Marathon (1994) is a masterpiece that I was forced to finish

I’ll be honest: I cheated on this Marathon Backlogged assignment. 

Well, it depends on your definition of “cheated,” I guess. What I mean is that I first started Marathon (1994) back in April of last year, in the short but agonizing time between getting back from previewing the new game at Bungie (which acts as a kind of sequel to the original game) and the infamous alpha coming out. Playing a few levels at a time, I stopped about a quarter of the way through the game, at the start of “Cool Fusion” in the game’s second chapter, Counterattack. The alpha had finally come to me and my friends, see, and by the time the alpha was gone … so was my job at Polygon. And finishing Marathon (1994) was the furthest thing from my mind.

But over the last year, it’s nagged at me.