Maze Wars+

Maze Wars+ was an early multi-player network game for classic Macintosh computers, released in Fall 1986 by MacroMind, the predecessor of Macromedia. It was advertised as a direct descendant of the classic Maze War game that had been developed for the Imlac PDS-1.

Development
Work on the Macintosh version of MazeWars began in 1984 as a network demonstration project at Apple Computer by software engineer Burt Sloane. Designer Susan Kare contributed to the graphics as internal interest caught on. In January 1985, MazeWars was demonstrated in San Francisco after the first Macworld Expo at the first Macintosh "net party". It was written as a demo specifically for the Macintosh 128K and 512K models and would crash if run on a system with more memory, though patched versions are known to exist.

Alan McNeil worked on an improved version with additional features that would become Maze Wars+. It was demonstrated by MacroMind at Macworld Expo Boston in August 1986 and went on sale that fall as the company's first self-published product.

Features

 * Support for up to 30 players on an AppleTalk network.
 * Real-time interaction speed over a 1200-baud modem.
 * Built-in terminal feature with the ability to send messages to other players.
 * 5 types of available characters and 4 types of accompanying robots.
 * Different options to change the nature of gameplay.
 * Solo play option against a computer opponent.

Articles

 * A Quick History of the MMORPG by Kevin Woodberry at Gamereactor (2016-03-13)
 * The first first-person shooter by Richard Moss at Polygon (2015-05-21)