Gaming History 101

Rise of the Triad is more significant than it initially seems in the annals of first-person shooter (or Doom clone) history. In fact, had it remained under its original title, Rise of the Triad: Wolfenstein 3D Part II it would probably have more awareness and fall under the pantheon of id titles still garnering praise on Steam and Good Old Games. Due to several disputes that arguably are the direct result of John Carmack, a co-founder of developer id Software and lead in milestone shooters Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake, the project was terminated in 1993 to avoid clashing with upcoming title Doom. This led to several disputes within the developer of Doom, id Software, and the planned publisher of Doom and previous publisher of several other titles, Apogee Software.

In the beginning there were two companies: developer id Software and publisher Apogee Software. For the most part Apogee was better known as its later developer 3D Realms, the team responsible for Duke Nukem 3D and originally Prey. Before that all happened, Apogee was making its money publishing id Software’s earliest successes including Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D. Apogee utilized the plan of “shareware” to market games, which is a method of giving people approximately 25-33 percent of a game to try out with the option to purchase the full game if interested. John Romero, the then lead designer on Doom at id Software, canceled Rise of the Triad and John Carmack decided to have id self publish so Apogee ended up not publishing Doom.  id Software’s co-founder Tom Hall (Carmack and Romero were the other founders) left id to join Apogee. Apparently Hall had concern over the amount of violence and gore in Doom, a project he assisted greatly in creating. Ironically a year later when he completed work as lead designer on Rise of the Triad for Apogee, it would have even more blood and gore than Doom, including a random occurrence where an enemy would explode into gory giblets and “Ludicrous Gibs!” would appear on the screen.

After the split, id Software would celebrate success with Doom and its next franchise, Quake, as a combination developer and publisher. id would continue to utilize the shareware marketing strategy begun by Apogee and even coin the term “gibs” in Quake, meaning literally giblets of human gore and flesh. While the concept of gibs in games was started in either Wolfenstein 3D or Doom, both created by id, I don’t recall seeing the word “gibs” until Rise of the Triad and definitely know it was popularized by Quake. Apogee would release Rise of the Triad on its own as both publisher and developer, the project led by Tom Hall and his team he dubbed the “developers of incredible power”. Aside from some preliminary work in the early-to-mid 90s on Prey, which would eventually be re-developed by Human Head Studio and published by 3D Realms (Apogee) 12 years later, the team’s only title was Rise of the Triad. When Apogee renamed itself to 3D Realms (although it kept Apogee as its traded company name) in 1994, Hall would assist in the Duke Nukem series including the very popular Duke Nukem 3D before leaving to work with John Romero at Ion Storm and produce Deus Ex.

Rise of the Triad is not only significant for being a game where the point is to navigate a predominantly linear level killing everything in your path (Call of Duty says “hi”), but also as the first title to be a total conversion mod. It started as an expansion pack and became a highly modified engine of Wolfenstein 3D, but little hints like the Nazi-esque uniforms of enemies give away what it originally started life as. Furthermore the engine was a technical marvel containing features like panoramic skies, simulated dynamic lighting, fog, bullet holes, breakable glass walls, and even multi-level environments – although it faked it well, Doom was a flat plain in the eyes of the engine. Rise of the Triad was going to be even more dynamic with pre-loaded enemy packs that would randomly generate and extra levels and challenge runs, but all were scrapped due to time constraints and technical limitations. It is also one of the few games of the time that had environmental hazards so drastic that they were usually one-hit kills.

Although mostly forgotten in time, Rise of the Triad is significant in assisting to move the genre of the first-person shooter to the complex world it is today. As a transitional title, it really has a hard time holding up against the more beloved and popular shooters of the time (as our review clearly demonstrates). Still, it was in the nucleus of shooter innovation and many of the crazies and best features of contemporary FPS started almost 20 years ago with the only shooter ever to come out of Apogee software and the Developers of Incredible Power.