Maze War
Overview
"Maze War" (also known as "The Maze Game", "Maze Wars", "MazeWar", "Maze", and "mazewar") is a computer game that originated from the early development of interactive computer graphics. It was the earliest networked multiplayer game where players, represented as eyeball avatars, roamed around a maze environment shooting at each other. It was also the first game to use a first-person view. Maze War was a groundbreaking and innovative game that paved the way for the multiplayer, first-person shooter games that we see today.
History
Maze War was developed in 1973 by Steve Colley, Howard Palmer and Greg Thompson, three high school students who were interns at the NASA Ames Research Center. The game was initially developed on an Imlac PDS-1 and PDS-4 minicomputer, and its graphics were displayed on vector displays. It was later ported to the Xerox Alto computer, which was a raster graphics display system.
Gameplay
In Maze War, players navigate through a maze viewed from a first-person perspective, a feature that was revolutionary at the time. The maze is a simple grid with walls, and players are represented as eyeballs. The objective of the game is to shoot the other players, earning points for each hit. The game ends when a player reaches a certain score.
Players can move forward, backward, turn right or left, and shoot. When a player is shot, they are temporarily stunned and unable to move, giving the shooter time to escape. The game also features a radar-like map, showing the location of all players in the maze, but not their orientation.
Impact
Maze War was a pioneering game in many aspects. It was the first game to introduce the concept of online multiplayer, which has now become a standard feature in many video games. It was also the first game to use a first-person perspective, a feature that is now common in shooter games.
The game also introduced the concept of avatars, where players are represented on-screen by a character or icon. This concept has been widely adopted in many online multiplayer games and virtual worlds, such as Second Life and World of Warcraft.
Legacy
Maze War's influence can be seen in many modern video games. The first-person shooter genre, which includes popular games like Doom, Quake, and Call of Duty, owes its existence to Maze War. The game's multiplayer feature also paved the way for massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) and multiplayer online battle arena games (MOBAs).