MIDI Maze
Encyclopedia
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
developed by Xanth Software F/X, published by Hybrid Arts
Hybrid arts
Hybrid arts is a contemporary art movement in which artists work with frontier areas of science and emerging technologies. Artists work with fields such as biology, robotics, physical sciences, experimental interface technologies , artificial intelligence, and information visualization...
, and released around 1987. It owes a significant debt to what may be the first of its genre, Maze War
Maze War
Maze War is a video game.Maze War originated or disseminated a number of concepts used in thousands of games to follow, and is considered one of the earliest examples of, or progenitor of, a first-person shooter...
. The original MIDI Maze team consisted of James Yee as the business manager, Michael Park as the graphics and distributed processing guru, and George Miller writing the AI/drone logic. It is mainly remembered now for the innovation multiplayer "deathmatch" combat by the construction of networks using the MIDI interface.
Up to 16 computers could be networked in a "MIDI Ring" by connecting one computer's MIDI-OUT port to the next computer's MIDI-IN port. Unless the computers were looped correctly, more than 4 players tended to slow down the game to a crawl and make it unstable.
Graphically the game was very simple with a humorous twist. The game area itself occupied only roughly a quarter of the screen and consisted of a first-person view
First person (video games)
In video games, first person refers to a graphical perspective rendered from the viewpoint of the player character. In many cases, this may be the viewpoint from the cockpit of a vehicle. Many different genres have made use of first-person perspectives, ranging from adventure games to flight...
of a flat-shaded Pac-Man
Pac-Man
is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is considered one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games,...
-like maze with a crosshair in the middle. All players were shown as Pac-Man-like smiley
Smiley
A smiley, smiley face, or happy face, is a stylized representation of a smiling human face, commonly occurring in popular culture. It is commonly represented as a yellow circle with two black dots representing eyes and a black arc representing the mouth...
avatars
Avatar (computing)
In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...
in various colors. Bullets were represented as small balls.
The game was started by one designated "master" machine, which set rules, divided players into teams, and selected a maze. A number of mazes were supplied with the game, and additional mazes could be constructed using a simple text-editor or one of various third-party tools. The game was very popular at gatherings of Atari ST
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
users until the end of the Atari ST
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
era, circa 1993.
A prototype of MIDI Maze was found for the Atari 8-bit family
Atari 8-bit family
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers manufactured from 1979 to 1992. All are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU and were the first home computers designed with custom coprocessor chips...
. It is possible to connect ST and 8-bit to a network and play together. A three-day all-day MIDI Maze tournament is one popular attraction at Con of the North, a gaming convention
Gaming convention
A gaming convention is a gathering that centered on role-playing games, collectible card games, miniatures wargames, board games, video games, or other types of games. These conventions are typically two or three days long, and often held at either a university or in a convention center hotel...
in Saint Paul, Minnesota
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city...
.
MIDI-Maze II and MIDImaze Plus
MIDI-Maze II was later developed by Markus Fritze for Sigma-Soft. This game was released as sharewareShareware
The term shareware is a proprietary software that is provided to users without payment on a trial basis and is often limited by any combination of functionality, availability, or convenience. Shareware is often offered as a download from an Internet website or as a compact disc included with a...
and contained gameplay improvements over the original.
Another improved variation, based more closely on the original Midi Maze, was Midimaze Plus from Robert and Werner Spahl featuring a compass and more detailed info on players.
Faceball 2000
A Game BoyGame Boy
The , is an 8-bit handheld video game device developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on , in North America in , and in Europe on...
version was developed by the original developers, Xanth Software F/X, and published in 1991 by Bulletproof Software, now Blue Planet Software
Blue Planet Software
Blue Planet Software, formerly known as Bullet Proof Software, is a video game developer and publisher. The original Bullet Proof Software was founded in Japan in the 1980s. Blue Planet Software was founded by Henk Rogers in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1996....
, under the title Faceball 2000. James Yee, owner of Xanth, had a vision to port the 520ST application to the Game Boy. With support from Michael Park, graphics rendering techniques and communication protocol knowledge was passed on to Robert Champagne. George Miller was hired to re-write the AI-based drone logic, giving each drone a unique personality trait. It is notable for being the only Game Boy game to support 16 simultaneous players. It used a special hardware device and cables created by the game programmer, Robert Champagne. A SNES
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...
version, also programmed by Robert Champagne, was released the following year, supporting two players in split-screen mode. The SNES version substituted completely different graphics and levels from the earlier GameBoy version. A Game Gear version, which is a colorised version of the monochrome Game Boy edition, programmed by Darren Stone, was released to the Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese market, supporting two handhelds connected by a cable. A demo version, simply titled "Faceball" was also available in Japan on a CD for the PC Engine
TurboGrafx-16
TurboGrafx-16, fully titled as TurboGrafx-16 Entertainment SuperSystem and known in Japan as the , is a video game console developed by Hudson Soft and NEC, released in Japan on October 30, 1987, and in North America on August 29, 1989....
. A Virtual Boy
Virtual Boy
The was a video game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was the first video game console that was supposed to be capable of displaying "true 3D graphics" out of the box. Whereas most video games use monocular cues to achieve the illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional...
version, simply titled "Faceball" was under development, until Nintendo decided to quit manufacturing the Virtual Boy. A variety of in-game music for the SNES version of Faceball 2000 was composed by George "The Fat Man" Sanger. A multiplayer networked IBM PC version of the game was prototype
Prototype
A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...
d, but never released.
A version called Faceball 3000, written in Shockwave, was also available.
Reception
Faceball: 2000 was reviewed in 1994 in DragonDragon (magazine)
Dragon is one of the two official magazines for source material for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and associated products, the other being Dungeon. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, The Strategic Review. The...
#201 by Sandy Petersen
Sandy Petersen
Carl Sanford Joslyn Petersen is a game designer.Petersen was born in St. Louis, Missouri and attended University of California, Berkeley, majoring in zoology....
in the "Eye of the Monitor" column. Petersen gave the game 2 out of 5 stars.
External links
- MIDI Maze Utilities
- MIDI Maze fan site (German)
- Faceball 2000 information page (ranked #25 of 1up.com's Essential 50)
- Faceball 2000 fan site
- Interview with Darren Stone
- Faceball 3000
- SuperMaze (Freeware Midi-Maze clone from 2005 for Windows and Linux featuring music from Amiga scene musician Chromag)