Remixes & Fan Soundtracks for Bungie’s Marathon (1994)

This is a list of (mostly) completed soundtracks for Bungie’s Marathon (1994) and its sequels, plus fan games for Aleph One, the open-source continuation of the Marathon engine. With the exception of Tempus Irae Redux, Eternal X 1.3, and hellpak vol. 2’s monster work-in-progress soundtracks, I’ve attempted to keep this predominantly to completed or almost-completed projects. (I’m still revising my Logic Pro mixes, but they’re subsequent revisions of albums that contain all sixteen tracks from the original game; conversely, some twenty years later, I think it’s safe to say Tobacco or Cannibal Whore Feast are each highly unlikely to do additional remixes, and they do give you all sixteen tracks of the OST between them.)

A quick note on file formats: Usually, FLAC is for listening outside the game, and MP3 or Ogg Vorbis for use within it. (Aleph One 1.6.1, released 2023-01-19, was the first version to play FLAC, and it only does so with MML and Lua scripts; thus, it’d take some work to get it to play FLAC with Marathon 1 maps.) I use ‘upmastered FLAC’ to denote that I didn’t have a lossless source and made a facsimile. I explained my process in a document included with the Eternal 1.2 OST, which I’ve reproduced with edits for clarity, brevity, & the insights I’ve gained from five subsequent years of working with sound. (Also, acknowledgements to Solra Bizna for the term ‘upmaster’, which is a more descriptive term than my previous choice, ‘pseudo-FLAC’.)

I’ve endeavoured to list release dates as accurately as possible. All dates are ISO 8601 (the objectively correct format): thus, yyyy-mm-dd, yyyy-mm, or simply yyyy, depending on the specificity of the information I possess.

Those curious about my remastering process for the releases found below may wish to consult my notes on my remastering process, which now have their own page. Those interested in making their own content for Aleph One may also be interested in my introduction to mapmaking and more advanced guide. If what you’re looking for isn’t on this page, you may want to check my discography page (which contains some Marathon music that I haven’t yet listed here) or my creative portfolio. Please contact me if you notice any errors or omissions.

Contents

1. Marathon 1 Remixes
2. Marathon 2 & Infinity Fan OSTs
3. Mod OSTs
4. Footnotes

Marathon 1 Remixes

Craig Hardgrove’s site has a massive number of these. Except as noted, the following aren’t on his site, and unless otherwise noted, they all contain at least one remix of every track in Marathon 1’s OST:

• QuickTime 2.0/2.5 stereo: YouTube, FLAC. QuickTime 2.0 in the left channel, QuickTime 2.5 in the right. Technically, these could be counted as my second remixes of the OST (I released them on 2021-02-03), but I’ve listed them first because they’re so similar in sound to the OST that they barely qualify as remixes.
• Aaron Freed (1997 QuickTime 2.5 remixes): YouTube, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis (see also my complete discography). My first remixes. Extremely faithful to the original sound, adding only stereo, reverb, new instruments, and a few other flourishes
• Tobacco (2001-07-24): upmastered FLAC. Contains the following eight tracks:
  1. Chomber
  2. Fat Man
  3. Flowers in Heaven
  4. Landing
  5. Leela
  6. Rushing
  7. Splash (Marathon)
  8. Swirls
  Wonderful remakes that add some tasteful – and tasty – new instrumental parts.
• Chibi-usa (2002-03-11): upmastered FLAC. Tasteful reorchestrations with a higher-quality synthesizer.
• Cannibal Whore Feast (2003-08-12): upmastered FLAC. Contains the following eight tracks:
  1. Aliens Again
  2. Flippant
  3. Freedom
  4. Guardians
  5. New Pacific
  6. New Pacific (reprise)
  7. Rapture
  8. What About Bob?
  Like Chibi-usa’s, these are tasteful reorchestrations with a higher-quality synthesizer. And you can combine these with Tobacco’s for another complete set of remixes.
• Eternal X (2008-02-23⁽¹⁾): A soundtrack that has grown and expanded with each 1.x release.
  • Eternal X 1.2 OST (2018-12-21⁽²⁾): upmastered FLAC. Craig’s site has the Ogg Vorbis files (but if you have Eternal X 1.2 or 1.2.1, you already have most of these anyway) and a link to the YouTube video. These probably remain the most famous and acclaimed remakes of the OST.

  • (WIP) Eternal X 1.3 OST (likely to be released sometime in 2024): Over seven hours of music by some thirteen contributors, mostly drawing from the Marathon 1 soundtrack. There’s some overlap with several of the above composers’ work, but some of these tracks have been revised, remixed, or remastered for Eternal 1.3, and since they frequently segue seamlessly into one another, you probably won’t have heard most of them in these exact configurations before. The OST has been updated and expanded substantially even in recent months, and several of these mixes are unique to Eternal 1.3.

    There are two different versions of this soundtrack, which should not be confused as they serve different purposes:

    • Original Soundtrack (OST): FLAC/upmastered FLAC (depending on track). Meant for listening outside the game; the quietest sections are left at their original volume levels, and tracks that loop in-game will loop past the loop point and then fade out. The level music for “We Met Once in the Garden” (which changes over the course of the level dynamically based on in-game events) is combined into a single track. Filenames contain track numbers and spaces.
    • In-game soundtrack: FLAC/upmastered FLAC (depending on track). For use in-game with 1.3 preview 6. Tracks that loop in-game will cut off suddenly if played in an audio player, and I made the quietest sections of a few tracks louder so they’ll be audible over the game sound effects. The level music for “We Met Once in the Garden” is split into three tracks. Tracks are grouped into folders, and the filenames are less useful.

    Note that Eternal 1.3’s soundtrack incorporates tracks that appear in several other collections here, including Craig Hardgrove’s Somewhere in the Heavens, Talashar ’s Eupfhoria, CKT1138 and Matrix_XV’s remixes, my 1997 remixes, and See You Starside (and its related albums).

• Craig Hardgrove – Marathon: Somewhere in the Heavens (2011-07-18): The bulk of Eternal’s soundtrack prior to 1.3, and still a major component of it in 1.3.
  • 2024-01-23 remaster: FLAC/upmastered FLAC. Remasters of higher-quality sources of seventeen tracks from Eternal 1.2’s soundtrack. Eleven tracks have lossless AIFF sources; I’ve upmastered the other six (“Fat Man”, “Aliens Again”, “What About Bob?”, “Freedom”, “New Pacific”, and “Splash (Marathon)”), which were lossy M4A. In addition, I’ve declipped most tracks to mitigate clipping distortion. These are likely the highest-quality versions of these tracks I’ll be able to make until I’m able to re-export the original project files in GarageBand 1.1.0 and 3.0.5 sans clipping; however, a few project files have missing loops, and if we can’t locate them, I may be unable to remaster them all perfectly.
  • GarageBand source files & original exports: AIFF, M4A, MP3, & .band via Craig’s website. Note that the link to the source files on his downloads page actually just links to the original MP3 releases; he posted the correct link on his news page.
• Will Christian (2016-10-17): SoundCloud, remastered FLAC. Some interesting, inventive takes. I wouldn’t have thought to rearrange ‘Leela’ as a metal track, but… somehow, it works.
• Talashar – Eupfhoria (2018-11-18): Bandcamp (streaming, FLAC, nearly any other format you want). Atmospheric reorchestrations that add new layers of harmony and melody, resulting in some fantastic twists on old classics.
• CKT1138 (2021-03-12): YouTube, FLAC & Ogg Vorbis. Faithful reorchestrations using vintage ’80s and early ’90s synthesizers, with a sound worthy of Vangelis’ Blade Runner OST on several tracks.
• Matrix_XV (2022-08-28): YouTube, upmastered FLAC, Ogg Vorbis/MP3. Lush, generally faithful remakes with modern synthesizers, and the points of departure, like the Black Sabbath-inspired take on ‘Landing’, are superb.
• Aaron Freed – See You Starside: The Marathon Soundtrack Reimagined (2023-02-04): FLAC & Ogg Vorbis. My latest complete Marathon OST arrangement album, made from 2022-12 to 2021-01 in GarageBand. Also available: my first drafts (from 2022-12-05), interim revisions, and complete discography. The 2022-12-05 tracks are ’70s/’80s-style remixes inspired by Marathon’s ‘used future’ aesthetic. I’d already planned to take creative liberties with the OST’s sound when I started, but I took steadily more as I gained familiarity with GarageBand’s surprisingly robust feature set; many tracks are heavily expanded to the extent of almost qualifying as complete rewrites (See You Starside adds some thirty-eight minutes to the OST’s running time). Roland drum machine and Mellotron samples are ubiquitous in all versions. My biggest influences are ’70s progressive rock, ’80s pop, ’90s Japanese game soundtracks, and ’90s/’00s post-rock; my secondary influences include metal, jazz, blues, classical, disco, ambient, Gregorian chant, electronic music, and film and TV soundtracks.
  • You can also listen to See You Starside on YouTube, but if you do, please use an adblocker (e.g., uBlock Origin), as I neither want advertisements on this video nor receive any money from them.
  • Aaron Freed – Violins Again: An Orchestral Marathon Soundtrack (2023-02-04): FLAC. The above mixes’ ‘orchestral’ counterpart (though, as I can’t afford to hire an actual orchestra, it’s really every bit as synthetic). Most of the melodies are identical, but the instrumentation favours violins, harps, and pianos over guitars or synthesizers (though this is not a universal rule). Occasionally, the orchestra is more eastern (you’ll hear a koto on several tracks and a sitar on at least one), or may involve electric violins, viole, celli, or basses; unfortunately, we were unable to confirm the involvement of any electric light orchestras. I don’t really like this title, but I never thought of a better one.
  • Aaron Freed – …And Beyond: The Marathon Future Symphonic Mixes (2023-02-04): FLAC. The result of combining See You Starside with Violins Again. Honestly, I don’t really like this title either, but again, I never thought of anything better. The subtitle is at least justifiable in that, by the time Marathon takes place, genres like rock, jazz, and even hip-hop and metal will probably be lumped in with Classical music the way we lump Baroque, Romantic, and even Modernist music in with ‘Classical’, even though the Classical period was properly only from ca. 1750 to ca. 1820.
  • WIP revisions of the above sets using Logic Pro and EastWest ComposerCloud+ instruments. I composed and arranged the above sets entirely in GarageBand and, with only four exceptions, used GarageBand or MainStage instruments – I wanted to show that it needn’t cost a fortune to make music that sounds good. (Violins Again and …And Beyond’s ‘Aliens Again’ and ‘Chomber’ use ComposerCloud+ instruments. MainStage is an entirely reasonable $50, and GarageBand comes free with every Mac.) I’m now revising them with professional-grade software and instrumentation, but note that several tracks currently have significant instrument balance issues; I’ll fix these in subsequent revisions.

Several others (e.g., wowbobwow, Storm, dontask4470, Zesorath, & Myrzir) have begun but not yet finished what I sincerely hope will be remixes of the entire OST. Search their names on the Discord and add ‘has: sound’ to find them.

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Marathon 2 & Infinity Fan OSTs

Marathon 2 Special Edition OST

Upmastered FLAC. Save this in the “Plugins” folder of your Marathon 2 directory to use it in-game (requires Aleph One 1.7 or later).

The Marathon 2 Special Edition itself is available here. See here for the Discord post where I originally posted these.

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Marathon Infinity Fan OSTs

Talashar released Strange Aeons, the first Marathon Infinity fan soundtrack, on 2024-04-10.

• An Ogg Vorbis version suitable for in-game use is available on Simplici7y.
• A FLAC version is available on Bandcamp; one track is from Eupfhoria, found above.

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Mod OSTs

In rough chronological order (I don’t know Trojan’s exact release date, and there are conflicting sources on Excalibur 1.0’s). Eternal is with the Marathon 1 remixes, as that’s most of what it contains.

• Trojan (1997-06): YouTube, FLAC
• Excalibur: Morgana’s Revenge 1.0 (1997-06⁽³⁾): FLAC
• Excalibur: Morgana’s Revenge 3.0 (2007-05-29): upmastered FLAC (entirely different arrangements and (often) songs. I also don’t know the correct names or composers for many of them)
• Phoenix (2010-06-15⁽⁴⁾): YouTube, upmastered FLAC (a few of these tracks may be older versions), MP3 & remastered sounds (note that Phoenix 1.4.x includes all of this except the remastered title theme & sounds)
• dungeons presents hellpak: Vol. 1 – Not Recommended by Doctors (2022-09-19⁽⁵⁾): YouTube, upmastered FLAC
  • dungeons presents hellpak: Vol. 2 – An Exercise in Questionable Taste (WIP, to be released in 2024): FLAC. Note: As this currently contains over seven hours of music and some 130 tracks, only around 30% of what’s in here will make it into the final release.
• Apotheosis X (2022-10-31): upmastered FLAC. YouTube video forthcoming pending creation of artwork.
• Tempus Irae Redux (WIP, to be released early 2024): FLAC or upmastered FLAC

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Footnotes

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