In 1989, Warner Brothers released the blockbuster film, Batman. A merchandising storm ensued, with both movie-related and general Batman-themed items flying off shelves. Around this time, the NES was at the dizzying height of its popularity as a home console, and it only stood to reason that a game be made. DC Comics dropped the license to Sunsoft, and one of the NES’s better late-era games was the end result.

I’ve wanted to do a Sunsoft NES game for a while now, and I may eventually do all of them… but this one was the first Sunsoft title I recall playing as a youth. I always loved the company’s style of presentation; they often found ways to inject color and vibrance into even the most gritty, drab themes. Sunsoft is undeniably late 80s/early 90s to the core. Batman: the Video Game is no exception.

A watchful eye on Gotham City. A huge, looming, watchful eye. Massive and constantly staring at Gotham City. Damn, Batman, cut us some slack.

The game is loosely themed after the 1989 film, though prototype graphics show that this wasn’t initially a priority for the development team. In the end, it was mostly graphics that tied the game and the film together anyway; I don’t recall Batman fighting a flying beetle-man or two separate malevolent AIs in the film. All things considered, the basics are the same: you, as Batman, must stop the Joker from dominating Gotham City with his campaign of poison and terror. Batman must travel through the Axis Chemical Factory, an abandoned laboratory, and other locales to reach Joker atop the Cathedral for the final battle. The game plays similarly to many action platformers in most ways, but one function you will be using often is Batman’s wall-jump. I mean, you have to become PRECISE with this move to get through the mid to late stages. Well-timed wall-jumping can also be used to avoid harm from certain enemies perched in hard to reach places… while you make your way over to punch them to death. Half of the game’s respectable challenge is simply navigating a level without dying, and the enemies only play a part in that. There are plenty of static hazards you have to avoid touching, such as ooze, grinding gears, and electrified surfaces. Batman: the Video Game is challenging, but thankfully, as the Dark Knight, you’re prepared for the challenge.

Batman can not only punch (quite rapidly, in fact) but can also use 3 different weapons. He gets his trusty batarangs, a triple-shot “dirk,” and…a gun. I mean, it shoots little missiles, but it’s a gun. Didn’t Batman have a thing about guns?

Anyway, you’ll need these weapons, since Batman’s up against some pretty varied and tricky opponents. Your regular baddies include little spiky toaster-ovens, dudes who look kind of like French Legionnaires, ninjas, hopping giant mutants, very slow-walking androids with claws, and dudes who squat in place with flamethrowers. Fighting most of these enemies involves either careful timing or simple blitz tactics, depending on how they move and how far they can reach with their attacks. You’ll find bad guys posted on narrow ledges pretty often, and it will usually be while you’re trying to do the wall-jump to climb vertically. When you kill an enemy, you almost always get some kind of small reward; hearts give back health, the missile icons give you ammo for your weaponry, and the “B” icon just gives you 1000 points.

A sprite rip of most of the common enemies in the game. Found at www.spriters-resource.com

The bosses are as colorful as the array of underlings, and two of them are actually machines. The first boss you fight, right outside City Hall, is a flying fireball tosser who seems daunting until you realize you can just stand to one side of his blasts and then boomerang his stupid face when he swoops down toward you. Axis Chemical Factory contains the first of the two electronic bosses; Batman must first shut down its outer defenses before blasting away at its energy core. At the end of the underground level, you fight Electrocutioner, a mohawked Mad Max extra with a claw for one hand and a deadly lightning gun for the other. (It is worth noting that most of the bosses, including him, are based off actual minor villains in the comic books.) If you’re patient, you can literally get this guy to attack the wall while you nuke him from the other side of the room. Level 4 is an abandoned laboratory that ends in a fight against another robotic boss. This one is a bit more straightforward; Batman must defeat two large and very dangerous cubes that move about the room and try to destroy him.

Level 5, the Gotham Cathedral, has two bosses: Firebug and The Joker himself. Firebug looks and behaves a lot like someone you’d expect to see in Fist of the North Star, and his routine is a pretty scary pattern of anime jumps and massive fireballs. The Joker is, well… a joke. His elaborate strategy consists of shooting you, running away, and pointing to the sky to summon lightning bolts that you can avoid by standing about one arm-span away from him. Once you defeat Joker, you get to watch one of the coolest cut scenes I’ve seen outside of Ninja Gaiden.

Batman: the Video Game has some really cool graphics, which manage to be both colorful and suitably drab for the setting of Gotham City. The background graphics are especially good; while they are undeniably 8-bit, some of them, namely the first stage, look surprisingly realistic. There are also some truly delicious cut scenes; these loosely follow the film and add a good dramatic element to the whole experience. The music was composed by Naoki Kodaka, and it is probably my favorite part of the game. The title screen music is completely flat, but every other track makes up for it. The level music is all pretty rock & roll. It’s as intense as it should be. I particularly like how mean the boss music sounds, and I especially enjoy Level 4’s music.

There was also a game for the Sega Genesis, which most consider to the better game; it’s not only on a more advanced system, it stays much truer to the film. Eventually Sunsoft also released a sequel (of sorts) for the NES, Batman: Revenge of the Joker. I have taken a cursory look at it, and it’s not a terrible game… but it’s very silly. There have been a multitude of other games released during the Caped Crusader’s more prominent periods on TV and the big screen; to list them all here would not make for interesting reading. I will say, however, that most of the ones based on the later films… well, they suck just about as bad as those films did. 

When the newer series of Batman films began a few years back, there was an outcry among hardcore comic/Batman fans. This says more about how good the 1989’s Batman was than it does about the new series. As a kid who sat wide-eyed in the theater during the Batwing scene and the cathedral fight in the ’89 film, I can relate to the feeling that they did it right the first time around. I also poured a lot of hours into this game as a kid, and enjoyed it enough to surmount its considerable difficulty.

See you mid-month, RetroManiacs!

No car is as cherry as the 1989 Batmobile. Look at his face. He knows he’s fly as hell.

In my last article, I discussed Doom, a landmark game that takes place in a dark future. Doomguy isn’t the first poor soul the video game world has sent into space to deal with a voracious alien threat… in fact, someone else undertook the voyage 7 years earlier, on one of gaming’s iconic consoles.

Her name is Samus Aran, and she is one of the most well-known early female protagonists in video gaming history.

This image is actually from the Player’s Guide for the SNES sequel, but cutaways are f*ckin’ cool and I wanted to include it. Click to view a larger version.

When I was a kid, I admit I wasn’t terribly into Metroid, because I didn’t get how you were supposed to progress through it. I was dense, and I also had kind of a short attention span. Looking back, it deserves all the praise and fan-following it gets. It was unusually advanced in concept for 1986; its gameplay features nonlinear exploration and multiple endings, two ideas that were more or less in their infancy at the time. The Famicom disk version had proper save game slots (think Legend of Zelda style), but the export version (released in ’87) required passwords to resume a previous game. In fact, the password screen could be used to enter certain cheat codes. Another fresh idea implemented was the concept of permanent “powerups.” In games like Super Mario Brothers and other standard platformers of that time, you’d lose a powerup when hurt or it would fade off after a set time. The items you find in Metroid act either as permanent upgrades or modifications, and you keep them once you’ve found them.

The box’s front cover…

…and this time I was able to find a good scan of the back cover as well!

In Metroid, Samus Aran must fight her way through the base of some space pirates on the Planet Zebes who have made off with samples of the titular organism. Samus must stop the pirates because Metroids are beings so potentially dangerous that they could be used as weapons of mass destruction, and that’s exactly what the pirates plan to use them for. Little does Samus know that she must eventually face Mother Brain, the alien intelligence directing the pirates’ actions from deep within the planet. Samus must do this alone, but she is a capable combatant and fast on her feet. Based on how quickly you complete the game, you get one of five endings; this gave the game replay value and also nurtured early speed runners by rewarding them in-game. Metroid also focuses primarily on exploration, unlike most of its fellow side-scrollers from that period. You have to backtrack, keep some kind of map (at least mentally), and unlock restricted areas by various means.

This isn’t the only place you find powerups, but it’s certainly one of the creepiest.

These are Metroids. Do NOT let them touch you, because they will keep touching you until you are dead.

At the start of the game, Samus has only a weak pea-shooter of a weapon. However, a diligent search of the surrounding areas will reveal more weapons; your gun gets better, you gain the capacity to shoot missiles, you can roll up into a ball and drop bombs, and then there’s the famous Screw Attack – the somersault that kills. Many of these weapons are also tools – some doors require missiles to open, and you will need to roll up into a ball more than once to get where you need to go. When you destroy an enemy creature, you usually get extra missiles or “energy,” which is tracked as a numerical value and functions as Samus’s “life bar.” The game is fairly gentle on your energy at the beginning, but if you find yourself getting the crap kicked out of you, death is certainly a strong possibility.

At first, you face pretty manageable enemies, like little bugs that cling to walls, slow-flying things that look kind of like fish, and ceiling-clingers that drop predictably down on you. Things do get harder, as not only will the menagerie of alien foes expand, so will the hazards built into the environment. If you see anything that looks like liquid, it will probably hurt you to immerse yourself in it. The two sub-bosses, Kraid and Ridley, are encountered fairly late in the game and are both kind of a joke once you know what to do. If you prepare ahead of time and make sure you’ve got plenty of firepower, you can ace them pretty easily. Mother Brain is a different story. Dealing with her is a two-fold challenge; you must first breach her considerable outer defenses before blasting her into oblivion. Once you’ve defeated Mother Brain, the last challenge is escaping before a timed self-destruct mechanism goes off.

A brief look at the barriers and hazards awaiting you in Mother Brain’s chamber.

Metroid’s graphics are pretty detailed for their time, with a rich palette and lots of organic/mechanical trade-offs. The sound and music are where the game’s theme really shines through; Hirozaku Tanaka’s soundtrack is appropriately sparse, yet meaningful in the context of the game’s plot. The score was written to emphasize the alien nature of Samus’s surroundings and the sense of isolation one would feel undertaking such a serious mission all alone on a distant, hostile planet like Zebes. The music is arranged so that the deeper you go into the compound, the creepier it gets.

The Metroid series has remained one of the most beloved among Nintendo purists. An entry into the series has been produced for almost every Nintendo system, with the notable exception of the N64 system. The games range from expansions on the original format to attempts at adapting the gameplay to an FPS (first person shooter) style. Samus herself has become one of the company’s most celebrated icons; she is not just lauded for being one of the first female protagonists in a console game, but also simply for being a total badass.

…um, okay.

And you know what? Someone had to stop those damned space pirates… why not a badass like Samus Aran? 

Stay tuned in August, RetroManiacs! Until next time!

Wolfenstein 3D was a commercial success, as well as a new standard for 3D action gaming. It prompted developers, including id Software, to ask themselves, “what can we do next?”

The very next year, id answered its own question and made gaming history.

I was ten, not much older than I was in the previous article’s flashback. I had a buddy in school (we both liked video games) who handed me another set of blue 3.5” floppies one day. “Don’t let the teacher see,” he said softly under his breath. “It’s doom.” Little did I know this was a proper noun, not just some dire warning. I played the shareware version through in two days, out of both grim fascination and obsession.

Welcome to Phobos. We hope you survive your stay!

Released in December of 1993, Doom is still played today by more people than you’d think. Once again, pioneer John Carmack devised a versatile 3D game engine from scratch. id’s team used this game engine to tell a grim story, a tale of pyrrhic victory in the face of demonic horror. Doom came under fire often for its intense level of violence, even being tied to the infamous Columbine shootings. However, even 22 years after its release, the original game still has a loyal following and a lively community.

The id team began working on Doom even as they were putting the finishing touches on Wolfenstein 3D. Carmack had already begun work on an even more advanced rendering engine, one with far less limits and far more detail than what had come before. Floors and ceilings could be on different elevations, even rising and falling during play if programmed to do so. Walls no longer had to be at 90 degree angles, either. This was done by dividing the map into “sectors,” each of which had its own set of data (floor/ceiling levels, lighting, etc.). In addition to more dynamic lighting options, the engine also boasted the capacity to texture all surfaces visible in the game, adding a new level of immersive detail. While the enemies and objects in Doom were still represented by 2 dimensional sprites, the art team created many of them by photo-scanning sculptures, resulting in some truly impressive monster graphics. All this art was painstakingly produced by the team of Adrian Carmack (no relation to John, believe it or not), Kevin Cloud, and Gregor Punchatz. The game had much richer sound and music, as well; Bobby Prince made a return as the composer, borrowing licks (within legal boundaries) from some popular heavy metal bands to fill out a soundtrack that is still hailed today as one of the most lush scores in 1990s gaming.

Doom’s story is split up into three episodes. You play the role of a marine sent to investigate strange messages coming from Mars’s twin moons, Phobos and Deimos. The UAC has been developing teleportation technology there, and recent messages indicate that something’s gone terribly wrong. In the first episode, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” you arrive on Phobos, only to find out that the messages were right on the money; the UAC base is crawling with undead humans and what can only be demonic creatures. By fighting your way to the source of the infestation on Phobos, you are transported to the other moon, Deimos… and “The Shores of Hell.” In this second episode, your marine must forge through increasingly ominous and Hell-like landscapes to reach the Tower of Babel, where the cyberdemon awaits. At the end of this struggle, you discover that Deimos floats above Hell itself. In “Inferno,” you seek nothing less than to cut the head off the invasion; you must reach Dis, the capital of Hell, and destroy the spider mastermind. As you move through the last two episodes, you see less and less of the possessed humans and many more of the various types of demons.

Between levels, you are shown your percentages of kills, items, and secrets. you are also treated to a bird’s eye view of the region you’re in.

Speaking of the monsters, they take various forms… and present a variety of threats. Your stock enemies are possessed human soldiers, some of whom carry shotguns that make them significantly more dangerous than their bottom-tier cousins. The first demonic foes you encounter are the imps. Not the little red men of folklore, these big brown bastards hurl fireballs and possess claws like Ginsu blades. There’s big pink-skinned demons, whose bite can put a serious hurt on any marine who lingers too close. The bosses of the first episode, the Barons of Hell, become rank-and-file heavies in the other two chapters of the game. They behave much like the imps do, but these massive goat-headed thugs are much more adept and both dishing it out and taking it. Some enemies fly, making them even more of a pain in the ass; the pumpkin-like cacodemons belch electricity, and the flaming skulls known as Lost Souls simply launch themselves at you like maniacal little cannon balls. The cyberdemon at the end of episode 2 is a sight to behold, and he’s also quickly lethal if you don’t watch out for his constant barrage of rockets. The spider boss in episode 3’s last hurrah is slow and ponderous, but if it draws a bead on you with its massive multi-barrel cannon, you’re toast.

Top row, left to right: Barons of Hell, Cacodemons, Lost souls. Bottom row: Demons, Imps, and the two varieties of possessed soldier.

Don’t go thinking that the monsters are the only thing that can kill you in Hell… Various environmental hazards present themselves, from acidic chemicals to lava to the incredibly unpleasant crushing ceilings that pepper the game’s corridors. Walls and surfaces can also shift, trapping you in hopeless ambushes that pit you against superior numbers. Doom is one of the most entertaining games I’ve ever played, but it is not a friendly game. It’s actively trying to kill you. All the time.

Not pictured: the turds falling into your marine’s pants during this final moment.

You start each episode with naught but a wee pistol (which looks to be modeled loosely off a Beretta M9, but I’m not a firearms expert). However, some of the zombies drop shotguns, and there are even better weapons waiting to be found. Chain linked machine guns, rocket launchers, and even experimental plasma weapons like the BFG 9000 can be discovered. They appear both conspicuously and in the secret areas that dot each level. You’ll also want to keep an eye out for a chainsaw, which not only beats your puny fist in terms of damage output but drags the targeted enemy into it while you carve up some meat. Since you’ll also be hurt on a regular basis, it helps to look around for medical kits… and there’s also a big blue ball that does more than any doctor could ever do. Armor will help too; it comes in two varieties, and absorbs a fraction of the damage you take from certain sources. There are also various powerups and tools to help you, like night vision goggles and hazard suits. If you find a black medkit, it not only fills your health, but gives your punch the force of a rocket as you blitz out on the adrenaline high. There are even green spheres that render you temporarily invulnerable, at the small cost of forcing you to see in high-contrast monochrome for the duration. Another sphere turns you temporarily hazy, almost invisible. I stress “almost.” This makes it slightly harder for the enemy to target you, but it’s more effective in multiplayer deathmatch against actual humans.

Some military men are stone-faced, but your marine is very expressive. Rage, horror, and even a little grim joy. All in a day’s work. This concept was a carry-over from Wolfenstein 3D.

Doom also pioneered the multiplayer deathmatch. Via modem or other means, players could face off not against demons, but one another. Much of this is self explanatory, but suffice it to say that even a rookie deathmatch opponent presents a much more tangible threat than any demon. Players could also progress through the normal game together, but deathmatch was (and is) considered much more fun.

Doom’s success was monumental, but the game also fell under the same crosshairs so many violent games do; public outcry over the gore and (vaguely) Satanic imagery led to widespread controversy. Doom was even implicated in the 1999 Columbine shootings, as both shooters were not only avid players but also dabbled in editing it and creating maps. Harvard, the Secret Service, and the US Department of Education all did studies that eventually showed no real correlation between video games and real-life violent crime, but the stigma remains. Overall, this didn’t hurt Doom’s popularity; if anything, it boosted its signal.

“This is an adult situation.” Another pre-mortem screenshot from some fool about to get ground into red mist.

In response to fan-made editing tools for Wolfenstein 3D, id purposefully made Doom’s content easy to access and edit. To this day, a diligent Internet search will turn up great vaults of user-made maps, graphics, and even sound effects for the game. In more recent years, Doom even got a loving overhaul when ZDoom was developed. Along with its direct descendents Skulltag and Zandronum, ZDoom added modern FPS elements to the game, such as bots, better multiplayer functionality, and (in the case of Skulltag) more game-types. Skulltag also added new weapons and enemies, most of which are variants on the original content. To this day, the game is modded, added to, and expanded.

Doom spawned a sequel, which itself is considered the standard for fans of the series. Doom II features additional types of enemies, a double-barreled shotgun, and 32 new levels. Doom II was used to make Final Doom, two more 32-level installments that ramp up the challenge for hardened marines ready to test themselves. There was also The Master Levels; I’ll admit that I never played them, but by all accounts, they are insanely difficult. The original Doom was re-released in 1995 with an extra episode, “Thy Flesh Consumed.” The game engine was used to make many other titles, which I will not attempt to list at length. Notable among them are Heretic and Hexen, dark fantasy spins on the FPS experience. In 2004, Doom 3 hit the shelves, and while it was considered a very good game, hardcore fans (including yours truly) felt like it wasn’t really a Doom game. It just lacked the distinctive feel.

The dim lighting in certain areas made this a lot scarier than it probably seems to us now. I can’t tell you how many times I muttered “oh, shit” playing through all three episodes.

A new reboot looms on the horizon, and if you’re into gaming, you’ve seen the trailer, the E3 gameplay, and everything else. I, for one, can’t wait to dive into Hell again. Doom was a world-shaker back in 1993, and I have no doubt it will shake 2016 just as violently. That said, nothing can beat that initial rush when I ran into the hangar on Phobos and fought my first zombie soldiers. The original Doom can be outdone with more modern technology, but it can never be truly eclipsed in terms of impact or quality.

Every time I try making a bulleted list on here, it refuses to show the bullets. Below is a “bulleted list” of neat stuff for you to check out if you’d like.

• Designer Tom Hall had a far more grandiose vision for the game, and outlined it in a document. Conflicts over the direction of the game led to Hall resigning.
• The name of the game was inspired by a scene from the film The Color of Money.
• Some of the weapons are scans of toy guns. The plasma rifle’s barrel is actually part of an M-60 machine gun toy that come apart, turned backwards.
• I didn’t go into a lot of detail about the game’s engine this time, but if you’re interested in the technological bits, here’s another big chunk of what made the game work like it did.
• Level 4 in the first episode originally contained a structure that lowered to display a swastika symbol on the floor. This was later removed.
• Someone created isometric views of every map. Enjoy.

Thanks for reading, RetroManiacs!

World War II. Europe is in turmoil. Germany is on the rampage, fueled by the poison doctrines of Nazism and the fire of hatred. The world stands in the shadow of one man… one despicable tyrant… Adolf Hitler.

I’ve met the man who took him out.

His name was B.J. Blazkowicz.

Portrait of an American hero. Bloodied but unbowed. And packing one hell of a shooting iron.

Wolfenstein 3D is the game that changed everything. It is the ancestor of the modern, true first-person shooter. Developed by id Software and released in May 1992, this groundbreaking MS-DOS adventure set a precedent for years to come. One of many games distributed using the shareware method, Wolfenstein 3D was distributed in truncated form (in this case, the first “episode” of six total). Interested parties could obtain it very cheaply on floppy disk, or they could download it using a BBS service (the Internet’s older, more conservative cousin). The shareware model was repeated with later games, notably id’s legendary follow-up, Doom.

Easily one of the baddest-ass pieces of cover art from the shareware era. Ripped and howling, B.J. exults in the bloody demise of yet another Gestapo goon. He fires his unthinkably massive chaingun in a physics-defying display of all-American fury. 

In 1991, John Carmack and id Software (yes, the “id” is all lowercase) had developed Catacomb 3-D, a well-received and innovative attempt at 3D gaming. While it wasn’t a true first person shooter, it achieved something that game developers had been stabbing at for years: a decent representation of 3D space. The engine used a rendering technique called ray casting to create a “pseudo-3D” point of view. To avoid giving you a colorless technical essay, what the engine does is translate a 2 dimensional (think “top-down” view) map into what looks like 3D. The engine had limitations, namely that the entire map had to be the same elevation (no stairs, platforms, etc), so it wasn’t really “true” 3D… id would get closer in 1993 with Doom. Nonetheless, it was still an incredible representation of 3D graphics, and the team decided to reuse the engine to make a more action-oriented title. Castle Wolfenstein, a 1981 software title by Muse Software, had let its trademark lapse, and id decided to rework it using Carmack’s engine. The engine rendered quickly and ran well on machines with average processing power, which freed up resources for other aspects of the game to shine. The sprite-based graphics weren’t revolutionary in themselves, but the way they were used certainly was; while static objects had only one sprite, the enemies had multiple angles from which you could see them, and had well-animated attacks and movement. The overall visual theme is purposefully lighthearted and cartoonish, to offset the serious tone of the story. The game’s audio made good use of the sound cards of the day (namely the Sound Blaster series), and you could enable sound effects through the PC speaker as well. The music is written by Robert Prince, who is mostly known for his work on the original Doom and Commander Keen games. While it isn’t quite as iconic as his scores for those games, Wolfenstein’s music is pulse-pounding and ominous.

an animation illustrating how raycasting translates 2 dimensions into 3. Public domain image, but credit and thanks to Wikipedia user “LucasVB.”

I was nine when this game fell into my lap. My father’s job for the airline involved a lot of computer work; for lack of a kinder way to say it, he worked with some straight-up nerds. We’re talking the good old fashioned kind of tech-geeks. Good people! One of his co-workers sent him home one day with a set of blue 3.5 inch floppy disks. They bore the cryptic, vague label “WOLF3D.” My first thought as a nine-year-old boy was, “oh wow, a werewolf game. And in 3D!” I enthusiastically thanked my dad and ran to our IBM 386 to install the mystery game. Needless to say, there were no werewolves, but I still wasn’t disappointed in the least. I played the entire first episode through in one day.

MS-DOS: the operating system you had to ask nicely before it would do anything for you.

In Wolfenstein, you play as B.J. Blazkowicz, a US Army Ranger sergeant captured by the Nazis while investigating something called “Operation Eisenfaust.” At the start of the first episode, you’ve disarmed a guard and set yourself free from your prison cell in Castle Wolfenstein. The first episode chronicles your escape from the castle. This effort culminates in a showdown with the massive Hans Grosse. In the second, you discover that Eisenfaust is real and set out to stop it. You fight your way through hordes of undead “mutant” soldiers to face down Dr. Schabbs, the crazed, syringe-wielding doctor behind the project. In the third episode, “Die, Fuhrer, Die!” your mission is nothing less than to kill Hitler. This not only involves making your way through his private stronghold, but also defeating his many floating clones and destroying his battle-mech armor.

Yes. Battle-mech armor.

The final three episodes form a series of prequels to the first three, revolving around the Giftkrieg, or “Poison War.” Your first target is another mad scientist, one who dresses a bit more like a military man: Otto Giftmacher. In the fifth episode, “Trail of the Madman,” you’re after secret plans that just happen to be safeguarded by Hans’ sister, Gretel Grosse. Finally, B.J. confronts General Fettgesicht, the man behind the entire poison plot.

The game is playable using the keyboard and the mouse, though the mouse’s functionality is crude compared to later FPS games. You move through a complex set of dungeons and other complexes, collecting plundered treasure and capturing weapons to use against your vile Nazi foes. Brown-shirted soldiers, beefy Schutzstaffel officers, and even zombies with torso-mounted rifles are scattered throughout the game waiting to finish you off for the glory of the Reich. You start with a simple pistol, 8 bullets, and a knife. Not to worry; dead Nazi scum are very generous with their kit. The SS guy drops a submachine gun, and if you’re thorough, you can find a massive machine gun that tears through enemy soldiers (and ammunition as well). With a max capacity of 99 bullets, resource management plays a significant role in both surviving and winning. Many of the levels feature puzzle elements, as well as secrets that only a canny and attentive player will find (including a secret level in each episode, one of which is full of Pac-Man ghosts). Both your health percentage and B.J.’s animated mug shot on the status bar show you your current condition; to regain health, you can use anything from med kits to dog food. The bosses present a significant threat, and Hitler himself is particularly daunting. However, if you’re quick and patient, you can bring even the Fuhrer down once you’ve figured out his behavior.

Wolfenstein’s Nazi imagery caused notable disquiet in Germany, where the game was initially banned due to laws prohibiting such symbols in media. When ported to the SNES, the game had the Nazi imagery (but not the Nazis themselves) removed. Elsewhere in the world, Wolfenstein received lukewarm criticism for its modest (by modern standards) levels of violence, but no controversy adversely affected its sales or popularity. It’s hard to keep down an innovative, revolutionary 3D game… especially when it’s a game that involves killing Hitler and ending the Reich.

In the direct sequel, Spear of Destiny, B.J. returns to reclaim a powerful relic from the Nazis: the spear that pierced the side of Christ on the cross. Few if any changes were made to the game engine itself; a handful of new sprites were added, and Spear of Destiny plays as one long episode instead of six smaller ones. It is considered slightly more difficult than its predecessor, and builds on the Nazi/occult theme established therein.

As I mentioned earlier in the article, Wolfenstein 3D is often hailed as the first big step toward the now-familiar first person shooter format. It established a standard in both form and quality; id Software and other companies would compete afterwards, releasing a slew of titles that gradually added improvement after improvement to the original concept. Notably, id’s Doom broke even further ground for FPS games in 1993, and their dominance of the genre continued with 1996’s Quake. The Wolfenstein franchise itself saw new life in 2001, when Grey Matter Interactive released a technologically updated reboot that launched a new series of titles.

No matter who (or what) you are, it’s important to remember your roots… your origins. Games like Call of Duty and Borderlands, while certainly works of wonder in their own right, can’t help but look up at granddaddy Wolfenstein, smile, and nod respectfully.

FUN STUFF/TRIVIA:

• To honor its 20th anniversary in 2012, Bethesda released a browser-based version, playable for free. There is also this weird “demake” of the game.
• General Fettgesicht’s last name means “fat-face” in German. 
• The starting pistol is supposed to be a Luger P08, a German pistol that saw extensive use in both World Wars. The submachine gun is loosely based on the WWII-era German MP-40.
• One of the secret levels is a sliding-panel maze; enterprising players can find not only goodies, but a sign that says, “Call Apogee, say Aardwolf.” This was for a contest that never fully came to fruition; user-developed hacks and editors made it impossible to verify whether a caller had legitimately reached the sign without cheating. This quick dismantling of the game’s source code led id to make Doom easily user-editable in response.
• The title theme music is an actual, honest-to-God Nazi anthem, “Horst-Wessel-Lied.” It is also removed from the German SNES version. 
• The German SNES release also featured mutant rats instead of dogs, green blood, and an altered Hitler boss called “Staatmeister.”
• The 1994 SNES game Super 3D Noah’s Ark is essentially Wolfenstein 3D with a total sprite-swap.
• The theme of the Nazis pursuing occult means of power isn’t endemic to Wolfenstein 3D; it not only shows up in the Indiana Jones movies, but actually sort of happened in real life.
• B.J.’s birthday is given in source material as August 15th, 1911. I would hazard a guess that this is in reference to the famous M1911 pistol, the standard US military sidearm during WWII and beyond. It is also stated that he is of Polish-Jewish ancestry.
• This is hardly trivia, but the blue-suited SS men show up again in the secret levels of Doom 2, both of which are homages to Wolfenstein.
• In 1994, a Sega MegaDrive/Genesis verion was announced, but never released. The game was, however, ported to the Jaguar, 3DO, SNES, PC-98, Macintosh, Acorn Archimedes, and Game Boy Advance. Many unlicensed ports exist as well.

Until next time, RetroManiacs! I had a blast writing this one up, and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I have.

            It’s Monday and two in the morning on the dot. The streets are quiet but the internet is still buzzing over the long awaited and much hyped KUNG FURY premiere.

            Kung Fury the passion project of Swedish filmmaker David Sandberg. Sandberg wrote and directed the now famous trailer for Kung Fury on a budget of $5,000 after quitting his day job of directing television commercials and music videos; the same trailer that gained traction via social media sites and instantly became viral. Everyone and whoever was sharing and talking about this trailer for an over the top action movie similar in style to the 80’s but, parodying all of the cliché’s that are now synonymous with the era. Side scrolling video games, bandannas, leather jackets, wrinkly rolled up sleeves, Zack Morris phones, video arcades, one-liners, fast cars, visions of society on the skids and the lone hero who will do what is needed to get “the job” done. It was instant water cooler talk and everyone’s liked video on youtube.

A Kickstart campaign was started at the same time the trailer was uploaded online. Once word spread, a staggering 17,000 people signed in to contribute to the project and Laser Unicorn was in possession of over a half a million dollars toward Kung Fury. This achievement is something that proves how belief, presentation and hard work can pay off. Over the course of the year announcements and updates were released of the films progress. Hell the films main theme was given a music video and vocals by David Hasselhoff. Even Robert Rodriguez was all in and premiered the film simultaneously on his EL REY Network. It couldn’t get any more hyped than it was… and then it was released.

Now let me say this: If you are angry or overtly critical of this film then by all means jump off a cliff because, I have no idea what you were expecting. Sandberg and team were given money by investors to finish the film “They” wanted to put together and not a pandering piece of candy specially wrapped for your tastes. If you want pandering go see a Marvel film.

What are my thoughts on KUNG FURY? Well Kung Fury is fun; it’s creative, kinetic and sometimes very funny. The computer effects and green screens are well done. The acting is… wait. Acting? C’mon…. The score is very good and complimenting of the piece with music by Mitch Murder and Lost Years. The main single of the soundtrack sung by Hasselhoff is probably the best part of this whole experience; and torture because I can’t get it out of my head and routinely hum the lyrics to myself at least once a day. All in all it’s fun and good hearted ultra-violence with constant tongue & cheek winks at 80’s film clichés and one-liners, which are hit or miss.

Highlights: Kung Fury himself, The entire first act of the film, Triceracop, The stereotypical angry politically incorrect police chief who cracks a very funny line about the Mayor that I’m surprised a lot of people haven’t caught on to, The police station shooting is hilariously ridiculous, the final 2-D fight between Fury and the Nazi’s is very well executed, Aryan Mustache is a funny piece of comedic dialogue for the short scene that it was.

Bad things: whatever I forgot to mention and that ending where my boot almost flew into my television.

Final verdict: It’s the perfect pilot to a live action Saturday morning cartoon we’ve dreamed about as children, a love letter to the romanticized memory of 80’s cinema and video games in all its 8-bit, VHS, analog, glory. A fun breath of fresh air for what it is. And it is what it is, nothing more. Nothing amazing like most of social media would have you believe; hell, if you read Tumblr you’d think this was the Matrix. Kung Fury is a fun movie, not great, not a masterpiece and definitely not the best film of 2015 (I have no idea what some people are talking about).

That being said if you really loved this film then please go and check out other 80’s influenced films like “IT FOLLOWS” which is a fantastic new entry in the Horror genre, inspired by John Carpenter. You can also revisit “Hobo with a Shotgun” which I think is a superior film starring Rutger Hauer and features music by Power Glove. Or you can double down and go see Mad Max: FURY ROAD in all its neo-80’s hard-nosed action, post-apocalyptic, car crunching, visceral violence and beauty, before that gem is out of theaters and you’ll all be sorry.

– Sam Haine

* Also available online for $1.99 on Steam and available for free on the App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android) is the KUNG FURY: Street Rage video game.

Sword & Sorcery. Known for buff swordsmen, scantily-clad warrior-women, and evil magic, this sub-genre of fantasy held pop culture in its jaws in the 70s and 80s. It never really went away; Robert E. Howard’s “Conan” character is still popular today as a poster-boy for the aesthetic and the ideal.  It offered us a darker, grittier (but also sometimes much sillier) alternative to the elves & dragons we’re all familiar with. What started with fiction and art from men like Howard and Frazetta soon blossomed into film and TV… it’s no surprise a few video games got made.

Golden Axe (called “Fighting Axe” in Japan) fits the mold of sword & sorcery, and it’s no disappointment. Developed by the same team who created Altered Beast, Golden Axe was released in 1989 for both the arcade (June) and the Mega Drive/Genesis (December). In researching this article, I took a good look at both; the Mega Drive version is largely unchanged from the arcade, but it contains one more level, a new ending, and a play mode that allows you and a friend to chop one another to bits instead of the bad guys. It is this version I have focused on, as it seems to be the one folks are most familiar with.

The plot isn’t too complex: some jerk named Death Adder has kidnapped the King and his daughter, and has begun plundering the land of Yuria like it was his own personal playground. Enter Ax (the swordsman), Tyris (the swordswoman) and Gillis (the badass dwarf with an axe as big as he is), three fledgling heroes with vendettas of their own against Death Adder. Each player selects one of these characters to plow through the minions of evil and set things right by putting Death Adder down like the mangy dog he is. The game leads them across various levels, including a village built on the back of a giant turtle. Overall, Golden Axe plays like a big medieval beat-em-up, not too different mechanics-wise from games like Double Dragon or Streets of Rage.

Each character is about as competent as their two counterparts in hand-to-hand combat, but what sets them apart is the type of magic they use. The dwarf creates lightning with his spells, while Tyris hurls fire and Ax summons up the earth itself. The magic itself isn’t terribly versatile, but you only really need it for one thing: to pound the crap out of enemies in a tight spot. The spells are fueled by little blue pots you gather by kicking around tiny men who run around with gunny sacks. You’d think I’m making that up, but I swear I’m serious. These tiny men can and do exact their revenge between levels, however, by trying to steal the blue pots back from you as you rest.

Sneaky little bastard.

Your bigger concern is the veritable army of brutes arrayed against you. It all starts off gently enough, with piecemeal-armored men wielding clubs and maces; things get a bit more serious once the skeletons, animated statues, and armored warriors twice your size start showing up. Some of these ruffians sit astride strange animals, which luckily enough, you can usually steal when you unseat the rider. Some simply attack with their tails, but many also breathe fire.

It is undoubtedly better to the the breather than it is to be breathed on.

There is a lot of palette-swapping going on in Golden Axe, but it is used well and isn’t done sloppily. Both the background graphics and the sprites are pretty crisp and detailed, and while the animation’s pretty simple, it gets the point across. There are no sweeping cinematics or long cutscenes; the game focuses mostly on the action, but you are given a short storyline advancement between levels. The sound is pretty good, with digitized voices featured prominently (though really only in the form of death screams). The music steals the show more than anything. It is pulse pounding, action-oriented, and powerfully heroic. The intro theme and 1st level music stand out to me as exceptional, but the entire soundtrack is excellent.

The game spawned two sequels for the Mega Drive/Genesis AND two in the arcade, as well as a couple of spinoff games (with the character Ax getting his own game for the Sega Game Gear). While I’d hardly call it a franchise, Golden Axe is certainly more than a drop in the bucket. It has held lasting appeal for console and arcade fanatics, and is notable as an important crossover between fantasy/RPG aesthetics and the classic beat-em-up play style. 

If you’d like to play, Internet Archive has a free browser version available.

Later in the month, we’ll look at some other fantasy-themed games for June. Until next time, RetroFans!