Here is the story, according to John himself:

“After killing the Spiderdemon at the end of E4M8 (Unto the Cruel), your next stop is Earth — you must save it from hellspawn that is causing unimaginable carnage. But Baphomet glitched the final teleporter with his hidden sigil whose eldritch power brings you to even darker shores of Hell. You fight through this stygian pocket of evil to confront the ultimate harbingers of Satan, then finally return to become Earth’s savior.”

Sigil’s opening screen. KVLT ANTI-HVMAN BLACK METAL

I am a pretty well-seasoned DOOM player, and can usually handle the original 3 episodes on Nightmare or at least UV. This shit is turning my guts inside out on Hurt Me Plenty. You will not see health much at all. You will need to be extremely careful. Yes, there are horrible monster traps everywhere. Inescapable pits too. You will die. You will know death again, Marine. You can never truly rest. But Space Marines are made for this shit. Let’s hit it.

E5M1 is a true gauntlet-run involving the elevation of platforms in order to find your way through a winding path of hitscanners and imps. The maps are very dimly lit, and instead of switches, Romero has us shooting the demonic eye symbols to activate/open things. I’ll save you the five or so seconds it’d take to puzzle it out. Sheol (E5M2) continues to incline the difficulty in a steady fashion. Breaking a sweat yet? You often find yourself with little room to move one way or another, measuring moments and shots, clinging to cover while whittling away at potentially deadly ambushes. I hope you like seeing barons and cacodemons up close, because you fucking will be. E5M3 is called Cages of the Damned, and it looks slightly more “conventional” as a map when you first start blasting through. Vaguely castle-like, with great run-and-gun action and a few open spaces (finally!) to use in combat. I’d even call E5M3 “classical” because of how true parts of it are to the original feel of the trilogy. You’re still, however, finding very little health. And yes, you’re still in horrible peril on a constant basis. Paths of Wretchedness (E5M4) is another hectic rim-grabber over pools of magma as you battle your way through a shooting gallery with you as the turkey. Movement is again limited, and you find yourself getting pummeled in bottlenecks – sometimes caught with your fucking pants down – and perishing if you’re not on your LeBron “Leatherface on Mars” James A-game. This level has a splash of that old alien-mechanical feel to it reminiscent of Knee-Deep in the Dead. Probably another of my overall favorites of the episode. While health is scarce throughout this episode, you will find enough ammunition if you are thorough, frugal, and keep your eyes open.

Pictured: One scrub (yours truly), pre-tenderized.

Abbadon’s Void (E5M5) hits us with the sound of a cyberdemon right out of the starting gate, and we don’t clearly see it, but we know it’s aware of us and it’s pissed off. Great. More indoorsy, wood-paneled infernal décor, peppered with monster closet ambushes and tense high-wire acts. I particularly enjoy the MIDI OST track for this map (more on the music below); it’s atmospheric and rich and it reminds me a little of Blood’s great theatrical-style music. E5M6, Unspeakable Persecution, has the exit to the secret level E5M9 (Realm of Iblis). I’m not going to spoil where the door is or what the secret level is like; if you want that shit you can find it easily online. (I admit that I had to look it up. My skills have gotten mad rusty.) I will say that E5M9 is as hot and nasty as you’d expect Sigil’s secret map to be. Buckle up, buttercup. E5M7 is the Nightmare Underworld, and it was originally meant to be the fifth map, but it belongs here in spot #7. It is an expansive and adventurous map, and it pounds me into hamburger at an embarrassing rate. John’s work in Sigil is the work of a man who intimately understands the tools he is using to engage the player. It is the work of a methodical, gifted, calculating psychopath. E5M8, Halls of Perdition, presents the final obstacle in Sigil. Like E4M8, it is not just a straight boss fight; you must find your way through one last intense firefight against the full host of DOOM’s baddies intent on beating you down. The finale has a marathon-like feel and is almost joyful (I only beat it once using equipment cheats on Hurt Me Plenty).

decino’s entertaining and thorough playthrough of Sigil. He is a much better player than me. Props.

Hi. <3

Let’s talk about the absolute fucking banger soundtrack. If you don’t know who Buckethead is, you should, and he wrote the CD soundtrack for Sigil. Apparently, he’s a long-time DOOM fan. Who’d have thought a dude like the immortal Buckethead would have good taste. It is busy, atmospheric, haunting, and it fits Sigil’s gloomy theme of desperation perfectly. The episode also features a fantastic MIDI soundtrack written by James Paddock. It’s a little more action-themed but fits the game every bit as well as the Buckethead score. E5M1 and E5M7 stand out to me as highlights, and you should have a listen.

Ol’ Johnny R. goes hard in the paint with Sigil, reminding us longtime Space Marines that while our blood may smear every hallway and elevator from Phobos to Mt. Erebus, we can never die. Besides, who the hell else is going to keep the demons down? You know they’ll just be back . They always come back.

Sigil gets a 9 out of 10 from me. It’s difficult, but that’s not a complaint at all. It’s a brutally refreshing shot in the arm for a game that’s been loved for over twenty-six years. Devastatingly crisp, well-executed, and effective. John Romero has given us more to love about DOOM… and a new way to get our asses kicked and GET GOOD.

See you later for more articles in October. Stay spooky as hell… and Stay Retro.

BONUS: Of course there’s a Zero Master speed run of 9:32 for it already. Hallelujah.

We’ve talked about DOOM. We’ve looked at Wolfenstein 3D. We’ve even touched on some left-field shit like Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. The formative history of the first person shooter is no new topic to us, RetroFans…

So why the FUCK have I put off talking about Quake for so long?

As I’ve pointed out in previous articles, Quake‘s predecessors (notably 1992’s Wolfenstein 3D and 1993’s groundbreaking DOOM) create the impression of a fully 3D environment… but they’re not really 3D. Wolf3D rendered its faux-3D point of view by way of a technique called raycasting, while DOOM expanded upon that idea significantly by allowing for differences in floor and ceiling height. What we were seeing, as cool as it was (And still is), amounted to 2D information being cleverly jury-rigged into a “3D enough for me” experience. Here’s another hair to split, while we’re talking like total assholes: the monsters and items were still very much 2 dimensional – the same type of sprites one might see in a 2D title like Super Mario World.

Don’t go thinking I’m just here to take a shit on Wolf3D and DOOM; far from it. I have a point, and I’m about to get to it. Please stop throwing furniture at me.

I’ve showed you this before, but there’s no reason why I can’t show you again. Hell, I love repeating myself. A visual explanation of raycasting, wherein a two-dimensional space is given uniform height/depth and roughly translated into what a dog or a 5 year old kid might consider 3D.

In 1994, John Romero saw Sega’s Virtua Fighter, and a thought occurred to him: “We could do that. Except we could do it better. Nastier. With hatchets and demons and shit.” Thankfully, Johnny R. happened to know one of the pimp-pioneers of game development, a man whose brain runs on twelve white-hot macho cylinders… John Carmack. The man who masterminded the DOOM engine, Carmack began hatching this next golden egg not long after DOOM II was released. But a funny thing happened on the way to the release; John Romero (who, let’s be real, has been known to toss some dogshit ideas at the wall and see if they stick) wanted to make Quake a third-person game… at least partially. Seemingly hung up on Virtua Fighter, Johnny R. wanted there to be hand-to-hand fights in the game that were presented just like the Sega fighting game. This turned out to be a huge time sink, not to mention a bone of contention between Romero and pretty much every other person working on the project. Long story short, Romero left id shortly after Quake‘s release. He went on to make Daikatana, which we won’t talk about because it’s terrible enough to put on the books as a felony.

Back on subject… when Quake hit the game shelves in June of ’96, it rendered all its predecessors obsolete. Fuck “obsolete,” it made them look like some Flintstones shit. Paleolithic grunting and biting. Most immediately, it was clear that Quake was fully 3D. Not “smoke and mirrors and two-dimensional SS officers.” Not “2D wearing 3D’s stolen hat.” The environment and models were fully polygonal, you could go under and over shit, the lightmapping was lush, and to top it all off, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails did the sound and music.

Our hero. A man of coughy grunts, constant grimaces, and what looks like the world’s least comfortable helmet.

In this dark, bloody and immersive escapade, you step into the shoes of a Ranger who finds himself the last man alive after a disaster involving prototype teleportation technology. It’s unclear if the dude’s proper name is Ranger and he just had colorful parents, or he’s meant to be nearly anonymous like the Space Marine from DOOM. Anyway, the situation you find yourself in bears a close similarity to DOOM‘s: an entity code-named “Quake” (TITLE REFERENCE) hacked the fuck out of the experimental Slipgate and used it to flood your world with nightmarish horror and death. In the grand tradition of brave but questionable decisions, you decide the best way to burn a few hours is to charge recklessly into the abyss.

During your journey through overrun military bases, hellish lavascapes, and Lovecraftian vistas, you’ll meet all kinds of new friends. There’s mostly “re-programmed” soldiers and dogs at first, and a new player might get to thinking this shit’s kinda tame… until you run into your first chainsaw ogre.

There’s also the Shambler. He’s probably my favorite, because he’s a gigantic eyeless ape that gallops after you Gunnar Hansen style and slaps you with electricity so hard your goddamn point-of-view shakes. Like most of the game’s monsters, if you don’t tread carefully around the Shambler, you’re fucked.

We’ve got gear to deal with these bloodsoaked, screeching assholes, though. Ranger had the good sense to bring a shotgun with him, and he even showed a little artistic flair by choosing a short double-bitted axe as a backup. After a while, these toys don’t cut the mustard, so it’s a good thing you find new toys all over the place. Who doesn’t enjoy the ponk-ponk-ponk a weaponized nailgun, or the sheer sporting joy of bouncing a few grenades out of your launcher into a room of unsuspecting restless dead?

Back on that soundwork by Trent Reznor for a second: While a lot of the OST is minimalist, it’s hauntingly effective. The main theme is really something else, though, evoking images of darkness, rust, throbbing pain, and grit. It almost makes me think of what Coil would sound like if they were a little less “experimental” and way more aggressive.

Quake isn’t all just murder and pants-pissing fear. There’s a handful of thinkin’ man’s challenges throughout the game, and even the bosses at the end of each episode require a bit of brainwork to defeat. Even now, 22 years later, I still like to jump into the Slipgate now and then. The only difference is, I use a source port or client (much like I do when it’s time to blaze up some DOOM or Heretic). There are several decent ones being maintained by diehard fans, but the one I use is GLQuake. I feel like it offers the most authentic single-player experience. Others, like Zquake or fodQuake, lean more toward facilitating network play, which was so astounding in the vanilla product that it ended up being the direction the Quake franchise went.

It goes without saying that Quake was hugely successful, not to mention the tremendous impact it had on the gaming world. It was the phenomenon that ushered in the dawn of “modern” FPS games, and subsequent efforts by other developers were aimed at meeting or exceeding Quake‘s standard. Two aftermarket expansions were released for Quake in 1997; Hipnotic Interactive’s Mission Pack No. 1 featured three new episodes, and was followed within a month by a second mission pack by Rogue Entertainment that added two more episodes to Ranger’s gore-drenched saga. No less than five sequels were spawned from the red wreckage; even now, Queakeaholics await the 2018 release of Quake Champions, id’s latest entry into the series.

I examined this game inside and out via the clarity of hindsight, and still can find no significant fault with it. Like the id Software titles that preceded it, Quake is a big bad daddy. It was a shot of heavy adrenaline in the arm of PC gaming, shotgunning the FPS and the concept of multiplayer to new heights. It also finished what things like Virtua Fighter and the PS1 started; it held its gib-covered banner high and roared out loud that a new age was upon us. If I don’t give Quake 9/10, then someone should probably come euthanize me.

The games we remember from the golden era fall into two categories: the classic, undeniably great ones… and the ones so ridiculous we can’t forget them. They’re not even necessarily bad (although many of them are), but they’re just so… well, bizarre that they become etched into our memories for decades.

This is one I’ve wanted to visit for some time now. I saved it for a rainy day.

Adventures of Bayou Billy is a retooling of a Famicom game called Mad City, which was released in 1988. When exporting the game to America and the PAL region in 1989, Konami decided to redo a lot of the graphics and scale up the difficulty a little. They also added something fairly rare at the time: DCPM-coded digital voice samples. What’s actually neat about the game is that it’s three games in one: you will do some hand to hand fighting, some action driving, and some shooting (either with the Zapper or the controller).

In either game, you play Billy West, a survivalist and ex-soldier who lives in the bayou and spends most of his time fighting the crime lord Godfather Gordon. Guess what Gordon does to get your attention and set up one big showdown in the Big Easy?

Very original! I think I’m beginning to learn something about living in a video game: don’t ever love anyone or anything, or it will be used against you.

That’s right. Your scandalously curvy girlfriend, Annabelle, is in trouble! Gordon not only has time on his hands, but apparently a lot of money to throw away on your murder as well, since you’ll deal with threats ranging from gators and thugs to airplanes and helicopters. The baddies (even the gators) drop food, weapons and armor occasionally, and these help a lot since Billy actually isn’t all that great of a fighter. His repertoire consists of a punch that has lousy reach, a kick that has slightly less lousy reach, and a jump kick that looks like some Riverdance shit. Some enemies even drop guns, which give you bullets for yours. When I say “some,” I mean “very few.”

You know all those strongmen downtown in New Orleans. Always out swinging their cartoon ball-and-chains in their perfect white bell bottoms. Scandalous! 

Get used to this.

In stages 2 and 7 you have to scoot carefully along and shoot it out with more of Gordon’s goons; depending on the game type selected, this can be done with the Zapper (plugged into the other controller port) or the controller (via a movable crosshair). The latter technique is much slower and will probably get you killed. You always magically have bullets in these stages, regardless of how empty your bullet counter is in the street-fighting portion of the game.

Gray is the preferred color for swamp ops. Gray sweat pants. Any true operator knows that.

Stages 4 and 5 are kind of like a racing game, except blue jeeps and prop planes are constantly trying to murder you. In the original Famicom version, your jeep had a life bar, but in the US version, one mistake kills you. I guess they figured that since us Americans are obsessed with cars, we’d appreciate the hardcore hell-on-wheels version.

Yes. Apparently you are going 180 mph on a dirt road. No big deal.

Bayou Billy is a pretty respectably hard game, right from the beginning. It’s so hard that it has a practice mode. I can play any of the three game types in practice mode and get my ass annihilated halfway through. The actual game is damn near impossible for me; I admit that I had to watch a longplay just to get a look at all of it. The bosses in the main game seem uncompromisingly brutal in that way beat-em-up bosses often are, with huge hit ranges and more durability than a Panzer tank. Once you make it to New Orleans, things get super ridiculous, with circus strongmen and full-on gangster gunmen joining the fray as regular enemies. In fact, the first fight you have in the front yard of the mansion is with three men armed with guns. Inside the mansion things get outright absurd during the final showdown:

The graphics are pretty cool, meeting the standard for Konami games of the era with rich colors and decent texturing. Enemy design isn’t terribly creative, but the swamps and streets of Louisiana look alive and are rendered with authentic detail. The music for Bayou Billy is a hidden diamond; I am especially enamored with the default side scrolling stage music and the boss theme. Konami rarely screws up the music part of anything, and this is no exception. That fighting stage music is probably something you could put on in a club and people would make the best of it! The voice samples (there are only two of them) are all right, but they’re characteristically fuzzy and it’s obvious that they were added as an afterthought.

I’d give Adventures of Bayou Billy 6/10. It’s not a great game, but it’s a weird game. It took a novel approach to diversifying gameplay, it had great music, and it’s one you remember if you encountered it back then. After all, fighting alligators with a stick is pretty hard to forget.

We’ve got some real treats in store for you next month, RetroFans! Stay tuned!

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.