Introduction
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A breif history of Xanth Software F/X leading to faceball 2000 for Gameboy
Courtesy of Robert Champagne

Xanth started as a computer-store (Atari mostly) in Seattle's Pioneer Square in the mid to late 80's. The owner, James Yee, (I'll use his real name because it's not really a secret) was/is a very enthusiastic and creative gamer. He was a part of the early Atari computer groups in the Seattle-area, and that's where I met him. Essentially all of what became Xanth Software F/X was a group of friends who loved games and game-programming. Jim always talked of having a group of guys making games, but we always just thought it was talk. However, it wasn't long before a silly little game-demo was created that became MidiMaze.
Because of MidiMaze Jim made lots of new friends in the game biz. One of these was Henk Rogers (owner of Bullet-Proof Software... now Blue Planet Software) who is the guy who brought Tetris from Russia to Nintendo (you may have read the chapter in "Game Over" about Henk... actually, Alexi Pajitnov helped us at various times during the development of Faceball since he was living and working in Seattle). Long story short, Jim convinced Henk to fund his company (Xanth, the name of which came from a book Jim loved) and the development of MidiMaze on the Gameboy.