#trailblazer best pistol fight me

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if you get this, answer with three random facts about yourself and send it to the last seven blogs in your notifs! anon or not, doesn't matter, let's get to know the person behind the blog <3

i almost always wear a hat outside. a fitted cap mostly, a beanie when it's too cold.

i got my hands on book 3 of a series called Aurora Cycle two weeks before its international release

i used to collect (code for "buy a lot of") nerf guns when i was younger. i still have just about all of them

Thank you for the ask :D

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Wolfenstein 3D

Original Release Date: May 5, 1992

Original Platform: MS-DOS PC

Developer/Publisher: id Software/Apogee Software

It's a rare thing, particularly in modern times, to witness a new genre of games being born. It's even rarer to know that you're witnessing something that big in the moment. One of the few times this has happened in my life is with the first-person shooter genre. I was at a friend's house and his father, a PC gamer, had recently downloaded the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D. Said father wasn't especially big on letting teenagers mess around with his computer, but he allowed me to play a few minutes of the game. I was so spell-bound by what I saw in that short period of time that I was soon begging my own father for the even more precious favor of using his computer. Unfortunately, that didn't happen terribly often.

Still, I had experienced enough of Wolfenstein 3D to know that it was something big. Something important. It seemed so incredibly immersive. So fast. Most of my experiences with computer games up that point had been simple single-screen or side-scrolling action games, adventure games, and of course, RPGs. Wolfenstein 3D was nothing like any of those. I naturally have to mention Ultima Underworld here, as it was technically a little earlier with its convincing first-person world. But by happenstance, Wolfenstein was the one I encountered first. As such, it's the one that burned itself into my memory. Perhaps part of the mythic quality it achieved in my mind is owed to the fact that I couldn't play it to my satisfaction until quite a long time after. This was going to be huge, I thought, and for once I was actually right.

As was the case for many other players, this was the game that got me started on a minor obsession with first-person shooters. Although I'm more known for my RPG appreciation than anything else these days, it's important to remember that I got my gaming debut as an arcade rat. Fast-paced score attack games like Galaga, Defender, Asteroids, and Robotron were my bread and butter, with RPGs only entering the picture after I got my Commodore 64 computer. In Wolfenstein 3D I could see some of the DNA of those games, but from a totally new angle. Pun slightly intended. As the genre became more multiplayer-focused and less arcade-like all-around, I dropped right out of the genre almost completely. I think the last first-person shooter I really enjoyed at all was Halo 3, and even that felt more like it was out of respect for the good times I had with the previous two games in the series.

The rise of first-person shooters more or less coincided with me getting my first IBM clone PC of my very own, which probably also contributed to my brief but intense affair with the genre. The golden era of BBSes, the increasing utility of modems, and the rapid advances in graphics technology proved to be a fertile ground for the genre. I hate saying that you had to be there to fully appreciate it, but I will say that having boots on the ground in that era was pretty special. It was the Wild West that preceded computers becoming ubiquitous devices in the home, and it was hard to guess just how things were going to shake out.

Wolfenstein 3D was able to take advantage of some of that. Certainly, the game's shareware model of distribution benefited greatly from the increasing popularity of BBSes, though I think it's safe to say that the reverse was also true. The next step from developer id Software would be the bigger one, bringing in ideas like modding and multiplayer modes that they either hadn't thought of adding to Wolfenstein or couldn't. But you can't get to DOOM without going through Wolfenstein 3D, and that makes it an incredibly important part of gaming history. More than that, it's also a pretty unique game by the genre's standards. Simple, to be sure, but also more complex in the way that only a trailblazer tends to be. Is it still fun today, after so much has followed in its wake? Yes, to an extent.

The game's history has been well-documented by better writers than me, so I'm just going to jump right to the game itself. You play as B.J. Blazkowicz, an American spy who has been captured by the Nazis and locked up in the jail of Castle Wolfenstein. The initial game consists of three episodes made up of around ten stages each. It was soon expanded upon with another set of three episodes known as the Nocturnal Missions. Finally, a sequel of sorts called Spear of Destiny was created by the game's retail publisher. The ultimate goal of the original set of episodes is to do no less than take down Hitler himself. Mind you, it's Hitler in a mechanized exoskeleton with quadruple chain guns for arms, but it's hard to mistake that mustache.

One of the most striking things about going back to Wolfenstein 3D is just how much its arcade roots show. While the first-person perspective was extremely immersive, just about everything else about the game screams "video game" at the top of its lungs. It makes heavy use of bright colors. B.J.'s foot speed is blazing quick. You have a score and are awarded points for kills and picking up treasures. The very act of picking up treasures causes a twangy, chirpy sound effect to play. The game even has 1-Up items, which naturally take the form of B.J.'s disembodied head in a circle. Yes, you have a limited number of lives. There are zombies, mechanical Hitlers, and even hidden stages inspired by Pac-Man, patrolled by giant colorful ghosts.

While the idea of a first-person shooter set in World War 2 having any similarities to Pac-Man seems preposterous at a glance, it's more on the nose than you would think. The level designs in Wolfenstein 3D have to make do with simpler tools compared to the games that would follow, but even what they had available was enough to make things quite challenging. The way the game was designed, levels could only take place across one vertical plane. The DOOM engine would fudge this in a believable way and Quake would completely bust it open, but at this point even the idea of a small incline simply wasn't part of the package.

Levels couldn't fold back or twist upon themselves, so the level designers relied on good old-fashioned labyrinths instead. Throw in a couple of different-colored locks and you've got all you need to keep the player running back and forth for a satisfying length of time. Indeed, if you're playing a version of the game that allows you to see the overhead map, many of the stages in Wolfenstein 3D look like they wouldn't be out of place as maps for a Pac-Man hack of some kind. B.J. is slightly more prepared to fight back against his pursuers than Pac-Man, mind you. He can pick up a few extra weapons to supplement the pistol and knife he starts with, and although his arsenal looks positively thin compared to most games in the genre, it suffices. All of the weapons use the same ammunition, and you're frankly best to use whichever one fires the fastest at all times unless you're pinched for ammo. Which you might be, depending on the difficulty level you play on.

The enemies can be very dangerous, especially since you don't get as much obvious feedback when you're being hit as you might be used to. The real challenge comes in navigating the mazes, however. They quickly become huge, and if you're trying to find every secret, collect all the treasures, kill all the enemies, and do it in as fast a time as possible, you'll have your work cut out for you. On the higher difficulty settings, where ammo is scarce and enemies are super-tough, Wolfenstein becomes a very different game. One where carefully peeking around corners and not necessarily killing everything you see is the best way to proceed at times. Where using that silly little knife you start with becomes an essential part of your strategy. While id Software wouldn't start leaning heavily into horror until after this game, there's still plenty to be afraid of in Wolfenstein 3D.

Personally, I enjoy the original three episodes of Wolfenstein 3D the best. The Nocturnal Missions are alright, while the Spear of Destiny campaign just doesn't do much for me at all. It's an interesting game to go back to and play now given just how far the genre has gotten away from its roots, and as long as you can forgive its thin set of features, it's an enjoyable bit of arcade action. It's not too hard to find a version of the game to buy, and I think Bethesda may have even put a free browser version up at some point. I played three versions in anticipation of this write-up: the PC version available through GOG.com, the PlayStation 3 port, and the now-antiquated iOS version.

I found the latter to be the most fun to play, though that will depend greatly on how well you get on with touch controls. It makes sense that it's something of an ultimate version, though. It was the last version of the game that original programmer John Carmack worked on, and I believe he did the port by himself. It includes all of the original episodes, the Nocturnal Missions, and all of Spear of Destiny. There's a handy level select, and you can access a map at any time. It's sort of cheating, but only sort of. It can actually be harder to skip to a later map than to play through from an earlier one, since you won't have access to any of the better weapons. You can only save between levels too, so that adds yet another layer of difficulty to the game, albeit one that speaks true to its arcade-inspired feel.

Wolfenstein 3D was a very surprising game. Even more surprising, however, was just how quickly its own developer would render it obsolete in so many ways. As big and important as Wolfenstein 3D was, its successor would seem so far ahead of it that you would think five years separated the two rather than just a year and a half. We'll be taking a look at DOOM in the next article in this series. I'll mostly be focusing on the first game, but I might dabble in the second one as well since that's one of my favorite games of all-time.