Well, you had three options. The first was talking to your dumb-ass friends about it. This has varying appeal, depending on who your “friends” are and how lousy their taste is. You could also check out grainy, tiny screenshots in ads, or on the game’s back cover. The problem here was, a lot of what ends up there is subject to change, as the ad copy and dressing is usually done in advance of the release.

Then there’s the real knee-jerk way, the “intuitive” lie we’ve all told ourselves before: judging the book (video game) by its cover.

Regardless of the quality of any given game, there was an era in the 80s and 90s where box art could make or break counter sales of a game. No punches were pulled. The phenomenon produced some real horrible shit, but we also saw some undoubted masterpieces. I’ve chosen five of them to look at this time over, and will probably do this again in the future… it was hard to narrow it down, so I chose five that impacted me as a young man that still hold a striking presence now, to the adult me.

I would like to note that the order is not a ranking. I would not dare to do that with raw visual art; each piece should really stand or fall on its own merit. I should also note that, while I made an attempt to credit individual artists, that information can sometimes be tricky to get ahold of. If you see a mistake or missing information, feel free to contact me or message our Facebook page. I have also not strictly grabbed the art as it is off the box; if I found a higher resolution or better version of that same art in a flyer, ad, or elsewhere, then I have used that.

Argus no Senshi/Rygar

Year: 1986

Artist: Unknown; if you know, please contact me

Click to enlarge!

Not one single bit of anything happening here is soft, gentle, kind, or anything less than a testament to divinely-inspired violence. There is a gigantic, demonic lion-person leering and reaching from the heavens. Rygar, having just decapitated some manner of ogre-beast in his endless quest for monster blood, holds up his trophy to the sky-lion and roars back in defiance. The bodies of other unthinkable creatures lie submissive and vanquished before him. Rygar will not bow to any being… no god, lion, or demon. If you would have Rygar, then descend from your sickly-green heaven and come take him! He will add your ridiculous head to his collection.

Seriously, there is nothing truly lacking here, except that Rygar’s weaponry is a bit dishonestly represented. I can’t even fault it, though, because it’s under-represented, leaving the pleasant and brutal surprise for when you play the game.

Exile: Wicked Phenomenon

Year: 1992

Artist: Vic Ireland

Click to Enlarge (it’s pretty big).

This one probably took a lot of time and talent, and it shows… this art is sufficiently dream-haunting that for a while I set that face as the image to show when my phone alarm went off. That way, I heard loud noise, picked up my phone, saw THAT, and was jolted awake by two senses instead of just one.

I hazard to say that the art is better than the game, which is okay if not a little slow-moving and unnecessarily inflated in terms of storyline. The game is immaterial. From the floor-fog to the lighting to the soulless, predatory eyes of the face in the wall, you know a dark story lies inside that game box.

Heretic

Year: 1994

Artist: Gerald Brom

Click to Enlarge!

Brom has gotten the nod for tons of art any gamer or fantasy fan has doubtless seen; just google “gerald brom art” and toodle around for a while. You’ll recognize plenty. I have always loved this particular work of his, for several reasons. Firstly, it accurately depicts the world of Heretic as a dark, dying realm where little hope exists. The only strong light source in the picture is the mage’s spell ripping into one of the undead warriors. Secondly, the mage’s face is perfect. It’s this exact blend of grim hardness, sheer terror, and arcane focus. I also love how the focal point of the image is twofold: the mage himself and the bolt of magical energy he is casting. It all seems initially off-balance to one side, but the dynamic movement implied in the figures present makes everything seem to fit right where it is. Lastly, something about these skeletons just looks punk rock as fuck to me. I’m into the undead as antagonists in any medium or genre; it’s even better when they look like extras from Return of the Living Dead.

Wolfenstein 3D

Year: 1992

Artist: Ken Rieger

Click to Enlarge!

I’ve mentioned this one before. This is an image that transcends what it is meant to depict and shows us a glimpse of what lies in one single moment of violence. A Nazi guard is sprawled on the floor, his vividly red blood spattered across the cobblestones as he gasps his last “mein lieben.” BJ Blazkowicz roars in brute triumph as he unleashes the full power of an impossibly huge chaingun on out-of-frame foes who are likely in the throes of Biblical-level terror. Nazi imprisonment has not weakened any part of the animal that is BJ; his instincts, supernatural physique, and bloodlust are every bit as powerful as they were when the Krauts lucked out and caught him. Now he’s going to singlehandedly send each one of them to the mockery of Valhalla reserved for such villains.

When you sit down to craft a piece like this, it’s ballsy to take the perspective of “sort-of underneath the guy.” You could end up with an image framing a crotch, or one that’s just unappealing. Rieger nailed this. He knew he had to show BJ Blazkowicz the way most mortals should see him: as if looking up into the stratosphere, to see where the divine scream of vengeance was coming from.

Castlevania/Akumajo Dracula/Vampire Killer

Year: 1986-87

Artist: surprisingly, I could not find this information.

IF YOU CLICK IT, IT GETS BIGGER

Looming above everything else, above and beyond the decrepit castle on the cliff, sneering arrogantly at the young man with a whip, we see Dracula. The Prince of Undeath. An ancient, horribly potent, and unsinkable evil. Standing defiantly below, we see Simon Belmont: the man who has come not only to kick Dracula’s shit in, but to do it with a whip.

There’s not a lot I can say here… this image has become iconic as a symbol of the protagonist/antagonist struggle that defines most platform games of the era. The player is presented with the bold but intangible outline of a villain supposedly beyond defeat, and given control of a modestly-depicted hero to get the job done. In the end, it turns out that legends die hard… but they can die. Even the vibrant streak of sky-hues across the middle of the picture doesn’t clash; it fits in and even adds to the tone of grey struggle. With eyes that sparkle like a cat’s, Dracula taunts not only Simon, but the potential player. As with its music, the art of the Castlevania franchise is consistently top-notch. This image set the standard.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at some of the indelible images that played a part in our hobby’s history. I will be back with more. Thank you so much for reading.

In the years between 1989 and 1997, the earliest strong attempts at 3D “first person” games were being fired at the wall. As 1992-93 rolled on, this fire reached a machine-gun rate due to the success of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Even now, in the year 2017, I set out on the Internet to research this stuff and unearth titles I’ve never played (or even seen) from that era. Some were surprisingly good, but escaped notice for some reason or another. As can happen all too often, poor timing or not enough publicity may have nailed them to the floor; in other cases, they are simply eclipsed by other releases that blow all competition out of the water.

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold fell victim to all three of these blights, but is still a solid example of the early first-person shooter template put to creative use. The game uses the same engine as Wolfenstein 3D, notable for its orthogonal game-spaces and its ray-casting technique of point-of-view rendering. The game was conceived and developed by JAM productions, a short-lived enclave formed in 1993 by Jim Row and Mike Maynard. Apogee (developers of the engine used) published Blake Stone, and also lent JAM the services of their legendary music man, Bobby Prince.

The game even came with a little comic book! It wasn’t incredible but it was at least cool.

In Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold you play as the titular character, recruited by British Intelligence in the year 2140 after distinguishing himself in the Navy. Your assignment is to scuttle the operations of an insidious organization known as STAR, which is led by the nefarious Dr. Pyrus Goldfire. Goldfire plans to conquer the world using an army of expert soldiers combined with a heavy complement of his own genetically engineered monsters… and things are looking like that might not be a pipe dream.

Thanks, Dr. Goldfire. You asshole.

Just like Wolfenstein 3D, the game has separate episodes, played one at a time. Each has 10-11 levels in it, usually representing some building or compound belonging to STAR. Blake begins with a simple sidearm when he steps in the door, but can find all kinds of futuristic weapons to beef up his offensive capability. In addition to health items lying on the floor, Blake can also pop tokens into vending machines for a small pick me up. All of this will prove to be extremely necessary, since each level of each episode is crawling with security officers, as well as a taste of Goldfire’s genetic engineering “miracles.” There are also robots, both ceiling-mounted and mobile, that await the chance to shred you with their integral weapons. One cool thing about Blake Stone is the element of ambiguity among the scientists you encounter; some of the men in lab coats are spies who will offer you info or food tokens, and some will just call for help and start shooting you.

Gallery 1

Gallery 2

At the end of each episode, you face off with Dr. Goldfire briefly. Each time, he has new tricks up his sleeve, but eventually teleports away before you can finish him off. He’s nice enough to drop the keycard you need to get to the actual boss of that episode, though… and let’s just say they’re locked up for a reason. The end of the final episode lets you finally bring down Pyrus Goldifre, but it’s then that you discover what he really is…

One of the end-of-episode bosses. Apparently just some creativity applied to bread mold. Mix in one part ugly and two parts angry and voila! Run for your life!

The game’s graphics are about on par with those of Wolfenstein 3D, but they are very colorful and varied. Nothing technical was stretched in terms of visuals, although you can tell a lot more creativity went into them, likely by necessity since this game offers mutants and aliens instead of Nazis as antagonists. A mix of 16 bit and digitized sound is used, with the digitized bits being mostly combat and enemy sound effects. As with most of his work, Bobby Prince borrowed a hook here and there from a rock song but produced a masterful soundtrack of very fitting music. The intro theme and Mission Music #6 are two favorites of mine, but the whole thing is very good. It’s very rich for a SoundBlaster-16/AdLib soundtrack.

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold was released only a week before id Software released Doom in 1993. As one may guess, Doom completely covered it and most similar games with a mighty shadow, and Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold sold poorly after a good start. It was received well when it was reviewed, however, and was praised especially for its additional gameplay elements and its sound. JAM released a sequel, Blake Stone: Planet Strike, in 1994, and then closed its doors. Its three members found work at other software companies. 3D Realms owns the rights, and has included the game in a couple of compilations as well as a standalone version on their site. It has a gently improved HUD but is otherwise true to the source.

I give Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold 7/10. In hindsight, it stands toe to toe with its peers, and it has a kickin’ soundtrack. It fell victim to poor timing and the shadow of a giant, but it can’t be called a bad game by any means.

See you around the next corner, kiddos! So much planned for 2017!

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.