Prodigy Lives! Play MadMaze On the Web
August 4th, 2006 by Benj Edwards
When I was but a wee lad, I begged my father to sign me up for Prodigy. I loved BBSes and wanted to try Prodigy so badly. On Christmas 1992, I finally got my wish: an orange cardboard box emblazoned with a blue star appeared under the Christmas tree. One hour (and one father’s credit card charge) later, I was online. Overall, I was mostly underwhelmed with the service and my subscription didn’t last long, but there was one thing I really liked about it: the games.
Many of you probably know of Prodigy, a pre-”popular Internet” era commercial dial-up online service that utilized copious amounts of NAPLPS graphics in its client interface. And one of the best applications of this rarely used, bandwidth- friendly graphics protocol was Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan’s very popular Prodigy adventure game, MadMaze.
Thanks to the hard work of Russ Brown, nostalgiaphiles like me can relive their glory days with MadMaze-II, a meticulous recreation of the original MadMaze game on the web via HTML. It’s been online since 2001, but I just stumbled across it recently and thought I’d share it with you. MadMaze-II plays almost exactly like the original; the only down side is that it requires Internet Explorer to play. Still, if there was ever a reason to dust off IE (for those of you who have gone on to greener pastures), this is it.
I love the innocent graphical style of MadMaze so much that I’ve even created a desktop background based on the MadMaze artwork. It’s available in two sizes: 1024×768 | 1280×1024.
Here are some more screenshots from the game:
Luckily, you can save your progress on the maze screen at any time. You only get one “save slot” though, so use it carefully.
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August 4th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
Prodigy is gone but Quantum Link is back. No, seriously. Check out http://www.quantum-link.org/ for all the details including a way to access Q-Link with your modern PC (just in case your retro computer is in the attic).
August 6th, 2006 at 11:31 am
Wow, that’s hella awesome RedWolf! I’ve never seen this before!
Any chance you could do an article on the only OTHER reason to dust off IE, virtualapple.org?
August 7th, 2006 at 11:35 am
Bjorn, thanks for mentioning that. I’ve actually been working on a piece about Quantum Link Reloaded. I’m working on actually connecting through a real C64. Stay tuned!
August 7th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Wow, this takes me back! I spent too much time in 1994 playing this game. I’m actually nostalgic for the old DOS Prodigy software.
August 7th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Before Internet Games There Was Only… MadMaze!
My first exposure to the online world came in 1993 when my parents gave me a 14.4Kbps modem. In the days before modern Internet access there were online services such as Prodigy, the original iteration of America Online, CompuServe, GEnie,
August 7th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
A great place to go for information about Quantum Link Reloaded, including assistance on getting connected with a real 64 or with an emulator like VICE, check out the message forums at:
http://jledger.proboards19.com/index.cgi?board=qlink
August 10th, 2006 at 9:49 am
[…] Fast forward to this morning. I was browsing through some of my less news feeds, when an article entitled “Prodigy Lives! Play MadMaze On the Web” on VintageComputing.com. Could this be the very game that has inexplicably risen out of my subconscious? And better yet, could I play it via the web right now? Tantalizing, indeed, but was this in fact the same game I remember from yesteryear? It did match 2 of the 3 keywords - “Prodigy” and “Maze”, but was there a Chickenhouse? […]
August 21st, 2006 at 1:51 am
do you know where i can find any of the other games that were on Prodigy?
August 21st, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Leslie,
No, sorry. The best I can help you is to point you towards Google. But if you find any more, please let us know!
December 2nd, 2006 at 6:23 pm
Hi, I used to play madmaze when I was a kid. i naver forgave my dad for canceling our prodigy service, because I had gotten so far in the game, and lost it. My question is this,
Can I buy a copy of the game to run on my computer? Where can I find it. I’ve been looking for years.
Thank you.
December 3rd, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Jennifer,
No, you can’t run this game on your computer locally. The game originally resided on Prodigy’s servers and was run exclusively through their client. The version of the game in the article above is a simulation of that game written to run over the web in Internet Explorer. The link to the simulation is in the 2nd to last paragraph of the article. Have fun!
May 21st, 2008 at 3:58 am
My dad is a retired Air Force officer, and he worked with computer since the 1970’s. Growing up, I had the opportunity to experiment a lot with computers, and innovated programs.
The first game I ever played online was Mad Maze. My first experience online was with Prodigy. I remember playing this and not understanding why I had only a few minutes to play. Back then, internet charged by the minute. I think it was something like 2.99$ a minute. I was only 7 years old, and I think it was 1989, or 1990.
I now know how lucky I was to be just 7 or 8 years old and using the internet back when most people, even those much older than me, hadn’t had the same opportunity. I think it was the mid to late 90’s when most American kids had consistent access to the internet. Anyone before then was lucky, like myself.
July 24th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I loved the maze game!! I also loved FITB and Prodigy’s version of Carmen Sandiego.
October 8th, 2008 at 1:03 am
like Ralph said it was a different time. Mad Maze was my first online game as well, its amazing how entertaining something can be when you don’t know any better. My whole family played this game when we had prodigy, even my dad who hates this kind of stuff!
October 26th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Hmm, MadMaze doesn’t seem to work well.
December 11th, 2008 at 11:14 am
What was the name of the business simulation game on Prodigy that was about cars? Car Wars? Auto Wars? Has anyone re-done this game? Timely I’d say.
December 11th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
I first got online with Prodigy with my 1200 kbs modem in my IBM286. Still love the classic garbled connect sound (but I can live without it with T1). Mad Maze was a classic…almost as good as the great gritty graphic games of the 90s (Lucas Arts….Tex Murphy…StoneKeep…the first “Theme Park”). They even topped Intellivision’s classicsiity. I dont remember V’s business sim.
January 4th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Oh, the memories! Glad to find this online, appreciate your posting it
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Can I get this game to work on my mac? I downloaded IE 5.2 and it still won’t load the game. Any help?
August 8th, 2009 at 12:31 am
I know I’m coming late to the conversation, but this is a great find. Really brings back memories of my top-of-the-line 2400bps and its blazing speed that winter of 1992. Never got past that damn minotaur, though.
Sometimes I’ll hear a fax machine connect and I’ll have a Prodigy flashback…
October 15th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
haha i used to sing along with the 14.4Kbps modem while signing on. i got hooked on madmaze but i never got past the minotaur either! i loved carmen sandiego and thinker (which was basically mastermind online), i LOVED police artist or police sketch artist or something, NOVA had a section with an interactive flash type animation, and i barely remember that car simulation….
prodigy was the best!!!!
were there mad libs or something on prodigy??
January 25th, 2010 at 12:59 am
GUTS!!!!!