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Few creatures have ever been as ferociously tribal as the '90s Apple fan. It may be difficult to imagine now that Apple is the richest entity on the planet, but the '90s were not a good time for the company. Windows 3.1 wrecked Mac OS's special snowflake status, and Apple's own executives seemed hellbent on finishing the job with an endless succession of lousy-yet-expensive computers (eg the underpowered $7,500 20th Anniversary Mac) and interesting-yet-underbaked ideas (eg the Newton PDA). Yet loyalists clung to their Macs, convinced of Apple's innate superiority. They watched with resentment and envy as developers abandoned the platform in favour of DOS, Windows, and even consoles; they cherished what games did make it their way. Mac-exclusive games were a cause for jubilation. And that rarest of rarities, the Mac exclusive on par with the other guys' cutting edge? Well, those went down as a thing of legend.
So you can perhaps forgive old Apple veterans if they get maybe a little too enthusiastic about the Marathon series. Designed exclusive for Mac by a little-known Chicago-based studio called Bungie, Marathon combined the twitch action of Doom with the plot and structured mission objectives of System Shock. Featuring sophisticated level design, a complex narrative, and impressive visuals, Marathon probably would have been a massive hit had it appeared on PCs first. Instead, it became a beloved cult classic-and its DNA continues to inform Bungie's other shooters, including Destiny: The Taken King.
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