Download the AP Marathon Films Compilation (213K Mac file. You may need to option-click).
Examine some stats.
"Damn you, Nash!"
"Oh! Oh! Oh! Ha!"
"And... there's... OH! MY! WORD!"
"Rockets!"
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After a day of endemic laziness, not being sent anything for review and slogging through the single-player game, it was pleasing to us to soak away those it's-not-a-proper-job-is-it stressy blues by misusing tens of thousands of pounds' worth of networked Macs to kill! Kill! KILL!
Marathon's net game strengths were these: you could see how the other players were armed (amazingly, unique among Doom games); the weapons were spot-on (M1 introduced the most horrible sidearm ever to appear in such a game - the flamethrower - while M2 added the finest - a carry-two-at-once spin-to-reload stumpy double-B); civilians ran around in terror providing cover; and the level design was excellent (all hail Waldo World Arena! All hail AMIGA POWER on principle!).
No one could defeat AP at Marathon. A series of memorable inter-magazine games against Amiga Format left smoking death-holes where their staff once sat and, while Amiga Shopper put up a stiffer fight, they too had to concede defeat to the fearsomely-skilled mighty beings. Who would then turn on each other. Natch.
(We'd occasionally pick on other mags, but the network was also used for trifles such as sending pages to lino and we had to move clandestinely.)
It is a genuine tragedy that the game we played more than any other (even Gravity Power) was largely ignored because it did not run on PCs. In vain we argued with Doom fans that being able to look up and down and so introduce the strategies of lofting grenades and sniping meant Marathon was crushingly superior. One particularly vocal Doom advocate refused a dozen invitations to play Marathon with us, insisting Doom was better and up-and-down was a gimmick and anyway Hexen did it too. (True; exactly as Breathless did, bringing nothing to the game.) Then when Quake appeared, everyone fell over themselves to explain how big a difference being able to look up and down made.
Sigh.
We understand there is an admirable Mac emulator for the Amiga, and urge all our Amiga-owning readers to play the game no member of AMIGA POWER could resist the call to join. PC owners will perhaps be surprised to learn that Marathon 2, with its wholly satisfying one-player game and new network modes (King Of The Hill, for instance, and Kill The Guy With The Ball - although we found the net maps aimed at large groups and unpleasant for two-player games) was converted to their machine, for, as far as we know, not one PC mag reviewed it.
(Tellingly indicative of the PC mags' approach was Cam's report while on PC Format that the demo had arrived, been examined glancingly and thrown in the bin. His powerful argument that the game was clever and scary and cunning and intriguingly plotted and nasty and vast and surprising and lovely was met with the riposte, "It doesn't look as good as Quake." The useless, cretinous morons.)
Marathon - the Eight-Player Game Of Champions. That AP was best at. (And I was best out of us. - Jonathan.)