Announced as part of the Xbox Live Arcade portion of Microsoft's E3 conference, the company finally confirmed what had been rumored, demanded and wished for ever since the service launched: Marathon is back. The classic Bungie FPS, considered a prototype for Halo (and a game considered in some ways a better game than the multi-million selling Halo franchise), will be made available to download on Xbox Live Arcade.

Microsoft showed a quick clip of Marathon: Durandal, which would indicate that the Xbox version is based on part 2 in the Marathon series -- that leaves you in the middle of the franchise (unless the XBLA version includes both Marathon and Marathon 2). Graphics on the quick clip looked smooth (at least, as smooth as a 10-year-old game should look), but we have no details on exactly what's been done with the engine and what features the XBLA version will feature. It is also not known yet if this game will be made available on the Windows Live service (although considering Bungie has open-sourced the game, that's not a big deal at the moment.) There's also not an indication as to whether the networked gameplay of the shooter series will be made available, and we also don't know if the XBLA version will let you make your own maps (or import the maps from the old games, although given that user-created content has not been welcomed onto Xbox Live just yet, we're not sure that we can count on this feature.

Rich in storytelling and intense with its gunplay, Marathon is a classic game from the vaults that any fan of Halo should check out. It may be dated, but the game was also ahead of its time at the time of its release, and it will be quite interesting to see on Xbox 360. We'll have more info on Marathon for XBLA as soon as we get new word on it.