Star Maze

When I was a kid, my dad, in a uncharacteristic fit of runaway consumerism, came home one afternoon with an Apple IIe rig. Monochrome green monitor, dual disk drives and a really big molded plastic desk to house it all. Expensive, cutting-edge technology that no one in my family really knew what to do with - including dad. But it was pretty awesome anyway.

I wouldn't become interested in programming for another decade or more (long after the Apple IIe was gone), but I have a lot of good memories of the unique & quirky games I played back on the Apple. So a few years ago when I discovered the AppleWin emulator project and the impressive ftp.apple.asimov.net disk image repository, I was stoked.

The vast array of software available in the asimov repository can be a blessing and a curse; it's comprehensive, but it quickly turns into a proverbial haystack when you can't remember the name of that one game you played 25 years ago. Last night I was pretty thrilled to finally reunite a vague memory of "that one gem collecting space game" with Star Maze.


Star Maze running in AppleWin
Since I've been building this 2D engine in XNA, there's been something of a worker thread spawned in the back of my mind. A background process that examines the games I play through a programmer's prism. Last night as I drifted around Star Maze, shooting bad guys, collecting jewels and enjoying the nostalgia, it occurred to me that Star Maze is actually a well designed game. It's ancient, and a hassle to play via the emulator, but whereas a lot of these old games I've exhumed from asimov lately have primarily had only nostalgic value and not much else, Star Maze sticks out as a somewhat viable game. I think there's a spark of gameplay beating beneath it's crude surface, preserved all these years.

Once the engine is done, I think I'll give my old pal Star Maze a face-lift.