There's a nice retrospective on the Marathon series today over at Reg Hardware. Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO for the heads-up.

TouchArcade has a story noting that Daniel Blezek's ports of the Marathon games (Marathon 1 and Marathon 2: Durandal by Bungie, and Marathon: Infinity by Double Aught) are available on iOS for free.

A Joystiq story today appears to reveal rather more information about Bungie's upcoming projects than fans are used to hearing during a quiet period. Aside from a few seconds of music and video, the term "Destiny" was about all we knew. Now, a document purporting to be the a publishing and development agreement between Bungie and Activision has leaked onto the internet, specifying not just one or two or three but four "sci-fantasy action shooter" games referred to by the term "Destiny" but also allows for Bungie do dedicate a small portion of its resources for the development of a game called... Marathon.

A post at Bungie.net, while short on details, would seem to confirm that the agreement is legitimate.

It appears as if Bungie retains the ownership of the new IP, although Activision will get ownership if Bungie fails to ship the first game, and if Activision terminates the agreement after the first game ships, it will retain an exclusive, royalty-bearing non-transferable license to the property.

More on this later.

UPDATE: According to Gamasutra, the agreement's disclosure was not actually a leak, but rather a result of the ongoing litigation between Activision and the originators of the Call of Duty franchise.

UPDATE: Other stories on this at Edge and The Escapist.

UPDATE: Dean Takahashi at Venture Beat has written an analysis piece that suggests that the contract will be tough for Bungie to fulfill.

UPDATE: Develop has a detailed article that lists most of the important points in the agreement, and breaks them down in terms of what they mean for Bungie and Destiny.

The first salvos in Bungie's anniversary news assault have been fired, and one round has a decidedly Pfhorlike flavor.

Bungie is announcing that Daniel Blezek has ported Marathon 1 to iOS; efforts started in 2010 and apparently the app is ready now-- I don't see it in the iOS App Store just yet, but I'm going to keep looking.

UPDATE: MacRumors, MacCentral and TouchArcade (earlier this year) also have stories on Marathon coming to the iPad, as well as screenshots and more details. Unlike the XBLA port of Marathon 2 made previously, the iPad version of Marathon apparently is based on the code open sourced and developed by the community as the Aleph One project, and reportedly will be a free release.

If you're looking to get your Marathon on and you don't have the XBLA port, the open source project Aleph One is still going strong. The latest update makes changes to the Lua scripting engine and adds HUD enhancements similar to the one in the XBLA version.

Aleph One runs on Macs, Linux, oh, and Windows, too.

Slashdot is reporting an "explosion" of emulators running under Yellow Dog Linux on the Sony Playstation 3.

What does that have to do with Bungie?

Because with Linux running on the PS3, you can install Aleph One on it and play Marathon.

MacWorld has mentioned Marathon as one of the best games on the Mac, as part of their commemoration of the Mac's 25th anniversary.

Heard about Marathon or Myth, but haven't played them? Played some solo Marathon or Myth, but haven't had a chance to check out multiplayer?

Then check out For Carnage, Apply Within, a group of fans dedicated to arranging regular multiplayer games of these classic Bungie titles.

Thanks for the heads-up to urk on Bungie.net.

Thanks to Louis Wu who wrote in to Bungie.net about Coldnose Sloth, who successfully recreated the serial number generator for Marathon. Wu has tweaked it, massaged it, and given it a web interface, for those times when you need some extra serial numbers for multiplayer.

What, you mean people don't keep stuff like this anymore?

Still ten shopping days left, but Aleph One has left all the old school fans a present to open early: a new version of the open source Marathon engine for playing Marathon 1, Marathon 2, Marathon Infinity and third-party scenarios on PCs, Macs, and Linux computers.