The trio were working on creating graphical representations of computational fluid dynamics on Imlac PDS-1 minicomputers, which unlike many other minicomputers at the time included a vector graphics monitor. The original version of the game was developed by high school students Steve Colley, Howard Palmer, and Greg Thompson in mid to late 1973 during a school work/study program at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California. In addition to human players, 'robot' players can be added to the game, which follow simple algorithms to play the game and slow down if they reach a score limit. Different versions of the game support different numbers of players the initial concept only supported two players, while the first main version of the game supported eight players at different terminals, and later variants supported more. Early versions of the game let the player overlay the screen with a top-down view of the maze and their avatar's position in it, while later versions kept the top-down view next to or below the viewscreen at all times. The players' scores are displayed next to the view of the maze. After being shot, the target has two seconds to move away before they can be shot again. Players can shoot bullets, which rapidly move away from the player and hit other players upon touching them shooting a player earns the shooter ten points, while being shot loses the target five points. Players can also send text messages that are displayed on the screens of other players. Other players in the maze are displayed as the letters of their usernames along with an indicator of which direction they are looking later versions of the game replaced this with the image of an eyeball. They can also peek around corners, which changes their view as if they had both moved forward and turned, but does not move their player character or allow them to shoot. The player can move forward and backwards between spaces at a rate of one space per key press and can turn left or right or look behind themselves in 90-degree increments. The game contains a default maze layout, but players can provide their own upon starting the game. The maze layout is represented by a grid of spaces that are either empty or solid and form a flat plane containing walls of equal height. Maze is a multiplayer first-person shooter maze game in which players traverse a flat maze and shoot opponents to score points. It has additionally been credited with a variety of other firsts, such as the first level editor, first observer mode and radar, and first avatars, but due to its reliance on specific, expensive computer hardware its direct influence on video games and the first-person shooter genre was limited. It is likely also the earliest example of what was later termed the first-person shooter genre and is considered along with the 1974 space flight simulation game Spasim to be one of the 'joint ancestors' of the genre. Maze is believed to be the first 3D first-person game ever made. The Xerox version went on to inspire many different takes on the first-person maze game concept in the 1980s and 1990s, released under many different names. Thompson and other programmers later developed several other versions of Maze, including a specialized hardware-based game by Thompson and other students as well as a version titled Mazewar by Jim Guyton, Mike Wahrman, and colleagues at Xerox for the Xerox Alto computer. There are reports that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA) at one point banned the game from the ARPANET due to its popularity. Due to the popularity of the game, laboratory managers at MIT both played it while also trying to restrict its use due to the large amount of time students were spending on it.

Other programmers at MIT improved this version of the game, which was also playable between people at different universities over the nascent ARPANET. After Thompson began school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he brought the game to the school's computer science laboratory in February 1974, where he and Dave Lebling expanded it into an eight-player game using the school's Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-10 minicomputer and PDS-1 terminals along with adding scoring, top-down map views, and a level editor. By the end of 1973 the game featured shooting elements and could be played on two computers connected together. The first version was developed by high school students Steve Colley, Greg Thompson, and Howard Palmer for the Imlac PDS-1 minicomputer during a school work/study program at the NASA Ames Research Center. Maze, also known as Maze War, is a 3D multiplayer first-person shooter maze game originally developed in 1973 and expanded in 1974. Greg Thompson, Dave Lebling (MIT version)Ĭomputer ( Imlac PDS-1, PDP-10, Xerox Star)

Steve Colley, Greg Thompson, Howard Palmer (NASA version) MIT version of Maze on an Imlac PDS-1D at the Computer History Museum

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