playing Game of the Year in 1993, and is currently available as part of the Mac Action Sack or the Marathon Trilogy Box Set.
- Marathon (M1): Released in December 1994. A hard-core first person action game, Marathon was arguably the best Macintosh game available for a long time. Describing Marathon as "the Mac's answer to Doom" would be damning with faint praise, as Marathon's take on the FPS genre was very different, mostly due to its complex story, considered by its fans to be the best in gaming history (yes, even surpassing Half-Life). You are a security officer (commonly referred to as "the Marine") in the year 2794, aboard the interstellar colony ship UESC Marathon, which has been sent on a 300-year voyage to Tau Ceti. But the ship and the fledgling colony have come under attack by a race of alien slavers known as the Pfhor. With the help of the Marathon's three somewhat functional artificial intelligences - Leela, Tycho, and Durandal - you must turn back the alien forces and save the Marathon. Marathon also included eight-player networking, with innovative features like the "Postgame Carnage Report" and the ability to talk live over the network with your Mac's microphone (when it worked). Marathon was Macworld's Best Network Game of the Year in 1995 (it missed qualifying for the 1994 awards due being delayed until late December). For more information on Marathon see Bungie.org's Marathon section.
- Marathon 2: Durandal (M2): Released in 1995, Marathon 2 continued the original's storyline while adding plenty of new content in the form of new engine features and overhauled graphics, as well as some new monsters and a new weapon. Seventeen years after the end of M1, the Marine has been kidnapped by Durandal and taken to an alien planet to find a lost clan of aliens, the S'pht'kr, who will help Durandal fight the Pfhor. M2 also included greatly improved networking, with game variants such as Tag, King of the Hill, and Kill the Man With the Ball, and allowed the single-player scenario to be played cooperatively. Marathon 2 remains the only game in the Marathon Trilogy to be ported to the PC; a Windows 95 port was released in Sept 1996. More information on the Windows side of Marathon can be found at Orbital Arm.
- Marathon Infinity (MI or Moo): Bungie collaborated with ex-Marathon team member Greg Kirkpatrick's Double Aught Software to end the Marathon saga with a bang. Released in 1996, MI included a new solo scenario, improved graphics, and Bungie's in-house editors Forge and Anvil. Marathon Infinity's story is much more complex than even those of the previous two games, involving time travel and multiple universes, and although it did answer many questions it asked many more.
- Myth: The Fallen Lords (m1 or TFL): Released in 1997, Myth was a new approach to real-time strategy, and was so different from other RTS games such as Warcraft that the new genre "real-time tactical" was created for it. Myth put you in command of small platoons of warriors and with no way to easily replace them, focusing on tactics instead of resource management. The engine used smooth 3D terrain instead of tiles; combined with the accurate physics model this enabled realistic aspects like getting a tactical advantage from one's height, or watching fragments of enemies bounce and roll downhill, leaving trails of blood. Myth featured Bungie's usual complex single-player game, with a fantasy storyline in which the player commands a ragtag army of humans and their allies against the evil Balor and his Fallen Lords who would ravage the world. Myth supported Internet multiplayer through the Bungie.net metaserver, which has resulted in a very tightly knit community both on- and off-line.
- Myth II: Soulblighter (m2): Released in 1998, Myth II expanded and enhanced the Myth world by furthering the Myth storyline and adding many new features to the multiplayer game. Set sixty years after mTFL, Myth II's storyline follows the battle between Alric, who became king after his victory in the previous game, and the cunning Soulblighter, who survived Balor's defeat and again plans to destroy the world. On the multiplayer side, Myth II offered a revamped version of Bungie.net as well as many new gametypes and Bungie's official editors Fear and Loathing.
- Oni: Released in January 2001. Inspired by the anime movie Ghost in the Shell, Oni is a 3rd person action game featuring "full contact action": an equal mix of gunplay and hand-to-hand combat. Oni's heroine Konoko must work her way through a web of conspiracies, perhaps rooted in her own past, surrounding an urban war between the Techno Crimes Task Force and a powerful crime syndicate.
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