#mps labs

In 1993, MicroProse’s MPS Labs released almost released Secret of the Seventh Labyrinth, a first-person role-playing game.

23 years on, there is almost no information about this game or evidence that it ever existed. The closest I can find is a French abandonware site that, in lieu of a copy of the game, includes screenshots that appear to be scanned from a magazine. It looks like it had a vaguely Egyptian theme...

Almost no other information about the game is readily available. If it wasn’t released, it came very close to reaching store shelves: a few mail-order catalogs list the game, and it had at least one brief review in volume 10, issue 7 of QuestBusters (scan courtesy of The Museum of Computer Adventure Game History):

It’s possible that Secret of the Seventh Labyrinth was canceled at the last minute. If it was released, that’s even more troubling: a game by a major developer would have completely vanished over the course of twenty years.

(Please get in touch if you know anything about this game!)

Darklands

Darklands is a role-playing game released in 1992 by MicroProse and developed by its in-house studio MPS Labs. The game is notable for its setting, which blends s detailed and realistic representation of 15th century Germany with medieval German folktales and legends - the world where kobolds, dragons, witches and demons exist but usually stay hidden in deep forests or beneath the earth, rarely seen but often spoken about by drunk people at the local inn. There's a lot of fantasy elements in this game but before you get to them, you're going to deal with the more mundane aspects of medieval life - travelling the dangerous roads, paying toll to enter the cities, working odd jobs and attending religious ceremonies.