"Somewhere in the heavens...they are waiting."

My Saturdays tend to fall into a pattern: my lovely wife Karli and I enjoy a leisurely morning together, including breakfast in bed, then she often goes shopping or to a movie with her sister Stefanie while I stay at home, do laundry, and play games on the computer.

Today, when I logged into Steam™ to continue my Fallout 4 replay, I was happily surprised to see that Marathon, Bungie’s classic 1994 Macintosh first-person shooter, had been added to the site as a free download - an opportunity which I instantly took advantage of.

First in the eventual Marathon trilogy, Bungie's 8-bit masterpiece holds a special place in the hearts of old-school Apple fans. Developed solely for the Macintosh platform, Marathon provided Mac users with their own version of Doom - and, as with Doom and Doom II, Bungie followed up on their success with Marathon 2: Durandal, and Marathon Infinity, continuing the elaborate storyline established in Marathon.

When I launched Marathon, I was surprised by how much I remembered, considering that this was a game I hadn't played for over 25 years.  Full credit goes to the developers, who created a distinctive environment with dynamic lighting, unique sound effects*, and (for the time) elaborate graphics.  I even had some recollection of the maze-based maps that helped to make the game a challenge.

Bungie might have been a minor entry in the early history of games development were it not for their better-known sequel to the Marathon games: Halo, which became Microsoft’s award-winning flagship game for the Xbox debut in 2001.

Apparently there's an updated version of Marathon being planned, which, sadly, will be a team-based extraction shooter** rather than a first-person game.  Personally, I'd love to just see the original Marathon given the Halo treatment - why mess with success?

- Sid

* The first time I shot one of the alien Pfhor, I laughed a bit - I hadn't heard that combination of sound effects for such a long time.

** In an extraction shooter, your team must successfully make its way to an extraction point without dying in order to keep whatever loot you've collected from either the map or the opposing team. 

Chekov's Jukebox.

There's been a jukebox on the bridge of the TARDIS since day one of the new Doctor - why haven't we heard any music?

(When titling this posting, I realized that I've unintentionally created a series of Chekov's Gun spinoffs:  Chekov's Fire Axe, Chekov's Volcano, and now this - maybe I should number them.)

- Sid

Carnac the Magnificent: "Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, and Spacehunter."

"The question is: Name two great movies and a dog."

A recent successful bid on the Heritage Auctions website added movie posters for Silent Running, Outland and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone to my modest collection. I received the package today, and I'm pleased with my purchases - well, mostly pleased, to be honest.

Silent Running? A favourite film for me, and a great transitional role for Bruce Dern. Outland - a well executed science fiction remake of High Noon, with a strong performance by Sean Connery.  Spacehunter?  Yes, well, Spacehunter...

As far as I can remember, Spacehunter wasn't in the original auction listing but seemed to make an appearance later, and there was never a photo of the poster, the image above is taken from another listing.  It's entirely possible that this item was grouped with the others so as to get the damn thing out the door, for all I know it had been collecting dust in the back room at Heritage for some time.

Faint praise aside, I have to admit that I did in fact see Spacehunter in its 1983 commercial release, back when the original Cineplex multiplex was located at the north end of the Eaton Centre in Toronto. This places me in elite company: the film only grossed $16.5M on a $14.4M budget.*  The film was produced using a two-camera technique called "Native 3D", and I do vaguely remember the 3-D effects, particularly the cyborg villain's metallic claws coming out of the screen.

On paper, all the pieces are there for a successful film.  The film was made in 3D as part of the shortlived craze of the early 80s, and has a reasonably noteworthy cast. Peter Strauss, who takes the leading role of Wolff the bounty hunter, was a workmanlike actor with a solid television resume and some previous big screen experience, and Molly Ringwald, whose appearance as Niki the Zone Scav is only her second movie role after Paul Mazursky's Tempest, went on to fame in the John Hughes trilogy of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink. Ernie Hudson and Michael Ironside have supporting roles, and Ivan Reitman was the film's executive producer. 

Regardless, none of that was enough to save the film from mediocrity, and the result is one of those bad movies that isn't quite bad enough to have achieved cult status. 

Part of me says that it must be streaming somewhere, and that I should re-watch the film as part of due geek diligence, but I somehow can't bring myself to invest another 90 minutes of my life on the outside chance that it's not a bad as I remember.

- Sid

* I was honestly a bit surprised to discover that it made back its costs.