Precursor to Doom Racks Up 30 years of Fragging

VirtualUK writes "Back in 1974 the first 3D networked multiplayer first person shooter game Maze War set the ball rolling for todays games like Quake and Doom. Initially written on a Imlac PDS-1 players represented as an eyeball fought it out inside what could be considered a minimalistic graphical adventure in comparison to the texture mapped, hi-res extravaganzas on the shelves today. On November 6-7 at the Vintage Computer Festival 7.0 held at the Computer History Museum (Mountain View, CA) there's a special 30th anniversary special event for Maze War. Brude Damer's digibarn site has a great article about it here."

Comments

Play Maze War online? How about on your Palm?

[DoorFrame]

I'm trying to find a site to play the game today online. It seems like it would be a simple game to recreate in a multiplayer form online. If I can play Joust online with shockwave, why not Maze War?

The best I could find was this Palm Pilot version available for download. Good, but not multiplayer like I want. Also, as I have a pocket pc it's not much use for me.

Re:Ultima Underworld

[3770]

Sweeeet!

I did a search on Ultima Underworld on a whim. And I found this page with some information on the game and a map of the "Stygian Abyss" and even better I found this link where you can download a demo.

I can't believe it. I'm going to have to download it and see if I can get it running.

I... Think... I'm... Going... to... cry.

Re:Ultima Underworld

[3770]

It actually works but you have to right click on the executable, choose properties and allocate some EMS memory for it. It then creates an old style .pif file and if you double click on that the game will actually start.

If you download this, just make sure that you put it in its own folder first because it self expands to the folder it is in.

It does look somewhat dated. But it is actually quite similar to todays 3d rpgs.