Have You Played… Encarta's MindMaze?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

I was thinking of what else to include in this series and MindMaze bubbled up from the recesses of my brain like a sunken mafia victim, suddenly afloat. Bloated and warped with childhood memories. The details of this ancient trivia minigame come to me now like bits and pieces of an old dream. I know it was included in an Encarta 95 CD-ROM, and I know it was absolutely impossible to complete. You had to be some kind of genius to know the answer to these questions. Or, like, some kind of adult.

You were stuck in a medieval castle, I know that much. There were some tickboxes, with subjects of interest in them. And you’d be questioned by the inhabitants of the maze depending on this. In one corner there was a minimap of the maze you’d uncovered so far. There were little torches you could use to… light the next area? I don’t know. There was a strange man with a trap door. Why?

Encarta died to the endless power of the incubating cyber being we call the Internet. But with it went MindMaze, and the countless hours lost to its jesters and their cross-examinations about geography. The dream memory fades. Goodbye parrot man. Goodbye lady with a letter. Goodbye... weird king on a box?