In 2001, they released Halo and set the gaming world on fire, but in 1991, the little company we now know as Bungie spent their time creating Mac games and Pong clones. Over the course of sixteen years, Bungie transformed from an independent developer of niche titles into video game royalty. This is their story.

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Chapter I - Out of the Basement

Like many other game development studios that made a sudden rise to global fame and fortune, the studio that would eventually create the world-renowned Halo franchise started out in relative obscurity creating something so simple as a Pong clone named Gnop! (Pong spelled backwards). When Gnop was released, Bungie wasn't even a company, but instead one man. University of Chicago student Alexander Seropian (seen to the left) single-handedly programmed the little Macintosh exclusive game which he gave away for free, but sold the source code for $15 a pop to try to make ends meat.

It wasn't until 1991 that the studio we know as Bungie came to be in Chicago, but even so, its foundation was originally meant to only serve one purpose—to publish another self-authored game by Seropian by the name of Operation: Desert Storm. Bungie wasn't even a "company" at that, but rather a one man operation in the form of Alexander himself. This wouldn't last long. The one man operation became two when Alexander was joined by his friend Jason Jones from their mutual Artificial Intelligence class.

Both of the undergraduate students had more familiarity with the Macintosh platform than the PC. Even though the PC market was more lucrative, it was also more competitive, so the Macintosh environment provided a more stable launch pad for startup companies. The first game they would release together from Alex's apartment would be Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete.

While Desert Storm had managed to sell around 2,500 copies, (which was pretty impressive for a pair of people working out of an apartment building, coding their own games from scratch while trying not to starve), Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete would be the one that got people's attention. It was a groundbreaking game because it was one of the first games to require the use of a modem (AppleTalk). Though the game would only acquire a cult following thanks to that same innovation, its success was enough to push the two to create a 1993 spiritual sequel in true 3D as a fleshed out single player experience relying on story. Designed for use on the "then" revolutionary Mac RISC chipset and developed on a Mac IIFX, Pathways into Darkness (which carried the tagline "This is the closest you'll
get to virtual reality without a helmet") was a revolutionary game that combined elements of the Western RPG experience (solving puzzles, talking with NPCs, and discovering secrets) with the fresh new world of first-person shooters, which was still in its infancy in 1993.

Pathways into Darkness did more than just acquire a cult following. Countless Mac magazines hailed the game as an instant classic, and it also received an award from MacWorld's Game Hall of Fame. This resulted in HUGE sales for the two man operation that was just the year before assembling the boxes for their games by hand. In fact, it managed to sell more than enough copies for Alex and Jason to move out of Alex's apartment and into a rundown old office in Chicago with a limited amount of staff. The place wasn't exactly a Hilton, but it was a start to what would in time become one of the most widely recognized game development studios in the world.