[i]I've been around for a little bit now and have noticed a lot of things come and go. People, idea's, mods, employee's, etc. History. It's become harder and harder to find things that I remember. Even the history page here on bungie.net didn't do it for me with inaccuracies and details left out. So I developed this compendium of a more extensive Bungie history including specific dates, people, turning points, pictures, etc. that give the Bungie community a better understanding of where this company came from. I've been working on this for over a month now and have stumbled upon a wealth of information on Bungie and you could literally write a massive novel on the company. I've tried to keep it towards the more interesting and lesser known facts area of interest, which is why I didn't go into as much detail with Halo towards the end since it's more apart of our history as we know it today. But at the end of this, I have provided the more extensive sources I've used for this for the community to investigate and find out interesting facts about Bungie on their own.[/i] [b]Gnop! and Bungie's birth[/b] As a senior at the University of Chicago, [url=http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/2309/alexd.jpg]Alex Seropian[/url] founded "Bungie Software" in May, 1991 to self-publish his own creation: "[url=http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/7799/gnop.gif]Gnop![/url]," a simple Pong clone written and released nearly 20 years after the original. The name Gnop is simply Pong spelled backwards. The game proved popular enough among Mac gamers since the game was a free, user friendly alternative. However, some fans were willing to purchase the source code, which Bungie later offered for $15. [b]Operation: Desert Storm[/b] In June, 1991, Alex Seropian's Bungie released its first foray into the realm of commercial software publishing with "[url=http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/5287/opds1.png]Operation: Desert Storm[/url]," self-published and duplicated. This was a top-down tank shooter for the Macintosh. It only sold about 2,500 copies and was based on Operation Desert Storm, a conflict in the Middle East that was going on at the time. The game featured twenty levels, culminating in the city of Baghdad with the final enemy being a giant Saddam Hussein head. It also came with a glossary of military terms and trivia which was needed in order to bypass the copy-protection in the game, and authentic maps of the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations. [b]Jason Jones and Minotaur[/b] Sometime thereafter, Alex Seropian teamed up with Artificial Intelligence classmate [url=http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/5228/jason.jpg]Jason Jones[/url], who designed "[url=http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/6199/minotaur.gif]Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete[/url]," which was produced with the help of Alex Seropian in his apartment basement and released April 30th, 1992. [url=http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/6491/minotaur1.png]Minotaur[/url] was a sharply detailed dungeon crawler that distinguished itself from other games of its time by including a multiplayer mode that functioned over the AppleTalk protocol or Point-to-Point Protocol. A single-player exploration mode was also available. The game's tagline was "Kill your enemies. Kill your friends' enemies. Kill your friends." Bungie's first games were sold at trade shows and gradually gained access to distribution channels. Bungie later licensed the Minotaur game engine to the studio "Paranoid Productions", who used it to create the single-player game: "Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis", released in 1996. [b]Pathways into Darkness and the small expansion[/b] The two then released "[url=http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/6424/pidbox.jpg]Pathways into Darkness[/url]" on August 1st, 1993. You play as a member of a US Army Special Forces team on a mission to prevent an ancient godlike being from awakening and destroying the Earth. In order to succeed, the team has to enter an ancient pyramid in the Yucatan Peninsula, reach the bottom level, and detonate a low yield nuclear device in an attempt to stun the Dreaming God and bury it under millions of tons of rock, with more permanent measures to be later taken by the "Jjaro", the alien race which warned the US government of the threat. However, before the game begins, during the team's deployment, the character's parachute fails to open, and the resulting impact both knocks out the character and breaks or scatters most of his equipment. Believing their comrade to be dead, the rest of the team enters the pyramid. Several hours later, their teammate arrives, armed with only a flashlight and survival knife. Alone, the player must fight his or her way through the monsters which inhabit the pyramid, and complete the team's mission to detonate the device before the god fully awakens in five game days. [url=http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/6981/pidboxb.jpg]PiD[/url] was coded on a Mac IIFX; Jason worked alone on the code, while his friend Colin Brent designed the graphics. The game received several awards: MacWorld's Game Hall of Fame, the MacUser 100, and Inside Mac Games' Adventure Game of the Year. With money, Bungie was able to invest in an above ground [url=http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/9600/bungiec.png]office[/url] and a staff. [b]Marathon and the expansion of the Bungie community fanbase[/b] One January 5th, 1994, Bungie first demonstrated their sequel to Pathways into Darkness, a science-fiction themed first-person shooter entitled "Marathon" (later dubbed "Marathon Zero") at the MacWorld show in San Fransisco. At the second MacWorld show that year, on August 1st, 1994, this time in Boston, Bungie demonstrated the greatly revamped Marathon game, with a graphics engine rewritten since earlier in the year and an entirely new plotline. Later that year on December 21st, 1994, Bungie released this groundbreaking new game. [url=http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/151/marathon1.png]Marathon[/url] was a milestone not only for Bungie, but the Macintosh as well. Marathon takes place in the year 2794 aboard a large, multi-generational colony spacecraft called the UESC (United Earth Space Council) Marathon. The ship was converted from Deimos, one of Mars' two moons. The plot of the story sets the player as a superhuman cyborg and focuses around an invasion of the ship by hostile extraterrestrial slavers called the Pfhor. The plot is primarily revealed through various computer interfaces called terminals. It is through these terminals as well that the player receives mission information from Leela, the ship's artificial intelligence, as well as Durandal and Tycho, the two lesser AIs aboard the Marathon. The first half of the game involves the player initiating a counterattack and sending a distress call to the planet Earth to warn them of the invasion. In this process, the player is kidnapped by Durandal, an Artificial Intelligence responsible for opening doors, kitchen maintenance and other functions aboard the ship. He achieves rampancy at the beginning of the game, a state that is described by a few terminals in the game and Durandal himself as the self-awareness of a computer system that permits a progression towards greater mental abilities. Leela eventually succumbs to the attacks of S'pht compilers, cybernetic alien creatures enslaved by the Pfhor that fight on their side until the conclusion of the game. Durandal takes her place and ends up as the Artificial Intelligence that assists the player. He eventually sends the player to explore the Pfhor ship to collect information about it.. It is eventually discovered that the S'pht are under the control of a cyborg on the ship. When the cyborg is destroyed by the player, the S'pht become free and a rebellion against the Pfhor begins. Leela gradually becomes stable and assists the player in the extermination of the last few hostile forces on the Marathon. Durandal leaves the Marathon and gains control of the Pfhor ship. [url=http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/5256/marascreen.png]Marathon[/url] turned Bungie into a leading Mac publisher practically overnight. But Bungie didn't slow its momentum setting its sight on the future, even launching "[url=http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/2315/21013734.jpg]bungie.com[/url]" over the young Internet. The website became the nexus where fans could interact with Bungie extensively, something Bungie was well known for doing. Here began early Bungie traditions, legends, and mysteries such as Ling-Ling, the "[url=http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/5331/bcom3.png]Webmaster[/url]" (some unknown Bungie guy in a gorilla suit and a cowboy hat), the [url=http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/6546/dsoul.png]Disembodied Soul[/url] and weird mysterious phrases such as "frog blast the vent core!", and "where the heck did the name Bungie come from?".