MIDI Maze, also known as Faceball 2000, is a networked first-person shooter maze game for the Atari ST developed by Xanth Software F/X and released in 1987 by Hybrid Arts. The game takes place in a maze of untextured walls. The world animates smoothly as the player turns, much like the earlier Wayout, instead of only permitting 90 degree changes of direction. Using the MIDI ports on the Atari ST, the game is said to have introduced deathmatch combat to gaming in 1987. It also predated the LAN party concept by several years. The game found a wider audience when it was converted to Faceball 2000 on the Game Boy.
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A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through the eyes of the main character. This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games, and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world, and this type of game helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in the field of graphics processing units. Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years.
A player engaging in combat during an above-ground section in Half-Life
More 21st century first-person shooters utilize the Internet for multiplayer features, but local area networks were commonly used in early games.
2011 shooter Xonotic