16 Player Faceball 2000

[TesseractE]

Had a chat with someone at the WCC event in FDL today about MidiMaze, and that reminded me of this gem... MGC features in it a few times!

 

[DaveG]

That was me you were talking to. Back when Gencon was in Milwaukee our MilAtari club would run MidiMaze rings at the event. For about 5 years Atari would send us 40+ Atari STs along with other machines (8-bits and Lynxs). We would have two 16 player rings of MidiMaze up and running from the opening of the show to closing each day. Atari sent these machines on their own dime. We charged $2 per player and split the profits 50/50 with Gencon.

After Atari quit sending us machines we tried to carry on with computers loaned from our members. We couldn't quite make up a full ring of 16. In 2003 we participated in our first and only event at The Milwaukee Gaming Classic. It was their third year and it was Held at Nicolet High School in Glendale. We had 8 or 9 machines linked together. That was the last time that we ran a MidiMaze ring.

I've included a photo of the 2003 event

 

[Actrogen]

That's really cool that they "could" do it hypothetically until these YouTubers built the hardware to make it "actually" possible years later.

 

[TesseractE]

I had a chat with Derek at MGC 2024 when they were trying to get it all working, but I had no Idea it was THAT much trouble. XD

 

[Spudster]

I remember playing MidiMaze back in the early 90's with a whole bunch of Atari STs interconnected, and it absolutely blew my mind such a thing was possible.

 

[TesseractE]

I think the closest I came to anything like that was playing Master of Orion 2 with a friend over a null modem cable.

 

[Jasper]

LAN parties were so dope!