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The original three Marathon games are available to play for free on Steam

Marathon, Marathon 2, and Marathon Infinity are now available at no cost to PC players to download and play.
TJ Denzer
TJ Denzer
Image via Aleph One Developers
1

Bungie’s current Marathon project may be on a bumpy road in development, but at least fans of the series can look back to the games that started it and play them for free on Steam. As of this week, Marathon, Marathon 2, and Marathon Infinity are available for free on Steam to add to your library. That means you can check out a full trilogy of what was an early Bungie venture in first-person shooter gameplay and puzzle-solving at no cost.

The Aleph One Developers group has been looking after what is now known as the Classic Marathon games on Steam for quite a while now, and it was this week alongside an update that the group made Classic Marathon, Classic Marathon 2, and Classic Marathon Infinity free on each game’s respective Steam pages. The original games have been said to be extremely alike to Doom in their foundational design. They are still shooters in similar fashion. However, the Marathon games put a far heavier emphasis on puzzles than the Doom games, making them quite a bit more than run-and-gun experiences.

An array of labyrinthine corridors in Marathon Infinity
As much as running and gunning is part of Marathon, the original games also emphasized puzzle-solving as you navigated its maze-like corridors.
Source: Aleph One Developers

With the option to get all of these games for free, players can now experience where Marathon started and get a sense of what they’re in for as Bungie continues to prepare the return of the franchise. That said, the classic Marathon games also may be the most reasonable way to check out this franchise for the foreseeable future, as Bungie has seen several setbacks that delayed the game into 2025, including a mass layoff of over 200 employees at the developer.

Even so, the Classic Marathon games are also just a sweet bit of gaming history. If you’ve never had a chance to play them and dig the old school, you’ve got nothing to lose but time in checking out these games while they free on Steam. Stay tuned for more updates on the Marathon franchise right here at Shacknews.

Senior News Editor
Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.

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