Mazes

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The third-person computer maze could be glimpsed as early as 1959 in ''Mouse in the Maze,'' but it truly erupted, in the Unites States at least, less than two years before the release of the Commodore 64, in October 1980. This is when the original ''Pac-Man'' arcade game arrived from Japan. In Japan, the genre of games inspired by ''Pac-Man'' is named after dot eating, but in the United States such games are called maze or maze chase games.

−

Of couse, Pac-Man cannot thread his way through the environment to find an exit -- except for the tunnel that links the left and right side of the screen together. Nevertheless, the playing field was called a maze from the beginning. ''The New York Times'' called Pac-Man "a circle with a big mouth that eats up dots in a maze while other big mouths try to eat it up" (Latham 1981), while ''Newsweek'' mentioned the "maddening Pac-Man maze" (Langway 1981). The puzzle that is posed to the voracious Pac-Man, or to the player controlling him, is not to get out of the maze but to run through more or less all of it, avoiding the pursing monsters. The player can certainly identify with the abstract figure who is controlled via joystick, but this figure has a life of his own, portrayed in some of the earliest cut-scenes and seen in attract mode, which features Pac-Man running around on his own.

+

Of course, Pac-Man cannot thread his way through the environment to find an exit -- except for the tunnel that links the left and right side of the screen together. The playing field may be better described as being littered with obstacles rather than as being "a maze" in the sense that hedge mazes, experimental mazes, and the like are usually understood. Nevertheless, the playing field was called a maze from the beginning. ''The New York Times'' called Pac-Man "a circle with a big mouth that eats up dots in a maze while other big mouths try to eat it up" (Latham 1981), while ''Newsweek'' mentioned the "maddening Pac-Man maze" (Langway 1981). The puzzle that is posed to the voracious Pac-Man, or to the player controlling him, is not to get out of the maze but to run through more or less all of it, avoiding the pursing monsters. The player can certainly identify with the abstract figure who is controlled via joystick, but this figure has a life of his own, portrayed in some of the earliest cut-scenes and seen in attract mode, which features Pac-Man running around on his own.

−

One very standard feature of 'Pac-Man's'' maze is that it is aligned to the axes of the display: The paths are either horizontal or vertical.

+

When ''Pac-Man'' was reimplemented for the Atari VCS in 1982, the vertical field was redesigned in horizontal format and for a lower-resolution graphics system. The essential topology of the game (partitions, looped corners, and warp gates connecting one side to the other) remained the same. One very standard feature of 'Pac-Man's'' maze both in the arcade game and on the VCS is that it is aligned to the axes of the display: The paths are either horizontal or vertical. Just as the tanks in '"Tank'' and the player's ship in ''Asteroids'' (1979) can turn and fire in many different directions, it was possible to represent a maze that was not "orthogonal" in this way: 10 PRINT provides a very simple alternative, a diagonal game. But third-person videogame mazes were almost always aligned as in ''Pac-Man,'' even before the dot eater made his first appearance.

+

Orthogonal maze-like playing fields were presented in third-person views in several early arcade games, including ''Gotcha'' (1973) and ''Tank'' (1974). In 1976, an arcade game from Midway called ''The Amazing Maze Game'' offered a more or less direct digital version of the standard maze challenge -- move an on-screen token to find a path that allows escape. Videogame mazes quickly made their way into the home, too. The game bundled with for the classic cartridge-based Atari VCS in 1977 was ''Combat,'' which brought the maze-like playing fields of ''Tank'' into the home. Soon after release, that console featured ''Maze Craze'' (1978), which allowed players to compete in several different challenges in mazy environments that were automatically generated.

+

Another feature shared by all these games (both arcade and for home video game consoles) is their treatment of the screen display as a single complete visual unit, like the board of a board game. The continuously scrolling maze of 10 PRINT at least suggests a maze that is larger than the screen, even if one cannot navigate around to see what is off-screen. An interesting contrast to the single-screen maze is a close-up design that puts the player in a larger-scale maze, seen in the Atari VCS game ''Adventure'' (1979). Adventure was loosely based on the interactive fiction work of the same name, and featured a hero with a sword collecting treasures despite the efforts of four dragons. Unlike ''Pac-Man'', in which the player can guide Pac-Man out a warp gate on one side of the screen and see him enter on the other side, ''Adventure'' contains numerous topologically impossible warps that are always hidden from view, and can only be deduced. Instead of an overview map of the total maze, each screen is a claustrophobic close-up of simple paths, often emphasizing discontinuous fragments of other paths that can't easily be reached. This kind of claustrophobic, discontinuous maze-space was later further explored on the Atari VCS in ''Haunted House'' (1981), particularly in the use of darkness and the addition of keys in some modes to restrict and sequence room access.

=== Context of Expectations: Computer Graphics and Games ===

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@@ Line 155: / Line 155: @@
 The third-person computer maze could be glimpsed as early as 1959 in ''Mouse in the Maze,'' but it truly erupted, in the Unites States at least, less than two years before the release of the Commodore 64, in October 1980. This is when the original ''Pac-Man'' arcade game arrived from Japan. In Japan, the genre of games inspired by ''Pac-Man'' is named after dot eating, but in the United States such games are called maze or maze chase games.
-Of couse, Pac-Man cannot thread his way through the environment to find an exit -- except for the tunnel that links the left and right side of the screen together. Nevertheless, the playing field was called a maze from the beginning. ''The New York Times'' called Pac-Man "a circle with a big mouth that eats up dots in a maze while other big mouths try to eat it up" (Latham 1981), while ''Newsweek'' mentioned the "maddening Pac-Man maze" (Langway 1981). The puzzle that is posed to the voracious Pac-Man, or to the player controlling him, is not to get out of the maze but to run through more or less all of it, avoiding the pursing monsters. The player can certainly identify with the abstract figure who is controlled via joystick, but this figure has a life of his own, portrayed in some of the earliest cut-scenes and seen in attract mode, which features Pac-Man running around on his own.
+Of course, Pac-Man cannot thread his way through the environment to find an exit -- except for the tunnel that links the left and right side of the screen together. The playing field may be better described as being littered with obstacles rather than as being "a maze" in the sense that hedge mazes, experimental mazes, and the like are usually understood. Nevertheless, the playing field was called a maze from the beginning. ''The New York Times'' called Pac-Man "a circle with a big mouth that eats up dots in a maze while other big mouths try to eat it up" (Latham 1981), while ''Newsweek'' mentioned the "maddening Pac-Man maze" (Langway 1981). The puzzle that is posed to the voracious Pac-Man, or to the player controlling him, is not to get out of the maze but to run through more or less all of it, avoiding the pursing monsters. The player can certainly identify with the abstract figure who is controlled via joystick, but this figure has a life of his own, portrayed in some of the earliest cut-scenes and seen in attract mode, which features Pac-Man running around on his own.
-One very standard feature of 'Pac-Man's'' maze is that it is aligned to the axes of the display: The paths are either horizontal or vertical.
+When ''Pac-Man'' was reimplemented for the Atari VCS in 1982, the vertical field was redesigned in horizontal format and for a lower-resolution graphics system. The essential topology of the game (partitions, looped corners, and warp gates connecting one side to the other) remained the same. One very standard feature of 'Pac-Man's'' maze both in the arcade game and on the VCS is that it is aligned to the axes of the display: The paths are either horizontal or vertical. Just as the tanks in '"Tank'' and the player's ship in ''Asteroids'' (1979) can turn and fire in many different directions, it was possible to represent a maze that was not "orthogonal" in this way: 10 PRINT provides a very simple alternative, a diagonal game. But third-person videogame mazes were almost  always aligned as in ''Pac-Man,'' even before the dot eater made his first appearance.
+Orthogonal maze-like playing fields were presented in third-person views in several early arcade games, including ''Gotcha'' (1973) and ''Tank'' (1974). In 1976, an arcade game from Midway called ''The Amazing Maze Game'' offered a more or less direct digital version of the standard maze challenge -- move an on-screen token to find a path that allows escape. Videogame mazes quickly made their way into the home, too. The game bundled with for the classic cartridge-based Atari VCS in 1977 was ''Combat,'' which brought the maze-like playing fields of ''Tank'' into the home. Soon after release, that console featured ''Maze Craze'' (1978), which allowed players to compete in several different challenges in mazy environments that were automatically generated.
+Another feature shared by all these games (both arcade and for home video game consoles) is their treatment of the screen display as a single complete visual unit, like the board of a board game. The continuously scrolling maze of 10 PRINT at least suggests a maze that is larger than the screen, even if one cannot navigate around to see what is off-screen. An interesting contrast to the single-screen maze is a close-up design that puts the player in a larger-scale maze, seen in the Atari VCS game ''Adventure'' (1979). Adventure was loosely based on the interactive fiction work of the same name, and featured a hero with a sword collecting treasures despite the efforts of four dragons. Unlike ''Pac-Man'', in which the player can guide Pac-Man out a warp gate on one side of the screen and see him enter on the other side, ''Adventure'' contains numerous topologically impossible warps that are always hidden from view, and can only be deduced. Instead of an overview map of the total maze, each screen is a claustrophobic close-up of simple paths, often emphasizing discontinuous fragments of other paths that can't easily be reached. This kind of claustrophobic, discontinuous maze-space was later further explored on the Atari VCS in ''Haunted House'' (1981), particularly in the use of darkness and the addition of keys in some modes to restrict and sequence room access.
 === Context of Expectations: Computer Graphics and Games ===