"[1] The concept was invented earlier by Dave Crummack and Craig Galley for the unreleased 1988 video game Infection.

Virgin Mastertronic licensed it to Leland as well as using the design in its own Spot: The Video Game released the same year as Ataxx.

The game starts with the four pieces on the four corners of the board, with red in the top left and bottom right and blue on the other two.

Each player's timer counts down while it is their turn to move; they lose if it reaches zero, but may buy more time (100 seconds per quarter) while the game is in progress.

Originally called Infection, the game was invented by Dave Crummack and Craig Galley in 1988 for Wise Owl Software, which then sold the rights to Virgin Mastertronic UK.

Graeme Devine of Trilobyte, co-creator of The 7th Guest, had overseen the production of Spot: The Video Game while working at Virgin.

[4] In April 2011, an updated version of the Microscope Puzzle was released as a stand-alone app for iPad under the title The 7th Guest: Infection.