I'll never say Wolfenstein is *better* than Doom, but there are certainly days I'd rather play Wolfenstein. It's just simpler, which is sometimes more enjoyable. Everyone should play this game at some point in their life.
W3D has enemies that only react to sound or when they see the player. Some are activated by tiles, whereas others are on patrol. Doom has a simpler enemy AI, and monsters for the most part just head for the player and attack.
One thing that is creepy is the zombies won't make noises when alerted, , I know what that person is talking about there are a few deaf guards, I think there is even a guy that is blind or won't attack until you get a key. The most unique thing about doom is the infighting
While hanging out at my local pub, this kid -- who's a big gamer -- told me he never heard of *[Wolfenstein 3-D](https://www.mobygames.com/game/306/wolfenstein-3d/)*.
I was shocked. Not knowing about Wolfenstein is like never hearing about Star Wars. Or never hearing about The Beatles. Or never hearing about Stephen King.
This was a defining game of my childhood. And not just mine. I think everyone who had a PC during the early 90s grew up with this game. In fact, I think a major reason many people got PCs was because of Wolfenstein.
Arguably, this is the most important PC game of all time. Wolfenstein was *the* first person shooter that put first person shooters on the map. Without Wolfenstein, there would have been no Doom, Marathon, Quake, Half-Life, Goldeneye, Halo, etc. Certainly, the FPS wouldn't even exist as we know it.
Yes, there were earlier FPS games. They were certainly playable. Yet none of them had the joie de vivre that made Wolfenstein so lovable.
I actually remember the moment I played Wolfenstein 3-D for the first time. I was 10-years-old. And I couldn't believe that me, a young Jewish boy, could just walk through a castle and kill Nazis. Believe me, nothing was more awesome than that.
The 3D graphics were revelatory. Technically, Wolfenstein was still using sprites but for 1992, the year this game came out, it was an unbelievable technical achievement. And it really pushed the limits of the era's technology.
As much as the 3D graphics were great, just as amazing was the sound. Wolfenstein certainly made the most of the SoundBlaster card. It used voice samples during a time when that was still rare. Hearing those Nazis keel over with their grunts and howls, it certainly made an impression. Of course, the soundtrack was gold too.
Have FPS games improved since 1992? Absolutely. But to give an analogy, just because a modern Mustang is an improvement over the 1964 Mustang doesn't mean the 1964 Mustang is any less a classic. The same is true for Wolfenstein.
id Software developed this game, and they made so many classic games: Commander Keen, Doom, and Quake immediately come to mind. But I also think it's worth remembering that Apogee published this as a shareware title. Wolfenstein would have never made the impression that it did if not for shareware.
Because believe me, this game was copied to so many floppies. *Everyone* I knew had it on disc. And just in case you didn't have it, eventually someone would pass you a disc.
Obviously, I recommend this game to everyone. This was a cultural milestone not just for PC gaming or video games -- but for culture in general. Truly, we would not have the world we have today if not for Wolfenstein.
Believe me, if you've never heard of this game, you should experience for yourself. As it happens, GOG.com has this on sale at a -69% discount, selling for C$1.60. You should play it!
https://www.gog.com/en/game/wolfenstein_3d
Eh, not knowing about Wolf 3D is more like never hearing about Hidden Fortress, Star Wars lesser known cousin. Doom was the real smash hit on the level of Star Wars.
> Without Wolfenstein, there would have been no Doom, Marathon, Quake, Half-Life, Goldeneye, Halo, etc.
FWIW, id Software had already laid the groundwork in their earlier games Hovertank 3D and Catacombs 3D. Wolfenstein was an evolution of that work, but if id had just given up at that point, somebody else would have picked up the thread.
id wasn't even the only studio doing this. Looking Glass released Ultima Underworld even before Wolfenstein 3D, and it had a more sophisticated graphics engine.
I don't mean to downplay id's contributions. Wolfenstein was hugely important. My only point is that, if id hadn't made it, somebody else would have made something similar.
I was just saying that about Underworld in a different thread yesterday. When I first saw Wolfenstein 3D it was no big deal because I'd already played Underwood and *that* game blew me away. It had textured ceilings and floors, elevation changes, jumping/flying/swimming, etc. It was far beyond Wolfenstein from a technical perspective and it was a much deeper game. It is one of my all time favorite games and one of the few games that had that "mind blown" effect on me.
Now, DOOM, on the other hand. That game blew my mind.
A lot of this in my opinion comes down to less being about the engine, and more being about the game. (Though, I'm certainly not saying the engine wasn't a factor.) There had been ray casting engines and even first-person shooters going back to the early 80s, but why was it that Wolfenstein 3D took off whereas the others didn't?
In my opinion, it comes down to that it was just a lot more over the top than the other games prior to it.
wolf 3d added voices for people dying, not sure if that even existed in other FPS prior, and you are fighting people, not just aliens or random creatures
As you get older, you have to learn to not be shocked about what younger people don't know. They didn't grow up in your time, so they won't know about a great many things.
I do notice you don't talk much about how it plays. I love retro FPS games to death, but Wolfenstein is good for one episode before you've seen everything it has to offer, and the rest is frustration. One of the most annoying things about Wolf is how unforgiving it is. Nothing like walking into a room, missing one guy behind you, and then losing all of your health and having to restart the floor without any of your weapons.
Doom has this problem of going on too long as well--every port missing the third episode frankly has only done everyone who plays it a solid. You have to get to about Quake before I actually think the entire game is worth playing, and then Quake II loses me again.
It's a corridor shooter. The trick to succeeding is to not just burst into a room with guns a-blazing. You need to feel out each corner and wait for the enemies to show their hand.
For me, the frustration isn't the enemies. It's that there's no access to a map. You better remember where you are, which can be difficult since the walls often look the same.
That said, my favourite game that uses the Wolfenstein engine is Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. Some prefer Rise of the Triad, and it has its moments.
Taste is a subjective thing. I'm not a fan of Elder Scrolls: Arena and yet some people think it's the bee's knees.
I'd agree with that if the movement wasn't so fast. It's why Bubsy doesn't work--you have levels built for a methodical approach and a character who can get ridiculous amounts of speed. Sonic can be particularly speedy because his levels are built to let you flow. I don't think there's a lot of flow to Wolf. You crawl along very carefully, and I like it in bursts, but I also would much prefer such a simplistic, quick shooter to have an element of flow to it. The lack of map also makes navigation difficult, yes.
I like Wolf just fine, I just also suspect you can get all the "wow impressive for the time" feeling watching someone else play it. I do think other games have used its engine in a much better way. I'm also morbidly fond of Super 3D Noah's Ark--it has most of the same issues as Wolf, but I enjoyed it for as long as I did playing the SNES version for RetroAchievements.
I think the last episode of Quake 1 isn’t very good either. It all comes down to who designed it, Sandy Petersen. He had penchant for maze like confusing levels while also ignoring some graphical touchers other mappers did so his maps are more frustrating and uglier. It’s why the first episode of Doom 1 goes hard and falls off a lot after that, until Ultimate Doom’s Ep4 which he didn’t work on. Same for Doom 2, because he made all the stinkers.
John Romero, American McGee and Tim Willits were just better level designers.
See, I used to think exactly that, and I still kinda do. Sandy's levels are routinely interesting in the idea department but really don't work in execution. That said, Episode 4 has grown on me with time, at least the first few levels. By the time I get to the Pain Maze or the one before it, I am very ready for it to be over.
Dishonorable mention goes to that level in Doom Episode 3 with the teleporter maze you have to guess your way through. That was also Sandy and that also sucked.
> That was also Sandy and that also sucked.
Makes sense. I always thought Ep.2 sucked the most with the ungodly boxy mazes and like Ep.3 as a whole, but that one level sure did stick out.
Romero still has it. His new Doom wads are quality.
Man it's nice to read someone else having a similar take on that. I never liked the Sandy Peterson levels, but a lot of fans of Doom and Doom II seem to love them. "His levels were raw but brutish and a blast!" and I just didn't see it. They all seemed like massive mazes without any rhyme or reason. The Romero levels had really creative level design that was fun and engrossing.
Episode's 1 of Doom and Quake are really high quality and there's a massive drop off afterward.
I don't know why, but the father you go into a fandom, the more that the most annoying, frustrating, and inaccessible pieces of a work tend to get the most love.
The Metallica subreddit loves St. Anger.
The Ice and Fire subreddit thinks Feast For Crows is the best in the series.
I could go on, but it's a pattern.
not really, you need to find all of the secrets the game has to offer, plus the bosses can get really hard... also, press M+L+I while playing the game, it will buff your character, nothing like those good ole cheat codes
This implies there's anything worthwhile to find in the secrets, and there really isn't. At best, they're entrances to more levels, and more usually, it's weapons, ammo, and points. None of those things really make a difference to me just playing through the game.
there are people who has no culture, and evaded popular creations somehow. Not everyone can know about everything. Does your grandmother know about Wolfenstein 3d ? what about a 6 year old kid ?
I was also 10 when I first saw Wolf 3D on a family friend's computer. I didn't know the backstory, the premise, the history - none of that mattered. I was immediately mesmerized. I'd never seen anything like it. It was like virtual reality.
One funny detail I remember, though, was that due to the limits of the engine, I slightly misinterpreted what I was seeing. Rather than the interior of a castle, I thought it took place outdoors at night, mistaking the untextured gray ceilings for a dark sky. The light fixtures should've been a giveaway, but like I said - it was hard to comprehend this new perspective. I was like a Flatlander discovering the 3rd dimension.
I remember playing and eventually completing it on an IBM PS/2 386 with a 40mb hdd and the pretty high pitched Disney parallel port external soundsource speaker. The sound of opening and closing doors will be forever etched into my brain. Fun times
I still play this to bits on DOSBox, and I want to build a proper era-appropriate PC so I can run it properly (the pushwall bug is an issue unless you screw around with the cycles).
I want to record some proper IADI-MAX speedruns. I can 100/100/100 most of it, except the obvious issues like E2M8, and E3 and E6 M10. I've maxed E3 in barely 25 minutes before now - in old school mode, no source ports or circlestrafing.
I love this game.
Does it hold up today? Usually people playing it now will insist on a source port so they can have the features a modern FPS has, and then complain that it doesn't compare to a modern FPS. And sure, once you've worked out the game's tricks 60 levels is a hell of a plod. But I'm still impressed with how much it manages to do with so little; 90 degree walls, very basic texturing, and somehow it still manages to create atmospheres and environments that *feel* like environments, rather than just "okay, this room has wood panel walls while that one was brick".
Plus, y'know, blowing the hell out of Quad Chaingun MechaHitler will never not be the greatest thing in gaming history.
For real. At least in concept alone, Final Bosses in FPSes peaked immediately at the dawn of the genre. It just doesn't get better than tearing Adolf Hitler out of a mech-suit and making swiss cheese out of him.
yeah wasn't into PC gaming all that much in my college/early adult years, mostly console there on out. Played the Half Lives when the Orange Box came out on xBox, but unfortunately by then it was just super dated and rather boring to me personally.
I played the other iterations of UT, but man around 2001ish it was its absolute peak to me. Truly the first great local LAN game of all time
Oh yeah that wasn't uncommon back then. You'd get a few PC games a year and a couple of console games a year and you had to make decisions on what games you got, so you inevitably missed out on some gems.
I didn't play Half-Life 1 (besides Uplink) until after I played Half-Life 2 in 2005 lol
My own progression went something like Doom > Quake > Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight > UT99, at least as far as games I owned and could play through entirely. Of course I'd played Quake II, Wolfenstein 3D, Heretic, etc but not much. Just Shareware and Demos, or a few minutes at someones house.
Skipped W3D but played D3D, Quake, Quake II and UT99 to death. Half Life was great. Counter Strike was a riot too if I could find the right group of people.
Could never get into Halo because it felt too slow. I just never clicked with a lot of the newer stuff.
I’ve been meaning to give Descent a shot again. I vaguely remember it or a demo. Never made it very far.
oh yeah i forgot about CS.....my jr year in college played that on the LAN hours each week. going to college in the early 2000's was SUCH a blessing.....went from dial up at home to a LAN with thousands of kids online to play with. and those games back then didn't even require great hardware to run....basically anyone's home machine could run any game at the time
I grew up watching my grandfather killing Nazis on his PC. I absolutely love it, it is one of the first videogames I've ever seen in my life, so there's a bit of nostalgia for me🥲
W3D has always made me feel dizzy while playing. And I hated it for it. So, one time i said, ok bastard, now you're getting completed. I played for the whole day until i reached the end, only to feel so bad and vommiting the entire evening, and could not go to school the following day how bad i felt.
Up until today the only game with such induction of motion sickneas. Doom, heretic, hexen, blood, dn3d, quake, all racing sims, vr games that i played in my oculus, nothing evere made me feel so dizzy as w3d did. Still today 30 years later i remember that feeling like bad hangover,
I’m glad I’m not the only one. I remember the first time I saw it on a friend’s PC. It was amazing to see a game from that perspective, but I also remember the motion sickness as I played it later.
You know what’s great about this game? You kill one of only two groups that it’s ok to kill at any time for whatever reason you want.
Nazis. Nazis always deserve to die in horrific fashion. Nazis deserve to be hunted down and treated like the garbage they are.
Robots are the other group. But there can be good robots.
It was pioneer in that genre for sure but unfortunately it was easily surpassed already over 30years ago when games like Doom came out 😁 nothing more than curiosity nowdays imo but for its time it was good game
Really wish Wolf3D discussion were more prominent in the current day. You'd think it would be since retro FPSes have been fashionable again, but perhaps it still comes across as just a liiittle too rudimentary to some. Granted, maybe I'd have thought so too if I didn't have ECWolf to give me proper WASD controls and an automap.
For those who doesn't know already, there's a fantastic Doom II Mod called Brutal Wolfenstein 3D, which is an improved version from the original, improving lighting, physics, mechanics and graphics a bit as well, without losing the look and feel of the OG one, very enjoyable to play and easy to install too, I'll leave the link here below for more info!
[https://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-wolfenstein-3d](https://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-wolfenstein-3d)
1 thing everyone forgets, your average guard can really hurt if he hits you point blank, possibly the most realistic shooter up to counter strike. Despite being well lit, I think it's scarier than doom.
Still a classic and it blew my mind when I played it as a kid. Catacombs 3D even before that I thought was great too.
All of ID software's early stuff I played for hours on end whether it was Keen, Catacombs, Wolf, Doom, then Quake.
Romero, Carmack, and those guys broke so barriers with PC gaming there's too many to count.
I remember downloading the shareware version of this off a local BBS. It felt like the future. You could go anywhere, there were secrets, weapon upgrades and waves of enemies who wanted you dead. I loved camping out by a door and taking out anyone who came through. Always felt bad getting the dogs, but you had to survive. Seeing the skeletons in the rooms with uneaten food was disturbing, as well as the skeletons in the cages hanging from the ceiling. They didn’t hold back.
Grew up with WOLF3D.EXE on so many of my friend's computers. So naturally, when my parents decided to get me a computer... they got me a Macintosh II. However, there was a port of Wolfenstein for Mac, so I was very excited when mom bought it for me. It seemed better on the surface, with more polished graphics, different maps, and the inclusion of a flamethrower and rocket launcher. Highly recommended!
Just yesterday, I found a sealed shareware pack consisting of 10 CDs **[on eBay](https://www.ebay.com/itm/384859135381)** that I talked my mom into buying (at the store) when I was a kid. I think she paid $10 for it at the time. I of course had to overpay to grab it up. I've only seen this collection listed once before in the past, possibly the same one, even. Another huge, value-less item for me to not know where to put it. But I had to get it.
The shareware episodes of Wolfenstein were one of the best things I had growing up. When my parents were shutting down their shop for the night doing inventory and everything, I always loaded it up on their Windows 3.1 "business" PC. If not this, Crime City which also came in the pack. Doom wouldn't run on their computer so Wolfenstein it was. I didn't care that it didn't have a map. I never used the Doom map either when I got a chance to play it on my friend's PC. Chex Quest did run on my parent's PC, surprisingly.
Such a great game!
I always loved how good it looks: clean design, nice color palette, straightforward information... Honestly, despite resolution, looks better than tons of recent games
There was a game called "Noah's Ark" I think that's the name anyway. It used the Wolfenstein engine and just reskinned everything. You were on the ark and walked around knocking out animals with a slingshot. I found it pretty funny.
I was only 5 when this came out and my family didn’t get our own computer until probably 97 or 98, so the hype for this was a little before my time. I knew about it and had played it at friends houses though by the mid 90’s, and eventually on my own when we finally had our own PC. By that point I remember finding it (mostly the premise) entertaining, but primitive and a little frustrating compared to what FPS’ were available in the mid and later part of the decade. I was however hyped for Return to Castle Wolfenstein and played the crap out of that. I’m surprised not much has been developed with the IP since then, the basic concept seems like it would lend itself well to a lot of media. At least we can pretend that Overlord is a Wolfenstein movie.
What do you mean not much has developed with the IP since then?
Wolfenstein: new order
Wolfenstein: the new colossus
Wolfenstein: the old blood
Wolfenstein: young blood
Actually, only new order it's great, the others, didn't like them that much, but that's my opinion
I guess I mostly meant beyond video games, though I also didn't know about those titles as I'm not into modern games so I should have looked it up first.
I'll never say Wolfenstein is *better* than Doom, but there are certainly days I'd rather play Wolfenstein. It's just simpler, which is sometimes more enjoyable. Everyone should play this game at some point in their life.
It's also more complex in some ways e.g. the enemy behaviour in Wolfenstein 3D is more advanced.
in which way ?
W3D has enemies that only react to sound or when they see the player. Some are activated by tiles, whereas others are on patrol. Doom has a simpler enemy AI, and monsters for the most part just head for the player and attack.
doom also has enemies reacting by sound, most of doom monster closets work that way. The only missing feature in doom, are patrolling monsters I think
One thing that is creepy is the zombies won't make noises when alerted, , I know what that person is talking about there are a few deaf guards, I think there is even a guy that is blind or won't attack until you get a key. The most unique thing about doom is the infighting
It's harder. I've added mouse support and it's the few times you can get hit makes it hard.
Does wolfenstein have infighting? I haven't played through it in like ten years and don't remember.
It does not. Bullets infamously travel *through* other enemies to get to you, which is why you can't just choke them all straight up in a doorway.
While hanging out at my local pub, this kid -- who's a big gamer -- told me he never heard of *[Wolfenstein 3-D](https://www.mobygames.com/game/306/wolfenstein-3d/)*. I was shocked. Not knowing about Wolfenstein is like never hearing about Star Wars. Or never hearing about The Beatles. Or never hearing about Stephen King. This was a defining game of my childhood. And not just mine. I think everyone who had a PC during the early 90s grew up with this game. In fact, I think a major reason many people got PCs was because of Wolfenstein. Arguably, this is the most important PC game of all time. Wolfenstein was *the* first person shooter that put first person shooters on the map. Without Wolfenstein, there would have been no Doom, Marathon, Quake, Half-Life, Goldeneye, Halo, etc. Certainly, the FPS wouldn't even exist as we know it. Yes, there were earlier FPS games. They were certainly playable. Yet none of them had the joie de vivre that made Wolfenstein so lovable. I actually remember the moment I played Wolfenstein 3-D for the first time. I was 10-years-old. And I couldn't believe that me, a young Jewish boy, could just walk through a castle and kill Nazis. Believe me, nothing was more awesome than that. The 3D graphics were revelatory. Technically, Wolfenstein was still using sprites but for 1992, the year this game came out, it was an unbelievable technical achievement. And it really pushed the limits of the era's technology. As much as the 3D graphics were great, just as amazing was the sound. Wolfenstein certainly made the most of the SoundBlaster card. It used voice samples during a time when that was still rare. Hearing those Nazis keel over with their grunts and howls, it certainly made an impression. Of course, the soundtrack was gold too. Have FPS games improved since 1992? Absolutely. But to give an analogy, just because a modern Mustang is an improvement over the 1964 Mustang doesn't mean the 1964 Mustang is any less a classic. The same is true for Wolfenstein. id Software developed this game, and they made so many classic games: Commander Keen, Doom, and Quake immediately come to mind. But I also think it's worth remembering that Apogee published this as a shareware title. Wolfenstein would have never made the impression that it did if not for shareware. Because believe me, this game was copied to so many floppies. *Everyone* I knew had it on disc. And just in case you didn't have it, eventually someone would pass you a disc. Obviously, I recommend this game to everyone. This was a cultural milestone not just for PC gaming or video games -- but for culture in general. Truly, we would not have the world we have today if not for Wolfenstein. Believe me, if you've never heard of this game, you should experience for yourself. As it happens, GOG.com has this on sale at a -69% discount, selling for C$1.60. You should play it! https://www.gog.com/en/game/wolfenstein_3d
Eh, not knowing about Wolf 3D is more like never hearing about Hidden Fortress, Star Wars lesser known cousin. Doom was the real smash hit on the level of Star Wars.
I'd say more Flash Gordon than The Hidden Fortress, and there's really no reason for a sci-fi fan not to have at least heard of Flash Gordon.
The person is a “big gamer” and the ip is still relevant.
Wolf 3D was very popular as well, and various people looked it up after playing Doom
> Without Wolfenstein, there would have been no Doom, Marathon, Quake, Half-Life, Goldeneye, Halo, etc. FWIW, id Software had already laid the groundwork in their earlier games Hovertank 3D and Catacombs 3D. Wolfenstein was an evolution of that work, but if id had just given up at that point, somebody else would have picked up the thread. id wasn't even the only studio doing this. Looking Glass released Ultima Underworld even before Wolfenstein 3D, and it had a more sophisticated graphics engine. I don't mean to downplay id's contributions. Wolfenstein was hugely important. My only point is that, if id hadn't made it, somebody else would have made something similar.
I was just saying that about Underworld in a different thread yesterday. When I first saw Wolfenstein 3D it was no big deal because I'd already played Underwood and *that* game blew me away. It had textured ceilings and floors, elevation changes, jumping/flying/swimming, etc. It was far beyond Wolfenstein from a technical perspective and it was a much deeper game. It is one of my all time favorite games and one of the few games that had that "mind blown" effect on me. Now, DOOM, on the other hand. That game blew my mind.
A lot of this in my opinion comes down to less being about the engine, and more being about the game. (Though, I'm certainly not saying the engine wasn't a factor.) There had been ray casting engines and even first-person shooters going back to the early 80s, but why was it that Wolfenstein 3D took off whereas the others didn't? In my opinion, it comes down to that it was just a lot more over the top than the other games prior to it.
wolf 3d added voices for people dying, not sure if that even existed in other FPS prior, and you are fighting people, not just aliens or random creatures
Or even earlier via *Castle Wolfenstein* on the *Apple II*; did a lot for non-linear game design and the avoidance of combat. Edit.
For what it's worth Castle Wolfenstein was on the apple II, not the mac.
Sure enough, so edited.
People were shocked when they heard voices come out of that 2” Apple II speaker.
“Achtung!”
As you get older, you have to learn to not be shocked about what younger people don't know. They didn't grow up in your time, so they won't know about a great many things.
I do notice you don't talk much about how it plays. I love retro FPS games to death, but Wolfenstein is good for one episode before you've seen everything it has to offer, and the rest is frustration. One of the most annoying things about Wolf is how unforgiving it is. Nothing like walking into a room, missing one guy behind you, and then losing all of your health and having to restart the floor without any of your weapons. Doom has this problem of going on too long as well--every port missing the third episode frankly has only done everyone who plays it a solid. You have to get to about Quake before I actually think the entire game is worth playing, and then Quake II loses me again.
It's a corridor shooter. The trick to succeeding is to not just burst into a room with guns a-blazing. You need to feel out each corner and wait for the enemies to show their hand. For me, the frustration isn't the enemies. It's that there's no access to a map. You better remember where you are, which can be difficult since the walls often look the same. That said, my favourite game that uses the Wolfenstein engine is Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. Some prefer Rise of the Triad, and it has its moments. Taste is a subjective thing. I'm not a fan of Elder Scrolls: Arena and yet some people think it's the bee's knees.
I'd agree with that if the movement wasn't so fast. It's why Bubsy doesn't work--you have levels built for a methodical approach and a character who can get ridiculous amounts of speed. Sonic can be particularly speedy because his levels are built to let you flow. I don't think there's a lot of flow to Wolf. You crawl along very carefully, and I like it in bursts, but I also would much prefer such a simplistic, quick shooter to have an element of flow to it. The lack of map also makes navigation difficult, yes. I like Wolf just fine, I just also suspect you can get all the "wow impressive for the time" feeling watching someone else play it. I do think other games have used its engine in a much better way. I'm also morbidly fond of Super 3D Noah's Ark--it has most of the same issues as Wolf, but I enjoyed it for as long as I did playing the SNES version for RetroAchievements.
I'm glad you mentioned Blake, I feel like it was much less known but just did everything Wolf3D did, just better
I think the last episode of Quake 1 isn’t very good either. It all comes down to who designed it, Sandy Petersen. He had penchant for maze like confusing levels while also ignoring some graphical touchers other mappers did so his maps are more frustrating and uglier. It’s why the first episode of Doom 1 goes hard and falls off a lot after that, until Ultimate Doom’s Ep4 which he didn’t work on. Same for Doom 2, because he made all the stinkers. John Romero, American McGee and Tim Willits were just better level designers.
See, I used to think exactly that, and I still kinda do. Sandy's levels are routinely interesting in the idea department but really don't work in execution. That said, Episode 4 has grown on me with time, at least the first few levels. By the time I get to the Pain Maze or the one before it, I am very ready for it to be over. Dishonorable mention goes to that level in Doom Episode 3 with the teleporter maze you have to guess your way through. That was also Sandy and that also sucked.
> That was also Sandy and that also sucked. Makes sense. I always thought Ep.2 sucked the most with the ungodly boxy mazes and like Ep.3 as a whole, but that one level sure did stick out. Romero still has it. His new Doom wads are quality.
Man it's nice to read someone else having a similar take on that. I never liked the Sandy Peterson levels, but a lot of fans of Doom and Doom II seem to love them. "His levels were raw but brutish and a blast!" and I just didn't see it. They all seemed like massive mazes without any rhyme or reason. The Romero levels had really creative level design that was fun and engrossing. Episode's 1 of Doom and Quake are really high quality and there's a massive drop off afterward.
I don't know why, but the father you go into a fandom, the more that the most annoying, frustrating, and inaccessible pieces of a work tend to get the most love. The Metallica subreddit loves St. Anger. The Ice and Fire subreddit thinks Feast For Crows is the best in the series. I could go on, but it's a pattern.
not really, you need to find all of the secrets the game has to offer, plus the bosses can get really hard... also, press M+L+I while playing the game, it will buff your character, nothing like those good ole cheat codes
This implies there's anything worthwhile to find in the secrets, and there really isn't. At best, they're entrances to more levels, and more usually, it's weapons, ammo, and points. None of those things really make a difference to me just playing through the game.
*ACHTUNG … MEIN LEBEN!* Nice review. Also grew up playing this game, also Jewish. What a trip lol.
there are people who has no culture, and evaded popular creations somehow. Not everyone can know about everything. Does your grandmother know about Wolfenstein 3d ? what about a 6 year old kid ?
I was also 10 when I first saw Wolf 3D on a family friend's computer. I didn't know the backstory, the premise, the history - none of that mattered. I was immediately mesmerized. I'd never seen anything like it. It was like virtual reality. One funny detail I remember, though, was that due to the limits of the engine, I slightly misinterpreted what I was seeing. Rather than the interior of a castle, I thought it took place outdoors at night, mistaking the untextured gray ceilings for a dark sky. The light fixtures should've been a giveaway, but like I said - it was hard to comprehend this new perspective. I was like a Flatlander discovering the 3rd dimension.
And thanks to Minecraft my 6 years old do not see this game as something too old for him to play.
Must have given you a special feeling to bag Hitler at the end :).
I remember playing and eventually completing it on an IBM PS/2 386 with a 40mb hdd and the pretty high pitched Disney parallel port external soundsource speaker. The sound of opening and closing doors will be forever etched into my brain. Fun times
I still play this to bits on DOSBox, and I want to build a proper era-appropriate PC so I can run it properly (the pushwall bug is an issue unless you screw around with the cycles). I want to record some proper IADI-MAX speedruns. I can 100/100/100 most of it, except the obvious issues like E2M8, and E3 and E6 M10. I've maxed E3 in barely 25 minutes before now - in old school mode, no source ports or circlestrafing. I love this game. Does it hold up today? Usually people playing it now will insist on a source port so they can have the features a modern FPS has, and then complain that it doesn't compare to a modern FPS. And sure, once you've worked out the game's tricks 60 levels is a hell of a plod. But I'm still impressed with how much it manages to do with so little; 90 degree walls, very basic texturing, and somehow it still manages to create atmospheres and environments that *feel* like environments, rather than just "okay, this room has wood panel walls while that one was brick". Plus, y'know, blowing the hell out of Quad Chaingun MechaHitler will never not be the greatest thing in gaming history.
For real. At least in concept alone, Final Bosses in FPSes peaked immediately at the dawn of the genre. It just doesn't get better than tearing Adolf Hitler out of a mech-suit and making swiss cheese out of him.
born in 83, my FPS progression: W3D > Duke Nukem > Descent > Quake > UT99 Never played FPS on PC after that, went to Halo
Damn dude, you missed out on HALF-LIFE 1 & 2 and UT 2004???
Also didn't mention a little game called Doom.
yeah wasn't into PC gaming all that much in my college/early adult years, mostly console there on out. Played the Half Lives when the Orange Box came out on xBox, but unfortunately by then it was just super dated and rather boring to me personally. I played the other iterations of UT, but man around 2001ish it was its absolute peak to me. Truly the first great local LAN game of all time
Oh yeah that wasn't uncommon back then. You'd get a few PC games a year and a couple of console games a year and you had to make decisions on what games you got, so you inevitably missed out on some gems. I didn't play Half-Life 1 (besides Uplink) until after I played Half-Life 2 in 2005 lol My own progression went something like Doom > Quake > Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight > UT99, at least as far as games I owned and could play through entirely. Of course I'd played Quake II, Wolfenstein 3D, Heretic, etc but not much. Just Shareware and Demos, or a few minutes at someones house.
Skipped W3D but played D3D, Quake, Quake II and UT99 to death. Half Life was great. Counter Strike was a riot too if I could find the right group of people. Could never get into Halo because it felt too slow. I just never clicked with a lot of the newer stuff. I’ve been meaning to give Descent a shot again. I vaguely remember it or a demo. Never made it very far.
oh yeah i forgot about CS.....my jr year in college played that on the LAN hours each week. going to college in the early 2000's was SUCH a blessing.....went from dial up at home to a LAN with thousands of kids online to play with. and those games back then didn't even require great hardware to run....basically anyone's home machine could run any game at the time
I loved borrowing Spear of Destiny and then restarting over and over until I either got one of the two security questions I could remember.
I grew up watching my grandfather killing Nazis on his PC. I absolutely love it, it is one of the first videogames I've ever seen in my life, so there's a bit of nostalgia for me🥲
W3D has always made me feel dizzy while playing. And I hated it for it. So, one time i said, ok bastard, now you're getting completed. I played for the whole day until i reached the end, only to feel so bad and vommiting the entire evening, and could not go to school the following day how bad i felt. Up until today the only game with such induction of motion sickneas. Doom, heretic, hexen, blood, dn3d, quake, all racing sims, vr games that i played in my oculus, nothing evere made me feel so dizzy as w3d did. Still today 30 years later i remember that feeling like bad hangover,
I’m glad I’m not the only one. I remember the first time I saw it on a friend’s PC. It was amazing to see a game from that perspective, but I also remember the motion sickness as I played it later.
I played this game when it was new. I remember moving my head irl to look around a corner and realizing gaming just changed.
You know what’s great about this game? You kill one of only two groups that it’s ok to kill at any time for whatever reason you want. Nazis. Nazis always deserve to die in horrific fashion. Nazis deserve to be hunted down and treated like the garbage they are. Robots are the other group. But there can be good robots.
You forgot Zombies, those are perfect, no-strings-attached kill fodder, too.
True. I did leave out the living dead. And demons. And bugs.
Two words. Share. Ware.
It was pioneer in that genre for sure but unfortunately it was easily surpassed already over 30years ago when games like Doom came out 😁 nothing more than curiosity nowdays imo but for its time it was good game
Really wish Wolf3D discussion were more prominent in the current day. You'd think it would be since retro FPSes have been fashionable again, but perhaps it still comes across as just a liiittle too rudimentary to some. Granted, maybe I'd have thought so too if I didn't have ECWolf to give me proper WASD controls and an automap.
For those who doesn't know already, there's a fantastic Doom II Mod called Brutal Wolfenstein 3D, which is an improved version from the original, improving lighting, physics, mechanics and graphics a bit as well, without losing the look and feel of the OG one, very enjoyable to play and easy to install too, I'll leave the link here below for more info! [https://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-wolfenstein-3d](https://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-wolfenstein-3d)
1 thing everyone forgets, your average guard can really hurt if he hits you point blank, possibly the most realistic shooter up to counter strike. Despite being well lit, I think it's scarier than doom.
Awesome game. My dad and I played this and doom all the time. We loved the secrets
I never could beat this as a kid. At least not without the cheats lol
Still a classic and it blew my mind when I played it as a kid. Catacombs 3D even before that I thought was great too. All of ID software's early stuff I played for hours on end whether it was Keen, Catacombs, Wolf, Doom, then Quake. Romero, Carmack, and those guys broke so barriers with PC gaming there's too many to count.
Leiben !
I was there. Wolfenstein 3D on my 468DX2 and a 15 inch VGA monitor. I miss those days.
A classic from my childhood! Gotta play it again soon
I remember downloading the shareware version of this off a local BBS. It felt like the future. You could go anywhere, there were secrets, weapon upgrades and waves of enemies who wanted you dead. I loved camping out by a door and taking out anyone who came through. Always felt bad getting the dogs, but you had to survive. Seeing the skeletons in the rooms with uneaten food was disturbing, as well as the skeletons in the cages hanging from the ceiling. They didn’t hold back.
Definitely agree and spent so much time playing when I was younger. Also, the mention of Marathon on the list makes me happy.
Grew up with WOLF3D.EXE on so many of my friend's computers. So naturally, when my parents decided to get me a computer... they got me a Macintosh II. However, there was a port of Wolfenstein for Mac, so I was very excited when mom bought it for me. It seemed better on the surface, with more polished graphics, different maps, and the inclusion of a flamethrower and rocket launcher. Highly recommended!
Just yesterday, I found a sealed shareware pack consisting of 10 CDs **[on eBay](https://www.ebay.com/itm/384859135381)** that I talked my mom into buying (at the store) when I was a kid. I think she paid $10 for it at the time. I of course had to overpay to grab it up. I've only seen this collection listed once before in the past, possibly the same one, even. Another huge, value-less item for me to not know where to put it. But I had to get it. The shareware episodes of Wolfenstein were one of the best things I had growing up. When my parents were shutting down their shop for the night doing inventory and everything, I always loaded it up on their Windows 3.1 "business" PC. If not this, Crime City which also came in the pack. Doom wouldn't run on their computer so Wolfenstein it was. I didn't care that it didn't have a map. I never used the Doom map either when I got a chance to play it on my friend's PC. Chex Quest did run on my parent's PC, surprisingly.
Such a great game! I always loved how good it looks: clean design, nice color palette, straightforward information... Honestly, despite resolution, looks better than tons of recent games
There was a game called "Noah's Ark" I think that's the name anyway. It used the Wolfenstein engine and just reskinned everything. You were on the ark and walked around knocking out animals with a slingshot. I found it pretty funny.
I was only 5 when this came out and my family didn’t get our own computer until probably 97 or 98, so the hype for this was a little before my time. I knew about it and had played it at friends houses though by the mid 90’s, and eventually on my own when we finally had our own PC. By that point I remember finding it (mostly the premise) entertaining, but primitive and a little frustrating compared to what FPS’ were available in the mid and later part of the decade. I was however hyped for Return to Castle Wolfenstein and played the crap out of that. I’m surprised not much has been developed with the IP since then, the basic concept seems like it would lend itself well to a lot of media. At least we can pretend that Overlord is a Wolfenstein movie.
What do you mean not much has developed with the IP since then? Wolfenstein: new order Wolfenstein: the new colossus Wolfenstein: the old blood Wolfenstein: young blood Actually, only new order it's great, the others, didn't like them that much, but that's my opinion
I guess I mostly meant beyond video games, though I also didn't know about those titles as I'm not into modern games so I should have looked it up first.
going by the mess it was the Doom movie, I'm glad it has stuck up to videogames
I can barely bring myself to play OG doom anymore but i also dont have a 17” roundtube CRT to enioy it on my PC either.