Rick Maurer made games for the Fairchild Channel F before joining Atari, where he programmed two 1980 Atari 2600 cartridges found on this site. Maze Craze: A Game of Cops and Robbers began after Atari stopped his first Space Invaders-style project; it is a two-player race through mazes that are generated fresh every game. He then converted Space Invaders, the first arcade game officially licensed for a home console. It roughly quadrupled 2600 sales and sold more than a million copies in its first year.
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Space Invaders is the 1980 Atari 2600 version of Taito’s 1978 arcade game, designed by Tomohiro Nishikado. The home port was programmed by Rick Maurer and was the first arcade game officially licensed for a home console. You slide a laser cannon along the ground and shoot down rows of marching aliens before they reach the bottom. Its many variations let you tune it from relaxed to very hard. You can play it here in your browser, with nothing to install.
Maze Craze: A Game of Cops and Robbers is a 1980 maze race for the Atari 2600, programmed by Rick Maurer and published by Atari. Sears sold it under the name Maze Mania for its Tele-Games line. Two players each steer a cop through a maze of city blocks, and the first one to reach the exit on the right wins. The maze is generated fresh every time, so no two races are the same. You can play it here in your browser.