“In a recent Twitter exchange, Bungie’s global franchise director, Philip Asher, namechecked Sony’s Wipeout game, its Mental Wealth ads for PlayStation and its translucent Dual Shock controllers as inspirations”
“With their spiked helmets and fluorescent gloves, the character models look like 90s ravers; the load-out screen is a fever dream of retro fonts and weird icons; and loading the game plies you with distorted videos of moths crawling over robotic faces. For a few minutes, it is almost incomprehensible”
“Then, as I settle into the kinetic hyper-rush of glitching images, I felt overriding nostalgia and admiration. Nostalgia for the era the game evokes so perfectly – that very specific period in which Johnny Mnemonic and Ghost in the Shell blasted cyberpunk visual language into the mainstream consciousness; when everyone was reading Jeff Noon and Neal Stephenson; when every video game ad looked like something from Blade Runner”
“I admire how strongly Bungie has committed to this aesthetic: how its menus are crammed with ASCII text and animating images like an old HTML website; the way this theme extends to the visual signs and systems in the game’s environments; and how the fiction of the universe is crammed with psychotic mega corps and anarchist hackers”
“I love the use of a very particular, very stately serif font – a lot like the Century Old Style in many Japanese games of the 90s. On the planet of Tau Ceti IV, every UESC building is loaded with boxy computer displays scrolling green text read-outs. Every piece of architecture looks like a giant MiniDisc player”
“Marathon unapologetically injects its influences straight into your eyeballs”
“It is weirdly poignant to be back playing Marathon now, 30 years later, after everything I’ve seen, and in a games industry that feels far less certain of itself. In the new version, the story is about the technological relics left behind by a once advanced and optimistic civilisation. I can’t help but think: should that really feel so relevant, so timely, so sad?”